Care Leaver Event

By Admin on December 7, 2015 • ( 0 )

This was the first event for Care Leavers in West Sussex, held at the Glynn Owen Centre. The aim of the event was to review how the Leaving care service has been for them since age eighteen and ideas about how to develop a care leavers group.

The day started with welcomes from Graham Vagg, Head of Leaving Care service and Richard Rollinson from the National Care leavers Foundation, setting the importance and impact care leavers forum have on services.

Care leavers discussed what has worked well and what has worked not so well.

The things the group found were working well were:-

Transition from social workers to PA worked well

Those that the group found were not working well were: –

not providing what they said they would in accommodation
When I left care I was given a flat, but lost my social worker
Not enough support at 16 to be living on my own
Social worker never visited me and seemed to have no interest in anything to do with me.
I was never informed of who my social worker was which changed a lot
Never got help about moving forward
Never got help with budgeting
As a care leaver with no family I struggled finding places to live and social services allowed me to live in a B&B and then a hostel. They left me to go to the council and told me it wasn’t anything to do with them.
Losing my PA
Always changing workers
Had to pay to see my own file
No help finding a job, had to do it all myself, and still can’t find a job
Haven’t got enough money to pay for transport to take a job too far from my home, and no support from social services
Not listening to almost everything I said or my family said (i.e. didn’t want to move out of West Sussex and did)
My voice wasn’t heard in my placement move
Pathway plans never work
Not taking complaints seriously
Had to pay to see my files which was information about me
Not being listened to

The group was then asked to think of solutions to some of these problems if they were in charge of the Leaving care service.

They suggested:-

Don’t move young people out of West Sussex
Listen to the young people
Support service for foster children and supported lodgings
Safe place to complain and express concern in confidence
Don’t charge people to see their own file
Allow access to your old foster carers at any time- as they are the ones who are important in your life
Have a cookery course, and budget training
Change the council housing policy in relation to “local connection”, as its not our fault we have been living in different places and can’t meet the 2 year rule.
We need someone to actually teach care leavers how to cook, as you can’t just learn from a book

Care leavers discussed moving forward

The group looked at what they would like the new care leaver’s forum to look like and do.

They suggested the following things:-

Online community – possibly on Facebook – as lot of people can’t actually be there
Opportunity to Skype in to meetings or watch them
Have our own website so people know what is going on
Hold fun events – a chance for care leavers to get together informally
Meetings should be 2 hours long
Transport should be provided by leaving care service either through a travel warrant, or money put on our p card to pay for it, or taxis arranged
Have lots of social events such as food nights, and cooking sessions
Meetings should be fortnightly
Meetings should be in the daytime for those attending today, as that is when we can make it, 11-1pm in Worthing
Wanted to meet at Glyn Owen centre again for the first meeting

Seven of those who attended said that they would like to take part in future care leaver’s forum meetings.

Next steps forward from this meeting: