Fight Connect

Fight Connect is a partnership between In Your Corner & Hawley Amateur Boxing Club (HABC).

After a successful pilot across Westminster & Camden in 2022-23, Fight Connect is back in Camden! Fight Connect involves group programmes which combine non-contact boxing skills, with flexibly delivered psychological intervention.

The project is facilitated by a Clinical Psychology team and England Boxing qualified boxing coaches.

The project has the following elements:

1. 2 x 12 week term-time groups (90 mins per week) which combine non-contact boxing (e.g. no glove to head or body contact) with a range of exercises and skills practice to enhance emotion regulation skills and emotional wellbeing. The next group will be starting on 14th May 2024.
2. Graduates from the 12 week starter groups will work with the team to co-design a FIGHT CONNECT Graduates Group, with opportunities to gain AQA units in Boxing Skills; become Young Ambassadors for In Your Corner and co-facilitate projects, or take part in peer mentoring.
3. The co-designed Graduates Group will launch in September 2024 and is funded to run for 2 terms alongside the main groups.
4. Graduates will also have the opportunity to join Hawley Amateur Boxing Club and further develop their boxing skills, with subsidised places available.

• To bring young people with similar experiences together, increasing their social relationships.
• To offer a therapeutic intervention for young people who do not wish to engage in talking therapies, are waiting for talking therapies, or for whom talking therapies do not seem to have been effective.
• To build physical fitness and boxing skills.
• To develop self-esteem and resilience via encouraging each other to try new activities and new ways of thinking.
• To develop emotion regulation strategies for coping with difficult feelings and consider personal resources for coping with future challenges.
• To experience positive role models and secure adult relationships via the coaches.
• To offer an accessible route into further targeted mental health intervention, further boxing/sports participation, or other structured activities if needed.

Sessions will run on Tuesdays from 4.30 pm – 6.00 pm.

Referrals are open now for the group starting Tuesday 14th May.

We would like to reach young people who are:

• Aged 12 -15 on date of referral.
• With behavioural, emotion regulation, or self-regulation difficulties
• With an address or attending a service/school in Camden. We will also accept referrals from nearby locations in the NCEL cluster that can realistically & consistently access the gym.
• May be open to, or waiting for CAMHS / a mental health service at the point of referral, or not.
• We will prioritise young people known to a targeted service - Looked After/Care Experienced, Children’s Services involvement (e.g. Child in Need, Child Protection, Early Help, Youth Justice).
• We aim to recruit a core group of 12 young people.
• If the young person is open to a service, we need a lead professional or care co-ordinator involved for the 12 weeks of the group to act as a contact and to support us to appropriately manage risk.

To refer, please fill out the referral form below, password protect and submit to admin@inyourcorner.uk

Once we receive the referral, we will contact you to clarify any information and then offer the young person and an adult (parent/carer/referrer) a 1:1 meeting to support initial engagement and to check out suitability.

Please have a full conversation with the young person before referring - It is important that they understand that as well as an opportunity to try boxing, the group has a focus on understanding and regulating emotions, and that they are “signed up” to some extent to trying out both elements of the group.