Flourish with Confidence - Creative Optimistic Visions - Coventry Alternative Provision 24/25
Training Provider
Creative Optimistic Visions
Creative Optimistic Visions (COV) is an award-winning Community Interest Company that provides
alternative education, training, open access youth provision, consultancy and mentoring services through the lens of the Protective Behaviours Process (PBs). PBs is a practical down to earth approach relating to feeling safe, equipping people with a skill set to keep themselves feeling safe throughout their life journey.
COV delivers services nationally, however we predominantly work within the West Midlands. COV is the leading provider for accredited Protective Behaviours Training in Coventry and Warwickshire supporting professionals on the front line working with vulnerable children and families.
We are a small grass roots organisation, founded in 2014 in Coventry City, that has built a respectful reputation with existing partners, but most importantly with our children and families. We engage with young people due to their lack of engagement with education, statutory services, and broken-down relationships within their family structures.
We firmly believe that ‘we all have the right to feel safe’ and ‘we can talk with someone about anything even if it is awful or small’, therefore we provide a wrap around, consistent model of support throughout our project and mentoring services.
COV has won awards from Santander and Coventry University Social Enterprise for our social impact locally, including Tutor of the Year from The Protective Behaviours Consortium, our governing body and The Roll of Honour 2020 for our services during the pandemic from Social Enterprise Futures.
Since the trial of our first project – Urban Arts – COV has expanded and grown from one determined individual, to a strong and committed team of trainers, youth workers, mentors, and volunteers. Creative Optimistic Visions is more successful than ever, and provides a range of bespoke programmes with people of all ages, and aims to ensure that whatever your Protective Behaviour needs, we can support you.
COV presents Flourish to support individuals of secondary school age. The aim of our Flourish Programme is to increase individual self confidence and self-esteem whilst learning about Protective Behaviours strategies to enable engagement with future employability and further education whilst promoting healthier, happier lives. Activities will help individuals to self-manage low self-esteem, anxiety and stress by introducing them to the principles and practices of Protective Behaviours.
This programme based on our Confident Me! course over 12 weeks for 2 days per week with the aim of working with 6 learners.
Confident Me!
Confident Me! will be delivered two days per week (10am-3pm) with regular breaks, for a total of 12 weeks. We believe our project will minimise the risk of harm to vulnerable people, manage and change behaviours and support individuals as follows:
• Providing a new skill set: Our Confident Me! Project will deliver a body of work based on our Level 1 Award in Employability Skills, fostering an understanding of Improving Own Confidence, Developing Personal Confidence and Self-Awareness. We encourage creativity to embed our learning further through scrapbooking, which informs our learners of their progression and tackles any elements of self-doubt.
• Delivering via a one step removed approach: The project will be delivered through a one step removed approach, ensuring the focus is not on any one individual in order to decrease the element of pressure or feeling unsafe. The project also explores unwritten rules of society, conformity, labelling and stereotypes thus understand how this can affect their internal world of feelings, thoughts and choices in behaviours.
• Improving prospects and opportunities to develop: The project achieves this by enabling learners to practice protective behaviour strategies, especially the language of safety. This strategy enhances employability and social skills permitting the exploration of boundaries when speaking of low confidence and self-esteem. The strategy encourages ownership of one’s self by exploring values and attributes and how to demonstrate this through language and behaviours: in turn communication skills become more effective.
• Enhancing personal confidence and self-awareness. The project will equip individuals with a skillset allowing them to fully comprehend the information being given, as well as creating and making informed safe life decisions.
• Regulation techniques: The project will consistently focus on self and co-regulation strategies,
educating young people on the science behind regulation techniques and the tools to practice them. Techniques will include breathing exercises, mindfulness, exercise, reframing negative thoughts and journaling. Shelby, our therapy dog in training, will also assist where possible in our learning space.
To this end, the outcomes of such a programme would foster an understanding of:
• How to use PBs in everyday life to keep individuals feeling safe, even when risk taking
• Reasons for feeling confident/non-confident
• Effective participation in social situations
• Ways to manage stress
• How to link decision making with associated emotions and feelings
• How to set goals and targets and increase confidence
• How to set goals for own development
• How communication skills can contribute to improving confidence
• Identifying, foster an understanding and practice of regulation
