Kate Woodcock

Our work on the D.O.T project has helped to support our Science 4 Friends project, which we have developed in collaboration with All Saints Youth Project in Kings Heath, Birmingham and with the support of funding from BBC Children in Need Curiosity. All Saints Youth Project is an inclusive youth centre, supporting young people with and without neurodevelopmental disorders, from a range of disadvantaged backgrounds – including socioeconomic deprivation, ethnic minority, and parental mental illness. We have worked with young people to develop 8 weekly workshops that support young people to explore the science of emotions and develop as young scientists in a setting designed to make young people’s social connections stronger. Each cycle of 8 workshops runs with a different group of young people, providing opportunities for many young people. Visits by young people to the University of Birmingham will be a key feature of many of the workshop cycles, which give us an opportunity to support disadvantaged young people into higher education. We will be running these workshops until 2023, learning with young people and improving the workshops as we go along. Towards the end of 2022 / beginning of 2023, we will develop a training programme to share what we have learned with other youth services.