The LGA is launching a new campaign to help support care leavers
Next week marks the beginning of National Care Leavers’ Week (25 October to 1 November), a time to celebrate our care leavers, amplify their voices and raise awareness of the challenges still facing the sector.
For councillors, supporting those leaving care is an enormous but thoroughly rewarding responsibility.
As corporate parents, it is your job to make sure that young people are ready for what’s next when they leave care, from managing household bills to getting a job and ensuring they have strong relationships to support them into adulthood.
At the LGA’s annual conference in July, LGA Chair Cllr Shaun Davies set out our intentions to ensure those leaving care are given the best start to their adult life.
To show this commitment, we are launching our new Step Ahead campaign, which will not only work to improve direct support to care leavers but also refresh and go further in the support we provide to councils in supporting their care leavers.
We’re kickstarting our campaign with a collection of good practice case studies from councils across the country (see below, for one), as well as encouraging councils to celebrate National Care Leavers’ Week by providing shareable assets for social media channels.
As part of the campaign, we have also been exploring:
- how the LGA as an employer can do more to support care-experienced employees and prospective employees
- how we can make the most of our ability to bring together partners from different sectors to work together
- where we can do more to make sure councils have what they need to provide children in care and care leavers with the best possible support.
Making sure we help people on the right path to a settled, successful and happy adulthood is one of the most important things we can do, and across the country, councils are working on innovative approaches to support them.
The pan-London offer
When it comes to developing policy and support for those leaving care, young people deserve a seat at the table – as can be seen through the Pan-London Care Leavers Offer.
The initiative, led by policy-makers from the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services, London Councils, Partnership for Young London (PYL) and the Greater London Authority, aims to create more aligned services in support of care leavers, to improve the outcomes for looked-after children and young people leaving care.
The pre-established Pan London Children in Care Council (CiCC) is made up of representatives, aged 14-24, who are motivated to use their lived experience of care to improve both their own lives and those of their peers.
Through the CiCC, young people identified a number of policy areas for the care leavers’ offer, such as health and housing. They also hosted a care leavers’ offer consultation event in partnership with PYL, which brought together 98 people from across London.
A lesson to be learned from the initiative has been to recognise that the young people involved often need to prioritise other areas of their lives over their involvement in the initiative.
Young people need effective access to support for the different challenges in their lives, and multiple routes for engagement should be programmed into the work.
‘Turning adversity into opportunity’
Sebastian Scott is studying law at SOAS University of London
Getting into law is very challenging, and the challenges are exaggerated when you have experience in the care system.
I have often worked harder than my peers to get to this point.
From 10 years old until 22, I’ve been part of the care system in some capacity, bouncing from my stepmother’s home to my sister to more institutionalised facilities.
These years were my formative ones, the age when you mature from a boy into a young man, where your environment is crucial to who you can become as a person and the values you hold.
For a long time, I struggled to form my own identity that was true to me. Adaptability had become my ally.
From living in a working-class environment in Lewisham to moving to more affluent Kent, mixing with people from all walks of life, I could comfortably switch my demeanour and language. I developed the ability to wear different social masks.
Over the years, with support from a handful of organisations including the Care Leaver Covenant, I recognised that adaptability wasn’t merely a by-product of my upbringing but it was a skill I’d honed.
I began to view it as an asset and advantage that other people I came across didn’t have.
Being in care often means you don’t have access to an established professional network. Ultimately, I built my own, forging relationships with people I admired and wanted to learn from.
Without financial support, I learned to be financially literate and independent from an early age.
Nobody in my initial network attended college or university, so I had to go out and do my own research.
All of these deprivations drove me to be self-sufficient, resourceful, and proactive, setting me up to take advantage of every opportunity that came my way.
A casual chat in the gym with a lawyer turned into a blueprint for what I needed to do to work towards a future that aligned with my values.
Interacting with the Care Leaver Covenant led to several foot-in-door moments; my circumstances gave me the skills to push them open and walk through.
In this way, I view myself as 100 per cent self-made, and I’m proud that at 18 I departed from the secure estate and began my new journey. At 23 I am proud to be studying law at SOAS University of London, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
People are regularly surprised when they learn I’m care experienced. Growing up, it made me feel on the periphery, an outsider, there was a stigma.
Now that I’m on the path to being a lawyer and person of influence, I feel society making assumptions again, but they’re positive and admiring.
I see this as a massive way I can give back to others from a similar background or who have shared similar experiences. I can show the world that being care experienced doesn’t put a person at a disadvantage or make them a burden – it can be the exact opposite.
I believe it’s time the working world started recognising the value in care experience as there are tremendous assets in character and skill which are not utilised in society. Because out of the other side comes a person who turns adversity into opportunity.
- See the Step Ahead campaign website for more information. We’d love to hear your council’s story in supporting care leavers – please email [email protected]
- The Care Leaver Covenant is a national inclusion programme that supports care leavers aged 16-25 to live independently. We collaborate with local authorities across England to support care leavers. If you are in Wales and interested in the Care Leaver Covenant, please contact our delivery partner, Spectra, by emailing [email protected]