Care Leavers’ transition(s) into adulthood

Project Background

The National House Project (NHP) has a mission to help care leavers live connected and fulfilling lives. The approach that the NHP takes to supporting care leavers has been co-designed and coproduced with young people, who have joint ownership of their Local House Project (LHP). NHP works with 21 local authorities (England & Scotland) and 710 young people, to date. NHP worked collaboratively with IMPACT to explore how best to support care experienced people aged 25+ in their transition(s) to adulthood, improving access to preventative, holistic support to prevent crisis.

This project was based across two Local House Projects (LHPs) in Fife and Coventry, and aimed to generate new approaches relevant across the four nations.

IMPACT Factfile

Key terms

In this report we refer to ‘care experienced individuals’. In England, this means people who have been “looked after” children under the Children Act 1989, defined by their provision of accommodation for over 24 hours, being subject to a care order, or a placement order at any point in their lives. In Scotland, this also refers to people who have been “looked after children,” at any point in their lives, with legal basis in the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, covering children living at home under Compulsory Supervision Orders, those in kinship, foster, or residential care, or subject to permanence orders.

We also talk about adults/adulthood. Adulthood is a difficult concept to define, as social, legal and individual definitions may not always align. The transition to adulthood for people leaving care is often ‘accelerated and compressed’ as adults with care experience often take on responsibilities of adulthood at an earlier age compared with their peers. For the purposes of this project, we engaged with a range of adults and young people with care experience to inform our understanding of how needs may evolve over time.

Evidence Review

The project started with an evidence review to ensure that strategic projects draw on evidence from across research, practice and lived experience. This identified several areas where adults with care experience may benefit from support, including psycho-emotional readiness, relational and material support. It was able to identify mechanisms important for strategic change including dynamic leadership, collaboration, maximising data use, planning, attentiveness to identity and co-production.

In addition to the evidence review, the Demonstrators, Mandy and Rhiann, engaged with care experienced individuals who raised key issues that they felt were important to their experiences of adulthood but were under-represented in the evidence review: identity, place and transport, pregnancy and parenthood

What we did

In the initial engagement phase, we wanted to understand the local and national landscape of support for care experienced individuals, including:

  1. Initial assessment of the current local offer for care experienced individuals in both sites
  2. Stakeholder mapping in partnership with LHPs
  3. Engagement with stakeholders, and care experienced individuals
  4. Assessment of strategic readiness for change, and opportunities for influence at each site

This culminated in several sense-checking meetings with stakeholders, including a local steering group in Fife, individual meetings across Coventry, and the development of an initial theory of change for the IMPACT project moving forwards.

Key activities

IMPACT and NHP have co-production at the core of their approach. Key co-production activities included:

Three co-production sessions

Six workshops in Coventry with the LHP and partners

Two co-production sessions and asset mapping with Fife LHP

IMPACT coaches also spent time informally with young people at the LHP, using the base for meetings and planning sessions

Find out more about the co-production of this project here

In Fife, a key barrier to care experienced individuals accessing support was a lack of awareness across both children and families and adult social work teams of what community supports were available to signpost care leavers to. In Scotland, ALISS is a national digital programme enabling people and professionals to find and share information on health and wellbeing resources, services, groups, and support in their local communities and online. ALISS was identified as a useful tool to collate community resources so that anyone, including adults with care experience themselves. ALISS editor training was provided to a mixed group of LHP staff and social work assistants in Fife Council, as a starting point to begin connecting with a range of local offers.

Fife LHP has a positive history of supporting Apprentices, and at the time of this project had secured a permanent contract for their Apprentice. After reflecting on evidence to date, our key links at Fife Council identified the opportunity to recruit a new apprentice, with a specific remit of supporting care experienced adults.

IMPACT has supported the LHP at Fife to develop core aspects of this role, in partnership with adults and young people with care experience. These include:

  • An evaluation strategy in line with the minimum reporting standards used by Community Link Workers
  • An induction programme co-designed with adults with care experience, seeking to support the Apprentice to manage the complexity of requests
  • A service journey map, detailing key points of engagement for care experienced adults reaching out for support
  • A co-produced letter to be mailed out to care experienced adults in Fife, welcoming them to engage with the service for support

In response to feedback that it is challenging for care experienced adults and the professionals who support them to know what is available, the IMPACT coach progressed local asset mapping activities. Extensive cross-sector stakeholder mapping was progressed, and local offers were categorised into under 25/over 25. This demonstrated that there were more offers for care experienced young people than adults. 

We identified the need for a collective, partnership approach to supporting adults with care experience. We convened stakeholders from across Coventry City Council, academia, voluntary and private sectors to collectively explore potential collaborative opportunities that will contribute towards ongoing holistic support for care experienced adults (25+) before they reach a point of crisis. The workshop was informed by co-production sessions with young people and adults with care experience and previous stakeholder mapping.

The workshop was split into two parts:

  • Current offers and practice
  • Going forward and considering the art of the possible

Recommendations

  • We need coordinated local and national efforts to address data gaps between children and young peoples and adult services, so that we can understand the scale and impact of unmet needs of care experienced adults
  • Future research or implementation projects may wish to engage with gaps identified by care experienced adults in this work including: travel, identity, pregnancy and parenthood
  • We need to invest in active and accessible communication to young people leaving care about their rights and entitlement in adulthood, not just because of their care experienced status, but as citizens and members of communities
  • Raising the profile of care experienced adults and their unmet needs across social care is vital, but we must create the conditions to explore and maximise individual and community level responsibility for this issue, with clear lines of accountability
  • The stigma faced by care experienced people ranges from off-the cuff comments to systemic discrimination, and it is important that future initiatives do not focus solely on individual level interventions, but on efforts to address stigma and marginalisation
  • There are opportunities to build on this work with the upcoming Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill

Meet Our Demonstrators: Rhiann McLean & Mandy Andrew

Rhiann McLean

I joined IMPACT because I am passionate about evidence-informed practice and co-production in 2023, and initially worked on a project about Personal Assistant wellbeing in Scotland. I started my career as a support worker before joining the world of research and evidence impact to improve outcomes for people who use Scotland’s health and social care services. 

    Mandy Andrew

    I am a registered nurse by background and expert facilitator specialising in change management and organisational development, with extensive experience leading change and transformational programmes in both local and complex national organisations at home and abroad.

    My experience includes collaborative cross sector partnerships across health, social care, public, private and voluntary sectors. Involving people and communities at the centre to support transformation through innovation, creatively and assets-based approaches.