WF-I-Can
WF-I-Can is a website for children and young people (8-19 years) in the Wakefield District. It is a place to find information and advice as well as self-help tips that support to increase confidence and resilience.
How did WF-I-Can come about?
A group of 30 local children and young people organised an event, assisted by Young HealthWatch. With the support of HQ Arts and the Youth Service, the event enabled young people from across the District to come together and share their views on local services.
The young people included members of Stripes Youth Group, the Pupil Referral Unit, Young Carers, Children in Care and young people with disabilities.
What came from the meeting?
1) The need for a safe place where young people can access support and activities to improve their well-being.
2) The need to improve the visibility of local services that are available for children and young people.
Young people told us that they didn’t know what services were available for them and that they would benefit from ideas on how to improve their well-being being made easily available in one place.
Most importantly, they wanted to be involved in what came next!
What do young people think?
“It was really easy getting around the site, and I like that they have separate pages for younger kids and teenagers. They’ve got an extensive list of articles for self-help which is great, because it means that teenagers can be independent, which I personally think is a confidence booster. “
“Really good, liked all of the pages and information on them. Not too wordy, no big words. Like the colours used on the website.”
“It has some good information on there, the first place I looked was the bullying section and I think that is going to help a lot of people.”
The aim of WF-I-Can is to work alongside children and young people to provide an online resource to help improve overall well-being (mental, emotional, and physical).
The website includes ideas and top tips developed by children and young people themselves, helps to connect them with local and online services and provides weekly challenges to take part in.
Children and young people in the Wakefield throughout the Wakefield District have been and continue to be, involved in every stage of creating and developing WF-I-Can. All content and resources have been approved by relevant organisations, experts/ professionals, and most importantly the children and young people that identified the need for this service. Most downloadable resources are short interventions from the Wakefield Resilience Framework. WF-I-Can is a platform that ensures the voice of local children and young people is heard and valued at every stage. Most of the content was first gathered from groups and top tips created through their lived experience.
Part of WF-I-Can offer is Changing Our Direction - one-to-one Mentoring Programme. You can meet with a mentor to explore what matters to you. We will work with you to find places to go things to do and support you in your journey!