Carmarthenshire Youth & Children’s Association www.cycaonline.org

Pam J Edmunds

Jan Williams

Another year has passed by, and considering the present global financial climate we have been fortunate to come through some tough times with good results. The building at Dewi Sant has caused much concern at times, but we are grateful to the local authority and the Gravell Trust for assistance with some repairs. The Palms building housing CYCA Wales Limited, continues to be a major asset to the association. Our nurseries continue to be well used and appreciated, Jellitotz moving back to be attached to the new Morfa school in September. After school clubs and holiday clubs continue being very busy. The Fit 4 Fun project makes splendid progress and has been appreciated throughout the county. We congratulate the team for their sterling work. Work with youth in the area has been very pleasing, with increasing numbers enjoying facilities at the clubs. Some well earned awards are being acquired by the youngsters. Thanks must go to all the staff for their hard work and enthusiasm enabling our children and young people to benefit from all we can provide at CYCA. To be able to successfully sustain the work of CYCA we thank all our funders and all who have supported us over the past year. Finally a big thank you to our vice chair Judith Jenkins and other trustees who have continually supported me over the past months and welcome to Jan Williams as new chair of CYCA Wales Limited. Hopefully we can continue to maintain the high standard and introduce new projects over the coming months.

As Chairperson of CYCA Wales Limited, I am pleased to inform you that we have completed our inaugural year of trading. Based at the Palms, Queen Victoria Road, Llanelli we offer custom designed state of the art facilities. I am delighted to say that it has been an extremely successful first year. Little Seraphs offers full day care from birth, led by a team of highly qualified staff. We have many exciting projects all designed around children and their families, for example ‘Looked After Children’. We also help with parenting skills, life coaching and enabling people to return to work. Indeed many of the projects involving counselling are innovative, empowering all family members. All this creativity is due to the innovative and strong management offered by Tracy Pike, Barry Johnson and Janet Jones and all other staff members who have made a fantastic contribution. I would also like to thank my Vice Chair, Mr Harvey Jones and all the board members for their loyal support. No organisation can stand still or it may lose the initiative. With the vision, knowledge and determination of Tracy, we can always be assured of finding ourselves in the forefront of new developments and often leading the field.

CYCA Chairperson

CYCA Wales Limited Chairperson

2010 has been a significant year for CYCA with the development of our new limited company, CYCA Wales Limited. Thanks to funding support of £184,454 from the BIG Lottery, £83,171 from Children In Need and £70,492 from the Deprived Area Fund we have been able to really make a difference to those families in crisis, unemployed and Looked After Children. A new team of counsellors and therapists have been appointed and we have forged strong links with Carmarthenshire County Council to extend our services and work closely together. We continue to offer the most vulnerable access to experienced practitioners and provide them with resiliency strategies to overcome major obstacles that prevent them from moving on. Smaller grants locally from The Gravell Trust and Town and Rural councils ensure that our core services continue. Our Early Years services in three venues continue to grow, with Jellytotz enjoying brand new premises in Maes y Morfa school. Our private nursery Little Seraphs in Queen Victoria Road is also enjoying the benefits of new outdoor play facilities, servicing working parents from 8am to 6pm daily.

Our play and youth clubs still offer a vital service to children and young people and we continue to receive successful CSSIW inspections at our main centres. This service has been greatly enhanced by Fit 4 Fun activities which has enabled children to participate in healthy cooking, Tatty Bumpkin yoga, skateboarding, and dance to name but a few! Fit 4 Fun online game and recipe books have been produced for all children participating. We now produce newsletters three times a year which can be found on our newly revamped website, where we proudly display our successes! Staff and children have gained successes by representing Wales in Fly fishing and Kickboxing, where their passion for the sports began in our After School Clubs. Finally, can I thank all CYCA staff, trustees and board members who continue to work so hard. In an uncertain financial climate with so many charities struggling to survive, the determination and efforts from everyone has really been appreciated. Our successes this year have been achieved by hard work and determination to ensure that Carmarthenshire families receive the best possible services. It is vital these services continue in 2011 and your help and support will never be more crucial.

Cofion a diolch

Association Manager CYCA and

CYCA Wales Limited

Tracy Pike

At CYCA we provide recreational and educational services to children, young people and families throughout Carmarthenshire. All children are welcome, regardless of race, ability or social background. As you’ll see over the next few pages, we offer a varied and stimulating range of activities, from our nurseries right through to after school care and services for older youths and their families, including a variety of services in emotional health and well being through our new limited company—CYCA Wales Limited. For the general community, we also run a host of successful projects, including our exciting healthy living project Fit 4 Fun, a variety of digital media projects, and initiatives which are aimed at improving the emotional health and well being of families within Carmarthenshire. Please remember, we’re always on the lookout for volunteers. No matter where your skills lie (from childcare to web design) there are so many ways you can help us develop the CYCA experience!

Our after school and holiday clubs continue to go from strength to strength. In total we ran five after school clubs in Bryn Primary School, Furnace Primary School, Brynteg Primary School, Pentip Primary School and our very own Dewi Sant Play Centre. Throughout the year the children were treated to a host of Fit 4 Fun activities including Dance, Skateboarding, Circus Skills, Dragons Sports, Relaxation and Healthy Cooking sessions. All the clubs were well attended and in the coming year we will be opening a sixth club in Maes Y Morfa’s new Primary School.

Once again our holiday clubs at the Dewi Sant Centre proved to

be an enormous success, working to full capacity in every

holiday period. The summer club, gave us the opportunity to

introduce some new highly trained and enthusiastic staff, who

along with old staff, ensured the children were treated to a

fun-filled summer. Next summer we will be running a second

club in the new Maes Y Morfa Primary School.

With the help of the Flying Start programme, it has been another successful year at our nurseries, with Teddybears continuing to thrive, Jellitotz moving to a brand new setting in Morfa Primary School and our new Little Seraphs setting enjoying its first full year of existence at our new training complex, The Palms.

The main highlight at all three nurseries was the introduction of the enthralling Tatty Bumpkin

programme. Where fully trained provider Jean Morgan visited each setting on a weekly basis delivering

this unique yoga-inspired service. We are very proud to offer the programme to our nursery children as

this is the only provision of Tatty Bumpkin in the whole of Wales.

As well as being visited from some special visitors and activity providers,

the nurseries also staged some special events of their own, including

Christmas Nativity plays and concerts, St David's Day celebrations,

Easter Bonnet parades, Children in Need events and Summer Sports

Days. Children at Jellitotz were also involved in an exciting Spray and

Play project which saw them play starring TV roles on HTV’s ‘People’s

Millions’ programme.

In order to raise awareness of the importance of healthy living, this year has seen the development of a host of Fit 4 Fun promotional activities, fronted by the project’s unique fun-loving mascot—Fabian The Fruit Cocktail. As a result, children and their families have been treated to a host of goodies, information packs, and their very own lunch boxes. The highlight of this campaign has seen the development of our very own online interactive games in partnership with media company, Tinopils, where children take control of Fabian in fun-filled challenges against his arch nemesis, Dr Slob! Visit our website now to try the games out for yourself!

This was the second year of our Big Lottery funded project, Fit 4 Fun, and it has made an outstanding impact across the county both within schools and communities. Through the use of professional activity Providers, over 200 Fit 4 Fun activities have been staged engaging with hundreds of school children and thousands of people in various communities through the staging of an array of healthy living events. These have included, Healthy Cooking, Circus Skills, Skateboarding, Sports Skills, Relaxation, Tatty Bumpkin and a variety of Dance sessions.

Our main focus of work with the young people involved, has been in the field of digital media, using film and music to allow them to express and explore issues that they are not able to talk about. They also work on building self-esteem, self-confidence, self-awareness, self-worth, motivation and goal setting. Life skills are also taught including social skills, cooking, shopping, tea/coffee making and so on . Four of the young people who attended have explored very personal issues, encompassing detachment, personal crisis, and anger, which is hugely encouraging. Our future aim is to develop a programme of support, in the hope that this can be seen as a model of good practice for the way forward, and ultimately result in further work of this nature developing at CYCA.

This year saw the introduction of our very own LAC project in partnership with Carmarthenshire County Council, which has seen us work with many young people within the support system. The project is part of the ‘Team Around the Child’ model being championed by Bethan James, Corporate Parenting Manager CCC, and aims to support young people within the care system to develop key, life and social skills, together with helping them to cope with and deal with any personal issues or problems that may arise, through a single point of contact. Our involvement has been very much within the ground floor development of the programme, and we have developed a support team, comprising of a team of Mentors, a Counselling & Support Team, Arts Psychotherapy, Family & Relational Integrative Counselling and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Holistic Therapies and Overall Support Management. Young people are introduced to the programme through the mentors and made to feel comfortable, getting to know them informally and building trust and relationships with the mentoring team prior to developing a bespoke support programme in discussion with young people attending and the team.

June 2010 saw the launch of our new Big Lottery funded project, Families in Crisis. The project has a team of fully qualified CBT & Integrative Counsellors and an Art Psychotherapist offering a broad spectrum of therapies to individuals, couples and children. The project has had an exceptionally positive response and numerous amount of referrals. By Autumn 2010 we were already supporting 11 families offering practical, emotional and psychological support including individual counselling, children's play therapy, group stress and an anger management programme. This is achieved by working closely with the other strategy and charity based organisations in Llanelli to assist families in accessing the appropriate support.

Through the project, we also provide a range of training programmes through our registered AAID Training service at our CYCA Wales Limited training centre, the Palms. These include: Therapeutic Communication Skills (Inspired by KIDs Company & The Institute

for arts in therapy & education) Stress Management Developing Basic Counselling Skills Basic Drug & Alcohol Awareness Dealing with anger and Challenging Behaviour Developing Basic Counselling Skills

Due to the sterling work of dedicated volunteer coaches, our Angling Participation project has been running since 2004 and once more enjoyed a successful year as several of the youngsters involved received national honours and awards, as well as representing Wales in International Fly Fishing Competitions.

As well as our weekly Youth Club, which continues to be an enormous success, this year saw us introduce some exciting new schemes. Together with existing on-going projects this has ensured that our youth provision continues to be an important element of our work.

During the year, we also ran very successful digital media pilot projects in rural areas of the county. This gave us the opportunity to liaise with rurally isolated young people through a host of engaging workshops where we demonstrated the potential achievements and opportunities that are attainable through digital media use. As part of the projects, we also created a youth led interactive magazine and a youth produced community DVD. As a follow up to this, we are to undertake a wider evaluation study and develop a business plan to determine the viability of establishing a youth led social enterprise, centred around digital media.

This year has also seen us set up a youth led ‘Alternative Sports’ group, which meets at our Dewi Sant Centre on a weekly basis. The aim of the group is to positively promote alternative sports throughout the county as well as explore avenues in to how funding can be secured to improve facilities. The group has also developed a successful ‘skateboard programme’ which they have implemented into various schools in Carmarthenshire.

If you would like more details about CYCA Wales Limited and the various training programmes we offer through our AAID Training service, just get in touch or visit our website.

This year, due to the hard work and ambition of our staff and volunteers we have successfully set up a new limited company, called ‘CYCA Wales Limited’. The aim of the new organisation is to represent the training arm of our work and through it’s AAID Training service has developed a unique training programme offering a host of courses, seminars and workshops in the field of emotional health and well-being. During the year, CYCA Manager Tracy Pike became an Approved Trainer for ISMA, only one of six registered in Wales.

The programme is delivered by a highly skilled and professional team from our new training facility - The Palms, which is just a stone's throw away from our Dewi Sant Centre headquarters. The centre offers a host of state of the art facilities, which cater for a variety of needs, including - training room for up to 35 people, private and comfortable counselling room, 2 fully equipped meeting rooms, and a bilingual crèche with superb outdoor play area.

Since the beginning of the year, the centre has been home to our new Deprived Area Fund project, which has seen us work with over 20 clients, as we help to get them back into employment. Through the project we offer free 6/8 Counselling and/or Life Coaching on a one to one basis. We also offer group sessions. We have had many success stories, for example, we have a client who is now working in the Fire Department, and one working with Avon. We also have a client that has started college and passed her driving test.

Dewi Sant Centre, Nevill Street, Llanelli, Carmarthenshire,

SA15 2RS Tel: 01554 757599

support@cycaonline.org Registered Charity No 512720

www.cycaonline.org

Carmarthenshire Youth & Children’s Association

Designed By Matthew Newbold

Phil Davies—Professional Rugby Coach & Ex Welsh International Player Nigel Owens—Professional Rugby Referee