Yorkshire Youth and Music is delighted to announce that we have been awarded funding from The Noel Buxton Trust for our project working with women and their babies in secure accommodation.

The project is called Little Song Stars and is based in two secure estates in the region. Each estate has its own children’s centre (one run by Barnardos and one by Action for Children) for women – often young mothers – who have small children (under two years old) and are held in the estates.

Our lead practitioner for the project, A (so called to protect her identity during the project), is a trained Social Worker with many years of experience in family work, in addition to her musical skills. Together, we are working in partnership with the prison estate managers and the two Children’s Centre charities to run the project which supports the babies’ development, mothers’ motivation and confidence, and better family bonding. This all contributes to better future life chances for the children involved, renewed determination from mothers about not re-offending, and the motivation of identifying educational and social goals by mothers for themselves and their families.