We hope everyone is keeping safe during these strange times. It certainly stretches our ‘capacity to cope’ and feel and be safe.
These are words and phrases that have been used a lot in SFAC in September as Caitlin launched SFAC’s first Protective Behaviours Foundation Course to 16 participants in 10 countries over 4 mornings (and no-one’s internet failed!). The participants not only gained new knowledge but will also receive an accredited certification from a UK college. The course was developed by the Protective Behaviours Consortium in Birmingham.
Protective Behaviours (PBs) is a process that equips people to recognise when they’re feeling unsafe (you could also replace safe with stressed, overwhelmed etc.) and with strategies to help themselves find ways to feel safe again.
A huge thank you goes to Enzygo for sponsoring this event and enabling us to keep costs low so everyone can take part. We can’t wait to see how the participants in this first course put PBs into action in their work.
Other SFAC highlights:
Since May SFAC has continued to be busy and we even won a Quality Award Accreditation! Go us! We were very pleased with this!!!!
We’ve worked with organisations online from more than ten countries including Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Paraguay and the Philippines. This time it’s been bandwidth rather than air miles getting us there…
In Indonesia, we worked with The Salvation Army to help them develop new case management paperwork and systems for all the children they care for. This includes an Essential Information Form (What we know about a child) and a Care Plan (What we are going to do). Here’s some feedback on this project that we received recently.
‘The SFAC team have been available for regular updates and answered questions and queries from the Social Department and worked both in person and online over the last 12 months with us. Although they are experts they come across as friendly and fun, work in collaboration, listen and respond to individual queries without any judgement and supported us to improve.’
Jane Sandford,
Salvation Army Envoy and Child Sponsorship Secretary, Assistant Territorial Projects Director & Assistant Territorial Child Protection Officer
We were excited to be invited to become technical social work advisors to the team at 1Million Home (1MH), a USA based charity that works internationally. We’ve already held a number of consultation sessions with them and began running online training sessions with their partner organisations in September. Our COVID emergency assessment tool has also been added to 1MH’s COVID19 response.
We were also contacted by a UK based organisation who were setting up an orphanage in Zimbabwe. They read Mick’s book and are now changing from an orphanage to a family care programme! What a great outcome!!!
Speaking of Mick’s book, did you see it’s been translated into Burmese and we are hoping soon into Portugese.
Things to look out for:
- SFAC now has an Advisory Group. This group will influence SFAC training content by reviewing what we produce, adding suggestions to improve it, and co-producing content. The Advisory Group consists of practitioners doing direct work with children and families around the world. We will be introducing these wonderful people on Facebook and here on the website over next few months.
- While we’re talking about the website, we’re busy working on a re-design so keep an eye out for some big changes!
- We’ve also been working on some new resources for our Free Resource Library so keep an eye out for them in November.
- Our Impact Report for the last financial year will be released very soon.
- Finally, you might notice a small change to SFAC for those who spot these things. Our charity register number has changed from 1095091 to 1186903. This is because SFAC has become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. It means we have a different legal entity which is better for our trustees. It’s been a long process of 18 months and you might be contacted if you donate via Reliance Bank. But otherwise there will be absolutely no difference!
- Pub QUIZ time : 20th November, World Children’s Day, for a virtual Quiz Night/Trivia Night.
We have some SFAC Superstars!
We are very thankful to these three amazing superstars who have been fundraising for us.
- Amelie rode her skateboard,
- Rob Fordyce ran 10k every day in September and
- Ranjit ran a marathon.
Together they’ve raised just under £3000 – an incredible achievement. and you can still make a donation on their links.
If you’d like to be an SFAC Superstar we’d love to hear from you!
P.S. We cannot complete this update without mentioning Mick, Dan and Ranjit (our volunteer legal trainer) all being very happy about their football teams!!! Leeds Utd (Mick’s team) was promoted, the Cobblers (Northampton Town – Dan’s team) were also promoted after winning at Wembley and Liverpool (Ranjit’s team) won the premiership. So the football loving contingent of SFAC was very happy this summer!!!!!
