Teapot Trust are working with community partners to meet the needs of children and young people

"It is about saying: this is the need, how can we work together to meet that need?”

Children and young people are front and centre to the work of Teapot Trust. The charity supports them and their families living with long term, and often painful, health conditions through art therapy. They work within hospitals and with community groups and other charities who are already embedded in the community, allowing them to learn from the good practice of others and to determine what is needed within these communities. Ally, Young Voices Participation Officer with the Trust, strongly believes that working together is the best way to ensure the needs of the community are being fully met, “It’s not about any one charity or brand, it is about saying: this is the need, how can we work together to meet that need?”

They have established strong relationships within children’s hospitals across Scotland and the UK, providing art therapy to individuals, in peer groups, and in open groups in outpatient clinics. Children can struggle to identify, understand and articulate the challenges they are facing and art therapy can be a great way to approach these topics gently and in a non-verbal way. A common challenge is a phobia of needles and using art therapy, alongside talking, can really help children and young people express how they are feeling and develop coping strategies to use going forward. Art therapy provides a strong foundation and supporting structure to help them cope with their ever changing health condition throughout their lives.

The charity’s most important partners, and the relationships that are invaluable, are with the children and young people they work with. They feed into everything and their feedback is absolutely central to all they are doing. Ally is passionate that this will always be the case. Children and young people living with chronic illness have to deal with grown-up things a lot of the time and might not get a lot of opportunity to have fun, so their youth work project Young Voices creates space for this. They work with a creative and imaginative bunch of children and young people on a range of different projects, decided by children and young people. One project involved creating an incredible piece of work called ‘Growing up with a Chronic Illness.’ Through a series of creative workshops, Young Voices volunteers came together to create a resource to help adults and professionals to see the whole picture of children and young people growing up with a chronic illness. It documents their thoughts, feelings, experiences and reflections from different stages of their young lives. Ally shares that “We know what professionals see as the key points, but we wanted to know what the children and young people think and to learn, in those times, what they really need and how those needs can be met.”

Going forward, their hope is that they “are doing what we should be doing and being what children and young people need us to be.” They would love to continue working with their community partners and ideally have the funding to be able to be reactive to the needs of the community and to have the flexibility to meet this need. But this is the barrier they are up against – there is just not enough money. “The mental health of children living with chronic health conditions isn’t really a priority for those with power and budgets,” says Ally. The charity doesn’t get Government or Council funding, it is all from Trusts and Foundations and individuals and community fundraising. Unfortunately, it’s getting tougher in a fiercely competitive funding landscape but need continues to grow. “It’s not just us, our community partners are struggling for money too and there is this ever growing, ever worsening need.” They have spent time building relationships with the community they are working with, with partners, the NHS and other organisations, they have listened to what the children and young people need and have adapted to this need, but Ally concludes “It is really frustrating because we have something that is making a huge difference, with proven outcomes, but we can’t do more because we don’t have the funding. That being said, we are working to continue providing support for children, young people and families. We get creative and adapt to keep meeting needs and follow the path set for us by the children, young people, and families we work with.”

Click the link to learn more about the work of Teapot Trust.

You can read all Connected Communities case studies here: https://www.alliance-scotland.org.uk/blog/case_studies/?projects=connected-communities