Reviews

Pick of the month

ALUMINA - SELFHARM.CO.UK (Book)

(5 stars)

Alumina is the new resource from Selfharm.co.uk. Rather than giving it the standard Premier Youthwork treatment, we decided to hear from a young person who went through the resource; the honest story of someone whose struggle with self-harm was helped by Alumina, and a view from her youth worker who has seen the difference it has made.

As a teenager who self-harms, getting help was hard, really hard. I’d only ever told one person and their reaction wasn’t the most encouraging, so telling someone about it that I didn’t know was a real challenge. I’d never heard of Alumina before I started it, and I think that more self-harm sufferers need to know about it.

The way that the book is set out, worded and presented, invites you in. Everything about it is supportive and encouraging. You can tell that it has been written by people with first-hand experience of self-harm. Nothing in the book is rushed; everything is taken one step at a time, starting with the real basics. By the time you get to the end you begin to understand why you started self-harming, what triggers you, and how you can phase self-harm out of your life. I never thought that after just six weeks I would have gone from harming myself four or five times a week to just once a fortnight at most and it is all thanks to Alumina. I lead a different life now than I used to and I couldn’t recommend it any more highly.

Becky Ledger

After some initial groundwork with Becky I saw she was really driven to beat this ‘need’ to self-harm and to regain a ‘normal’ life, with healthier coping mechanisms. This felt like the right time to start Alumina with her. The book is really simple to use; we met every week reflecting back on the activity that Becky had to do and what she had learnt about herself in doing it. We would then look at the activity for the next week and talk about what it would involve. Sometimes I would have to push her to do something, but normally Becky led the way, working hard and really valuing what Alumina had to offer her.

The tasks were simple but challenging, and are accessible for many different learning styles. The book doesn’t promise that you won’t ever self-harm again but it does help you understand why you do it and what you can do instead, as well as encouraging the user to move forward and seek other help.

Becky really valued using Alumina and really engaged with it. She went from harming multiple times a week to only once in the last two months. But more importantly she now knows why she harms and is working on addressing that, using the foundation that was built through Alumina.

Helen Sare is a youth and community worker in Horsham.

PHILOSOPHY IN YOUTH AND COMMUNITY WORK - MIKE SEAL AND SIMON FROST (Book)

RUSSELL HOUSE PUBLISHING

(3 stars)

This book is squarely aimed at the academic studying youth and community work. It is not written from a Christian viewpoint but rather a secular youth work one (which isn’t anti-Christian, just not expressly Christian!). Its aim is to expound and challenge the meaning behind the jargon words that can creep in to youth work. The book has chapters on topics such as ‘Youth work is just common sense’ and ‘Fairness’. Each chapter goes on to explain what is meant by the terms and how they might be understood from a theoretical standpoint, giving helpful insights into what can be meant. (For example, the understanding that fairness and equality are overlapping ideas, but different in application. We might need to treat people unequally in order to treat them fairly, e.g. some young people need more support and help to get to the same point).

The book does not directly tackle Christian youth work, and as such would need a fair bit of work on the part of the reader in order to apply it to a church setting – but nonetheless a careful reading and hard-worked application might bear fruit in challenging some of our (often unspoken) assumptions about what makes for good youth work. I’d recommend it for the stout of heart and academic of mind, with a lot of time to think about what it would mean for them, but not for the faint hearted, or those who haven’t read lots of youth work theory books already. If you are working with young people who are not part of the church and are doing open youth work, it would be of more use than if you are doing Bible studies for Christians. I’d give it four stars if you’re studying youth work at degree level or above and two stars if you’re not, so let’s split the difference and call it three!

David Welch is the Guildford diocesan youth adviser and a volunteer youth worker in Surrey. 

ALL OR NOTHING - PETE JAMES (Album)

ELEVATION MUSIC

(3 Stars)

Great song-writers are one of a kind. These exceptionally creative individuals continually push the boundaries. All or Nothing is one giant leap forward from the Sheffield-based worshipleaders’ debut album My Heart is Singing Loud.

All or Nothing is at its very core a compelling message of commitment, and explores both God’s love for the world and our devotion to follow Christ. Lyrics maintain simplicity from start to finish, though they are little repetitive. That said, this is not the kind of music your young people will be blasting through their headphones any time soon. My mum loved it though!

Ed Wyeth is the lead coach for Spear at St Paul’s Hammersmith.  

RHYTHMS OF GRACE - THE REMISSION FLOW (Album)

7CORE MUSIC

(4 stars)

Rhythms of Grace is the follow up to 2012’s The Light that Floods and contains 11 songs led by the gritty-voiced Darren Mulligan. In an unusual move, the band have buried their best tunes - including the hymn-like ‘Vast as Oceans’ and Hillsong United-esque ‘More Like You’, towards the back of the album. But as the seven-piece fade out with their unique take on ‘It Is Well (With My Soul)’ it’s clear that Rhythms of Grace is a more focused record than its predecessor. On songs such as ‘More Like You’ it is obvious that the band’s deepest passion lies not in their music but in their desire to live out their faith. This is top quality worship music from a band whose fresh sound continues to impress.

Sam Hailes is a freelance journalist based in London.