Did The Art Room resolve the young people’s difficulties?
Given that The Art Room aims to build resilience to protect against both immediate and long-term difficulties, its work is related to educational success, improved mental health, social inclusion and prevention of offending. In many cases, the complex backgrounds and issues these children and young people are coping with cannot be addressed in weekly support sessions for one term, but the Art Room hopes to provide and build within them a model of coping that they can later draw upon to help them when beset with further difficulties.
The Art Room offers an important short-term respite for those with the greatest difficulties, and has had an important longer-term benefit for many of the others. The older students, those who had previously been referred and their teachers attested to the longer-term importance of going to The Art Room.