HIV ‘Inbetweeners’ and ‘Misfits’

posted: 21/02/2011

Life in my shoes challenges the stigma and prejudice around HIV and corrects misunderstandings about HIV transmission and treatment.It's a new campaign aimed at teenagers and families affected by HIV, organised by the London family HIV charity Body and Soul.

Life in My Shoes is fronted by actors from the popular television shows The Inbetweeners and Misfits, to appeal to teenage interests, and it offers young people exciting opportunities.

Could you be their star?
Life in my Shoes is a film which will be distributed to secondary schools. The campaign has begun with a competition to find a young person to star in the film. There’s a short script about HIV misconceptions and prejudices. You upload your auditions to the online gallery.

Help spread the word about Life in my Shoes - visit the website, and encourage young people to join the competition. The competition is for all between 14-21 who have stars in their eyes to be on screen, whether or not your life has been affected by HIV.

You can audition and star without saying anything about whether or how HIV affects you.

Young people with or affected by HIV should check the other wannabe stars in the audition gallery. It is a treat to see young people, who may not have thought much about HIV previously, reading the script and showing support for young people whose lives are touched by HIV.

Audition and upload

Upload you audition using their script before Thursday 17 March – St Patrick’s Day
 

Life in my Shoes  is a response to findings from research commissioned by Body & Soul and undertaken by OPM into the attitudes of teenagers to HIV.

Download their report Attitudes to HIV among 12-18 years olds in London 
 

Manchester Event - HIV and Young Carers

posted: 27/01/2011

Young carers and families affected by HIV are under the spotlight at an event in Manchester, in early February.

The Children's Society are running a training and consultation event Affecting Change for Families: Improving services for young carers and their families affected by HIV
on Friday 4th February 2011 at the famous Midland hotel in central Manchester.

No-one is sure how many children in the UK are caring for someone in their home with HIV. It is estimated that there are between 15,000 to 20,000 young carers of people with HIV.

This free event aims to ensure those involved in providing services to families affected by HIV including service managers, policy leads, and senior practitioners in health and the Voluntary and Statutory Sector are equipped with the latest guidance and are able to identify and respond to when a children and/or young people is taking on a caring role and to address wider family issues.

The event

• Find out about the Children's Society’s young carers and families HIV work, funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation
• Learn about the issues faced by young carers and their families affected by HIV
• Obtain new Good Practice guidance in multi-agency working with families affected by HIV
• Inform national practice with your own expertise.

Booking form

More information and bookings

Professionals for HIV Teens to Adults

posted: 21/01/2011

Professionals in the North of England interested in supporting young people with HIV to make the change from childrens to adult services, are invited to regional meetings.

Growing numbers of HIV teens to adults

Many of the children now growing up with HIV are becoming adults and will need to switch to services for adults. Children's and adults' services staff need to think, plan and work together, for a smooth transition between children’s and adult HIV and other services.

Invitation to regional focus group

The Children and Young People HIV Network has arranged focus groups for professionals in the North of England, (and meetings for other regions) to make a start on developing age transition services locally.

The HIV Network invites all children's and adults' professionals (health sector, social care, and community sector) who are, or will, deliver services to 10 – 24 year old young people living with HIV.

This is part of a three-year project to improve the transition of young people living with HIV from children's to adults' services. The project aims to develop capacity by improving partnership working and enabling quality service development, both clinical and social care.

These focus groups will

• find out any current local arrangements for young people living with HIV making the transition from children's to adults' services
• explore the successes and challenges of transition, in different areas, with different numbers of young people, and identify needs
• provide a networking and discussion opportunity for professionals interested in better transitions.

Transitions won't wait

Despite the current upheavals in health, community and social care, young people’s needs for a better transition will not wait. Each area’s professionals need to become involved.

This networking and sharing opportunity will provide professionals with some useful resources on HIV and transition, lunch, and even travel expenses help for some.
 

Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham

• For Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire and Lancashire – Manchester, 15 March, 14.00-16.30
• For North, West & South Yorkshire, East Riding, and Lincolnshire – Sheffield, 10 March, 13.30-16.00
• For Tyne and Wear, Co. Durham, Cumbria and Northumberland – Newcastle, 2 March, 10.00-12.30
• For West Midlands, and Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire – Birmingham, 15 March, 12.00-14.30.

Join the group where you would have the most service links. No transition arrangements yet? All the better if you attend.

People working with affected families of HIV-positive adolescents are also welcome, although the focus will be on the transition needs of the HIV+ young people.

Book a place
Please email the Children and Young People HIV Network, telling them which one you would like to attend. All places must be booked in advance so they can book suitable accommodation and cater effectively for all. Live elsewhere? - email the Network for details of meetings in other regions

Domestic Abuse Attitudes

posted: 15/11/2010

Domestic abuse harms many people as well as wider society. People living with HIV are affected by domestic violence as much as any other people in society. The Greater Manchester domestic abuse organisation, Independent Choices, wants people’s views about domestic abuse problems and what services are needed.

The survey asks just nine questions and takes just 5 minutes. Join the survey here.
 

Please share the survey

Please circulate this to people you know in Greater Manchester, because they want as many people answering the survey as possible.
 

Findings

The survey results will be published and help develop and support high quality domestic violence support services for Greater Manchester region into 2011.
 

Copies of the finished report will be available by searching their website in January 2011.

Questions?

Questions about the survey to the research student, with the email heading ‘Research’  

 

Proud to Halt HIV Child Deportations

posted: 30/04/2010

It was New Year's Day 2008 when Martin Narey, head of the children’s charity Barnardo’s, opened the letter he had been waiting for. Inside were the names of 63 HIV-positive children and their families who had at last received a reprieve from the British Government. They no longer faced deportation back to Malawi and Rwanda, to an almost certain death.
 

In a candid interview before he steps down as chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's, Mr Narey told The Independent that the letter was the proudest moment of his professional life.
The 54-year-old former head of the prison service had fought long and hard to keep the children in this country, lobbying Tony Blair to argue that it would be "cruel and inhumane" to return them to die when anti-retroviral treatment in the UK could give them a near normal life expectancy.
 

Behind the scenes
George House Trust and the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit work closely with Barnardo’s Gregory’s Place to support HIV positive children and their families in NW England remain in the UK. He came to Barnardo's met families and staff from both organisations. We all fed him the facts and harsh realities facing HIV positive migrant children and their families.

Martin Narey instantly grasped the inhumanity of deporting HIV positive children to an early death. He used his unrivalled access to people in power and his passionate commitment to justice and care for children to win protection from removal for 63 children with HIV.
 

Manchester visit sparked action
"On a visit to one of our services in Manchester I met Josephine, a mum whose appeal against a decision not to grant her asylum had just been rejected. Josephine and her son Michael, then 14, were about to be deported to Malawi," he said. George House Trust and the Immigration Aid Unit had given expert evidence and pleaded the family’s case at the immigration tribunal.
 

"Both Josephine and her son were HIV positive. The clinical evidence I was subsequently able to read indicated that without anti-retroviral treatment in Malawi, both would die within months, whereas Josephine's life expectancy here was considerable and Michael's was essentially that of any other 14-year-old. What most shocked, upset and moved me about Josephine was not her quiet acceptance about her own death, but her abject fear over the reality that because she had a radically lower blood count she would die first and leave Michael to die on his own a few weeks or months after her.”
 

Take it to the top
"I went straight from there to the Labour conference in Manchester where I was speaking in a Fabian Debate and I spoke very frankly about what I'd seen. That got me in front of the All Party Parliamentary Group on HIV. That got questions asked at PM's Questions. That got me a meeting with Tony Blair and eventually – and to his enormous credit – a list of more than 60 children, all HIV positive, and their families were given indefinite leave to remain.
 

"The reprieve list, which was sent to me on New Year's Eve and I opened on New Year's Day 2008, was, and I suspect always will be, the best moment of my professional life."
 

Source