We were delighted to bring Rubie, Lottie, Isla, Sophia, and Jaiden together to gather their thoughts on the look, feel, and presentation of our resource.
Deployment can be a tough time for children and young people.
The absence of a serving parent brings a range of emotions and difficulties, from anxiety and loneliness to managing daily responsibilities at home.
The impact on young people can be profound, and who better to understand these challenges than those who have lived through them?
Our young people are creating a deployment webpage that can be accessed by children and young people from armed forces communities.
They have co-created a child-friendly deployment cycle resource which will be used on a new website landing page, called the ‘Deployment Rollercoaster’.
It will explain what deployment is in a child-friendly way and use the visual of a rollercoaster to help explain the different stages of the cycle.
We worked in partnership with Civic UK to start the exciting process of bringing our young people’s experience of deployment to life.
Isla and Jaiden working together during the session.
“It was really fun and I really enjoyed drawing and coming up with ideas for the deployment rollercoaster and webpage.
Deployment is difficult getting used to, like the going away, coming back and routine of it. I hope it (digital deployment pack) helps young people with the journey of deployment from one step to the next.”
Rubie sharing her thoughts on webpage design during the session.
Facilitators employed various creative methods, including brainstorming sessions, group discussions, and hands-on activities to collect insights and opinions.
Young people looked at the building blocks of digital webpage design employed on our website and of similar youth-based organisations to share their thoughts on what they felt worked and what could be enhanced for our deployment resource.
Attention then turned to the user journey young people want peers to take when visiting the digital deployment pack resource, focusing on the ‘Deployment Rollercoaster’.
The rollercoaster takes them on an interactive signposting journey to useful advice, information, and resources to help during the various stages of the deployment cycle.
“I really enjoyed the mapping out and planning of the deployment webpage.
It (deployment) plays a big role in forces children’s lives and it’s something you will not be able to forget, no matter how hard you try.
The military make promises and they never keep them. My dad was only meant to go for six-nine months and it ended up being fourteen. So if it’s just meant to be a little time, don’t rely on it and it’s likely that will change.
I hope it (digital deployment pack) makes them aware how long deployments can be and it’s not always the same.”
Lottie shows off some of her work during the session.
Further sessions will take place to provide lots of opportunities for young people to review and refine the digital deployment pack before it is launched later this year.
Forces Children and Scotland Learning and Development Worker, Judith Blair, said:
“Our sessions with young people have evidenced that there is a real need for a deployment resource within Scotland.
We have facilitated discussion around the emotional cycle of deployment including anticipation of loss, withdrawal and renegotiation.
Many of our young people and parents were not aware of this, through these sessions we have identified a need to cultivate increased understanding of this within the family unit.
Our session today was very interactive and a lot of fun! We cannot wait to see how our child friendly, emotional cycle of deployment will look on screen along with our co-produced resources enabling our young people to get help when they need it most.”