DRUGS: GUIDANCE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE’S SERVICES

‘Drugs: Guidance for young people’s services’ is a series of information, training and dissemination sessions provided by The National Youth Agency in a partnership with DrugScope and Alcohol Concern based on the publication ‘Drugs: Guidance for the youth service’. This series of five regional events, supported by Government Offices in each region, aims to give youth service providers, DAATs, Connexions Services and their partners the opportunity to come together to learn about the new DfES/DCFS/DH guidance and its use in the context of current Government initiatives, particularly Targeted Youth Support.

Full details and a booking form can be found on the link here

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escapism

Went to see Diehard 4.0 with some FYT folks last night. It was pure escapism great fast paced, totally unrealistic, great one liners such as when the sidekick asks Bruce Willis “whats your plan?” Bruce replies “rescue my daughter and kill everyone else”
It must have been escapism as none of us were thinking “oh I could use that bit for work”
Aslo why does Diehard 4.0 look cooler than Diehard 4?

A Christmas Carol movie download

New departments

As a youth worker I feel I should cope with change better than this. But this the sort change that I hate as I have to relearn where everything fits

The Government has announced the restructuring of its departments including the formation of a new Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) and Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR). The Department for Education and Skills, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office will be disbanded.

New Ministerial team at DCSF
The new Department for Children, Schools and Families will be headed up by Rt Hon Ed Balls MP, former Economic Secretary to the Treasury.
The full listing of DCSF ministers can be found Here

New Third Sector Minister

The new Minister for the Third Sector is Phil Hope MP, formerly the Minister for Skills at the former Department for Education and Skills. The minister has held previous positions in the National Youth Bureau and as a youth policy advisor to NCVO before entering Parliament. He has also previously chaired the all party parliamentary group for the voluntary sector.

The full list of new Cabinet appointments can be found hereThe Brothers Bloom

Youth work news

DCVYS newsletter highlighted the following

GOVERNMENT OFFICE FOR THE SOUTH WEST – as part of the re-structuring of the GOSW the Safer and Stronger Communities Directorate has been established. This new Directorate pulls together GOSW’s work on crime, drugs and antisocial behaviour with that on neighbourhood renewal, community cohesion, equalities and the third sector.

NEW DEPARTMENTAL ARRANGEMENTS – with the advent of Gordon Brown’s leadership there are changes to the departmental set up, with the DfES being split in two. The Department for Children, Schools and Families will be responsible for children’s services, families, schools, 14-19 education, and the Respect Taskforce and The Rt Hon Ed Balls MP is the Secretary of State for this department. Further education will come within the remit of the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills with The Rt Hon John Denham MP as Secretary of State.

IMPLEMENTING YOUTH MATTERS: Continuing the dialogue with young people – The DfES has launched a drive to gather young people’s views on its youth policies. The initiative follows on from the consultation on the Youth Matters green paper, which attracted about 19,000 responses from young people. The department wants to ensure that it continues to receive feedback from young people as it implements the proposals in the green paper and so has recently held a consultation with young people (closing 2nd July), seeking their views on a range of subjects, including whether they feel that services have improved in the past year, and whether they are aware of youth initiatives such as the Youth Opportunity Fund and creative fund Mediabox – see www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1483. As part of the drive Parmjit Dhanda, the undersecretary of state for children, young people and families, has recently undertaken a seven-stop tour of England, visiting youth groups and meeting young people and reported his findings at The National Youth Agency’s Youth Summit on 25th June. He planned to talk to as many young people as time allowed – including those from the poorest and most challenging backgrounds and was joined on some of his visits by other Government ministers who were keen to learn more about youth issues, including Culture Minister for the Third Sector, Ed Miliband. For further information see www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2007_0100

End Game the movie

Sundays Talk

READING 1 – Matt 9 18-31

There are two parts to what I wanted to say today, but they are linked. This first section was from when I first started thinking about what I was going to say today ages ago I thought about the role that HELP plays in deepening Christian fellowship. At the time we were without a kitchen for about a month, and the washing was piling up. Lots of people are great at offering help, and that is great we were offered help, but your immediate is “I don’t want to people out or your busy�. I wanted to get over this, so we asked various people do our washing. It was good for me to have to ask, to show that I needed help, to make myself vulnerable. So I asked different people if they would help us with the washing. Now I am able to report of the quality of the washing machines and services offered, Meurig and Heather, are definite contenders for best service, we do iron BUT HEATHER does, and it came back dried and ironed. Warwick and Carol, Colin and Ali, are good because we got fed whilst we did the washing, but Warwicks machine does spin as well as Colins so the washing was slightly wetter. Annie and Mark, being the eco warriors they are led me down to the river and showed me the large stone to rub the clothes on, no not really but they have separate spinner which is very old but very efficient and your clothes are almost dry when finished.

I asked – they all helped, but more than that – they were happy to help. BUT the process got me thinking that maybe the sign of a deeper fellowship is not about the numbers of offers of help, as I think we are good all pretty good at that, but actually deeper fellowship is about being in place where you are happy to ask for help or take people up on the help that is offered.

Turn to person behind you and answer these questions?
Which is more difficult – to ask for help or to offer it and why?
How does asking for help or taking up an offer of help enable others on their journey with God?

PART 2

Can anyone remember what Warwick talked about last week?

BEWARE I’ll make sure whoever is speaking next week will test you on what I am about to say!
The second part I wanted to explore today links into the idea of help, and builds on Last week when Warwick talked about the TRINITY and how the church family should reflect the relationship of the Godhead drawing on 2 Corinthians 13 v 14 May the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

At the very heart of the trinity is love, Father Son and Spirit three persons but one, who for all eternity the one God has been involved in the concrete activity of giving receiving and sharing love amongst one another Father Son and Spirit, – so when we say God is Love or when the bible says God is love (1 John 4 v 8) it not simply saying God has loving feelings towards his people but God is constantly involved in the concrete activity of love. God is a fellowship of love.

Our theme is deepening Christian fellowship –so if we are to do this in our fellowship, what ways can we deepen fellowship or to put it another way-
how do we exhibit this love, – Well Warwick again gave us a key verse when he discussed, 2 Corinthians 13 v 14 May the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Here we see the love part is mentioned and the trinity talked about BUT the critical factor I want to draw your attention to is – GRACE – Notice how precedes the mention trinity and love at the very start. You see without grace we will have schisms or factions, etc that Paul was warning about, because we are human, we do think different things, even Paul suggest we question things, and we have different callings, I am sure that NOT many of you would want to come out the street with me at 10.30 to talk to the skaters hanging out at lidls car park, and with no offence the last I want to do is go on the trip with rendezvous to Powerham castle.

In our reading we heard about 3 of the miracles of Jesus, and three common threads in them was that the people asked for Jesus help,
“come and heal my daughter�
the woman from bleeding asked in an active way by reaching out to touch the cloak and
the blind men, chased him up the road shouting heal us.

We see countless times the onus is on the person to ask Jesus to act and then Jesus responds to those specific requests, even if it may not be the best thing for Jesus personally as was the case with the blind men, which was why he probably told the blind men NOT to tell anyone.

If are going to take God the trinity seriously as our model, we have to recognise as well as in the trinity being love there is the dna of the trinity – Mission

The primary way God choose to reveal himself was through Jesus. A missionary move. John 20v 21 Jesus said “as the father sent me I am sending you� The missiologist John Bosch reminds us, that Father sends the son, and the father and son send the spirit and this can be extended seeing the father, son and spirit sending the church. So if we are to be church we must be missional in our dna.

Yet mission is messy and messy particularly when is comes to church because as mentioned my mission field is not the same as yours, but we should all be striving for the same goal. So what can we learn from this verse to help us in our fellowship with one another.

Well firstly they were different with different roles Father Son and Holy Spirit but One. it must have been difficult for the father and spirit when jesus died on the cross but they were still unifed because God is love, so jesus was still in this loving relationship. Jesus time on earth his time distanced from the father andspirit was a concrete embodiment of love, it was love that took Jesus to earth and love that enabled the Father to give his Son to death on the cross.

Therefore deepening fellowship is about living with tension that enable each of us to fulfil the calling of mission placed on us by God whilst remaining unified by love and grace.

We may do different things and express our faith in different ways, and the mission may take us in different directions but so long as we have examined ourselves as Paul mentioned in 2 Cor 13 and we act in good faith, God’s grace and love can hold us together.

You know it is difficult to ask for help, and at times it takes grace to ask for help and it takes grace to give help, but if we are going to move into a deeper fellowship we do need to embrace the tension that helping others move on in their journey of faith may create for us, personally or as a church.

Sometimes we confuse unity with uniformity, particularly if think about church before mission. The churches in the New Testament were different because they arose out of different missionary contexts, the idea that unity is about us meeting together perhaps on a Sunday morning or at other times, is a false one. Real unity is one that springs from the triune God, different but the same,
real unity is not a unity that is about us all doing the same thing, but a unity rooted in the deep grace and love of God that enables the church to flourish by enabling it’s people to follow its calling to be the bride of Christ to hurting and broken world regardless of the cost to us.

Pulse (aka Octane) move