It’s been Party Season
It has definitely been party season over here at Carefree. In the last week we have had not one but two festive parties for young people and children, as well as a festive evening trip to St Ives for our asylum seeking young people.
The week kicked off on Monday with a party for our 11 to 17 year old young people. Here is a dispatch from Alex, one of our support workers:
With strict instructions to report live from the 11 to 17’s party at the Old Bakery Studio, I managed to secure role a working as a member of the Escape Room team. Unfortunately, this role meant that 99% of the time I was locked behind a door, in a cold empty room alone.
Alex Morgan, Support Worker for Separated Children Seeking Asylum.
What I can report beyond the Escape Room is therefore limited to what I could hear and what I saw the five times I got an opportunity to leave my station.
In the escape room, we had six fantastic teams manage to escape Laura O’Meara’s challenging escape room, each using a different strategy to win. Some chose the calm, thoughtful approach, discussing answers as a tight-knit team and pulling on the skills and resources of everyone in the room. Others just smashed stuff up. In the end, the fastest team combined these two strategies.
Beyond the door to the escape room, I could hear that there was a very loud silent disco, with lots of great stomping and shouting, and possibly a wild animal attack.
When I did get an opportunity to leave my station it was wonderful to appreciate the great, warm atmosphere in the building. It was fantastic to see so many young people dancing tolerably well, and sometimes with instructions from senior Carefree staff might get even better.
The art session was busy making decorations, the photo booth crowded with future stars, and lots of classic Carefree food on offer for everyone. Overall it was a great night, with bonus hot chocolate packs for everyone as they left to get them ready for an awesome cozy holiday.
On Tuesday night, Carefree young people over the age of 16 got their opportunity to get together and celebrate the holidays at Hendra Hall which had been festively decorated by the party planning group. We shared an enormous Christmas dinner together and indulgent melted chocolate dessert before the silent disco came out for the second time this week. The hit of the night though was the giant Jenga set, with young people gathering around and getting very competitive about how high we could build the tower before it came crashing down. We also played a huge game of passing the parcel, with chocolate and sweets being shared amongst everyone.
Finally on Thursday night in between showers of drizzle our asylum-seeking young people got together for a magical evening walk around St Ives and a nighttime game of football/volleyball on the town beach. With hot chocolates topped with whipped cream and brownies to keep us warm we all stumbled through the beautiful lanes of St Ives between the empty beaches where the wind had whipped up the waves and salt spray splashed our faces. We then retreated to the sheltered high street that was lined with golden lights making a magical festive scene.
