In its recent response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the Government stated: “We must listen to the voices of children in care and care leavers if we are successfully going to make the changes needed.”
Ofsted has also recently expanded its inspection framework, introducing a new requirement for local authorities to show how young people will ‘influence the services they receive’.
While professionals across the sector have long understood that listening to young people and involving them in service design is key to developing the right solutions, this approach should now be embedded in national social care practice.
Local authorities across the country should continuously be looking at how they can incorporate the views and lived experience of care leavers to respond to the national drive for improvement.
Coram Voice developed a three-year co-production programme, New Belongings, which supported eight local authorities across England (North Tyneside, North Yorkshire, Oldham, Stockport, Coventry, Hertfordshire, Wandsworth, and Dorset) to engage with young people to develop creative and innovative solutions for local care leavers.
A new report on the programme, ‘The Story of New Belongings’, found that the eight local authorities created a range of successful local service improvements together with their care leavers, in areas such as education and employment, emotional health and wellbeing, leaving care support services, and accommodation.
At the start of the programme, the local authorities were supported by Coram Voice to better understand the views and experiences of their young people using our ‘Your life beyond care’ survey. In completing the survey, the young people sent a powerful message to their local authorities.
A third (32 per cent) reported that they did not feel safe where they lived; a similar figure (34 per cent) reported high levels of anxiety and one in five (20 per cent) said they struggled to cope financially.
The local authorities then used this baseline evidence to work with young people to co-produce solutions to the issues identified.
The report contains many examples of effective solutions that emerged from the New Belongings programme.
To improve emotional health and wellbeing, the London Borough of Wandsworth introduced specialist personal advisers with a background in mental health to bring a therapeutic approach to their work with young people experiencing acute difficulties.
To mitigate the ‘care cliff’, North Yorkshire developed the ‘Always Here’ scheme, to extend support to young people beyond the age of 25 in recognition that some care leavers wanted to keep in touch with their workers to share their successes in life or have someone to talk to when they experienced difficulties.
The New Belongings programme shows what can be achieved when local authorities are committed to listening to their care leavers about what is important to them and taking action, together with young people, to develop local solutions to local issues.
Across England, we need to shift the focus of children’s social care to embed participation and co-production with young people, to ensure that services offered meet the needs that young people themselves identify.
New Belongings is a structured and inspiring approach that can help local authorities on their journey towards improving services.