Talk of a Merge and Mindfulness Training

First thing on Friday when I arrived Micheal called the entire team working at the centre into a meeting. He stated that there was going to be a combining of an agency called Crosscare and Catholic Youth services. Many of the workers at the centre of course had many questions, but of course with it being so new Micheal was not able to give to much information and details had not been passed on and were in the process of being figured out. What he did tell us was that they were looking for this to happen in early January with the Crosscare director Conor Hickey taking over leadership of both as Father Jim Caffrey, Director of Catholic Youth Care steps down. Micheal was very careful of his wording being clear that this was not a take over, but more a blending of the two agencies. Due to Ireland’s economic stresses and the country going bankrupted a few years ago, funding for many youth funding projects have been cut tremendously. After this announcement there was a great deal of conversation around what this was going to mean for peoples' jobs and project funding. A lot of this is unknown at the moment but one of the good things about these two organizations coming together is most of the work they are both already involved in is not overlapping too much. From what I was able to gather, Crosscare does more work with residential group care, homelessness, and disabilities work. Talking to the Fan team directly and discussing how it might affect them directly, they thought therir project more or less was pretty safe as it is funded more through the Justice department than anything so it was thought they should be pretty safe even with the change. It's still a while a way and I’m sure the complete picture of what is going to become of these agencies has not even been formed yet, but it was a very interesting conversation to be part of. I thought a lot about the OBSD projects going on back at home and how partnerships of agencies seems to be maybe a global tend in the field these days due to funding issues and wanting to improve services. If you want more information on either of the agency I have provided a link. I went and checked them out to just get a better idea of them separately and thought I would put it here for anyone else who might be interested as well.

http://www.crosscare.ie/joomla/

http://www.cyc.ie/

A couple of interesting things it did make me think of those was how it might impact our students in the future. This might just create a a great connection opportunity to get a better look into what residential services look like and how they function in Ireland.

After the Meeting it was mostly just getting ready for next week and getting caught up on anything from this week that needed to get done. There was a meeting with the FAN team and Micheal to talk about any concerns, scheduling, and programming stuff that needed to be discussed. I'm sure anyone who has ever done a practicum or worked in the field has experienced that in a meeting like this is when a lot of the team/management dynamics can be observed. I think it was interesting and very good for me to see. The reality of this field is that it's about working with people and everyone comes with their own style. One of the biggest learnings can be how to make this work in teams who are able to pull out the best from everyone and make them work together.

In the afternoon there was a Mindfulness workshop set up for the FAN team and CE. They brought in someone to talk about the importance of mindfulness in practice as well as how to implement the ideas for working with youth and how to help the youth you are working with become more mindful. The guy who was brought in was very good. It's funny, the people who lead this type of workshop often bring in with them such a different feel than we often find in the everyday of our jobs. I know this is such an important piece to being healthy as an individual and in my practice but it's something that is often lost. And if I’m not always able to bring it in and role model it what hope is there that I am able to do with or teach these skills to my youth? I think I am often reminded this is an area I am still working to find a balance in. I think I have over the past few years become a great deal more mindful of myself in my practice.. but am eager to find new and creative ways to bring mindfulness to my youth.