Project Description
The TVF team has visited organisations and universities to take part in and facilitate conferences, meetings, and seminars. In 2016, we shared our testimonies at the Greater London Authority Beyond Care Conference. These are some of the pledges that delegates made after hearing the young people’s testimonies:
- Listen more
- Lessen the paperwork
- Fight for better housing for young people
- Call more, text / email less
- Listen more, talk less or talk to the right people when I do talk
- Remind myself to consider young people as my own child
- Find out more about the CICC in my borough
- To turn all electronic gadgets off/on silent when talking with a young person
- Hold management accountable for the needs being met for YP
- Use the needs + wants of care leavers in the development of their educational provision
- Support young female care leavers to financial independence by helping them find sustainable employment
- Share with a target audience the successes of each project, and the evaluations by participants
- Seek opinions of young people and adults who do not participate
- Outreach to children I have never met/ heard from
- Make more effort to build relationships with those not attending groups
- Remember to value photos + try to use other media
- Follow up more and try to close gap between foster carer and other parties involved with the young person
- Say less and listen more
- Communicate better, listen and talk. Build better relationships
- Better understanding
- Be positive and encouraging
- Find more solutions and see ideas through – if we don’t try it then we won’t know
- To be mindful of language – avoid words which are about process and not people in my interactions with young people
- Keep trying to get the peer mentoring programme up and running
- Challenge the status quo and not be complacent in the way I work so that I can push to make things better for young people In care and leaving care .Even if I can only make a small changes for the better I will try to make them happen
- Communicate with the young person. Show them that their concerns are listened to, not excluded in their care plan
- Feedback about their concerns
- Follow up
- Treat every young person as an individual and leave their background at the door and really listen and hear what they are saying to me
- I will ask them what they want from me and what to do and with them and make it happen
- Continue to be about my experience in care, whilst using my position as an educated adult working within H.E. in order to raise aspirations of the young people in care, and raise awareness of people in H.E. of the barriers that care leavers face in education
- Spend more time thinking about the hardships that young people in care face
- Find out about other organisations to collaborate with to support a care leaver/looked after child in their progression
- Talk to looked-after children + care leavers about what works / doesn’t work in supporting their progression to HE
- Help my carers to provide young people in their placement with guidance on how to prepare for a life beyond the care system
- To ensure that savings are put away regularly + focus on young people having a good amount of savings for when they leave care. This will begin in the next 7 days
- Make more time to talk with young people to allow time for general chat rather than just talking about the business
- Meet up with a young care leaver who I know is very lonely. I usually only meet him when he asks for support over a specific problem
- Keep pushing for change without blaming individual social workers for what is going wrong
- Be more supportive of those in care
- Challenge stigma
- Praise the positive profile of care leavers
- Build stronger networks with other organisations that support those in care/ care leavers, particularly foster carers
- Find out when/ if the children’s care council takes place
- Attend a meeting!
- Become a foster carer
- Always be there for a young person
- Phone, email, FaceTime, because every conversation counts and can change / save a life