Getting ready for leaving improving young peoples experiences

Getting ready for leaving: improving young people’s experiences of preparing to leave residential care Nat O’Brien, Jenny Dagg, Leslie Hicks 1

Presentation draws upon: • LIFT children’s homes project – improving practice on planning and preparation for leaving residential care • LIFT evaluation qualitative findings – good practice points • Value: what helps in preparation? • Broader implications LIFT: Life in Full Transition/ Learning Independence for Transition 2

LIFT project aims Designed to explore current best practice in supporting young people aged 15 - 18 years to leave residential care, and ways to improve: • Pathway Planning • Employment and education opportunities • Preparation for leaving care and for independence LIFT used a co-production approach with young people and professionals supporting them Government-funded project; took place in the north west of England (greatest concentration of homes, geographically) 3

The project involved • Workshops in 15 children’s homes or supported accommodation – young people, residential workers, homes managers, service managers and personal advisors • 30 young people took part in co-production workshops over a two year period • 45 young people engaged with work opportunities • 450 + professionals took part in multi-disciplinary training, coproduction workshops, learning and dissemination events • Model utilised built on learnings from each stage 4

Project model Gain a common understanding of rights & responsibilities Adapt & Improve training & resources Provide training, workshops & resources Co-produce solutions Review progress Evaluate & capture best practice Capture messages from co-production for future training Provide training, workshops & resources Share best practice 5

Independent evaluation • A ‘Good Thing’? • Commissioned as part of the overall programme of work • Reported at two points in time • Time 1: interim evaluation to enable programme development • Time 2: end point evaluation to establish overall merits • Utilised co-production techniques • Qualitative and quantitative data 6

Preparing for leaving: is there a problem? It [the project] concentrates on an area which is woefully inadequate in terms of getting young people in the care system ready for living independently in the community. Does the system work and are our young people prepared? I would say in 90% of cases, absolutely not. Especially now with all of the cuts taking place in local authorities across the country it’s getting worse and it’s not getting any better. Professional’s view 7

Many difficulties? … the doing of preparation is, by nature, unsettling, and …. there's an avoidance, to a certain extent, of doing the preparation. You’ll go from seeing a professional once every two weeks to not seeing a social worker or another worker once every 12 weeks. There seems to be a great big chasm. People aren’t leaving home until in their mid 20 s, sometimes later than that, yet we have an expectation that a young person at 16/17 is ready to go and live independently. It doesn’t make sense. Professionals’ views 8

‘Good Practice Points’ drawn from the independent evaluation: Direct work with young people Supporting residential staff Organisations 9

Direct work with young people • Extra support for young people to enable positive development: preparing to leave care increases intensity in already complex lives • Young people may need long periods of supported transition: in order to move away from institutionalised care towards achieving a confident sense of agency sufficient to withstand the inevitable decrease in support • Listening to young people: needs to be accompanied by observable action 10

Direct work with young people • Pathway Plans need to: be focused on young people as individuals; be accessible to young people, by including shorter, less professionalised summaries; be up-todate and relevant, not simply recording generic life events. • Continuing opportunities for young people: need to be sought, offered and supported, without pressure or coercion, to expand their experience base 11

Young people’s views LIFT has helped my confidence miles. They [workshops and trips] helped me feel a bit more experienced with the world, definitely given me more experience of the world in general. . . it’s helped me a lot with that, with my anxieties. I really learned much of lots of things about [the] LIFT project , I’ve learned about taking responsibility of myself and also talking about preparing in getting into adult life. This has really changed me and as I think about myself. I really achieved something in my life. And also I’ve learned how to be sociable. 12

Supporting residential staff • Emotional effects: on staff of preparing young people to leave care can be powerful barriers to progress • Staff need to be supported in direct work: with young people at this life stage; not all staff have experience in helping young people to move on from care • Developing strategies: staff need support in developing pedagogical approaches to enable young people to identify their aspirations and manageable steps towards achieving these 13

Organisations • ‘Preparation for independence’ training: needs to include the voices of young people involved in preparation • ‘Vertical slice’ training: across organisational tiers enables the development of a ‘Leaving Care Aware’ organisation • Pathway planning: strengthened by being joined up and involving the full range of relevant personnel • Reliable information sources: access to - a central, open access and up-to-date policy/legislation/rights website - a dedicated and experienced and/or qualified ‘preparation for adult life’ professional 14

Good practice points: project overall • Creating opportunities: for young people to interact actively with others serves to increase confidence levels (individualised care and support may have a de-socialising effect) • Pace: preparation should be staged to meet young people’s needs and capacity to engage • Co-production: is an egalitarian means to achieving development by virtue of improving engagement, empowerment and a sense of agency 15

What helps? 16

Value of engagement The eye-opening thing was the way the young people actually engaged with the project, which was lovely to see. . . they were willing to give up their time and to contribute and to actually talk about things they wanted to change; and they’ve carried on the same. . . developed a huge amount of confidence, they’ve been exposed to forums that they would never have had opportunities to do before Professional’s view 17

Value of that meaningful relationship That’s sound. I like Jake [project team member pseudonym]. I proper like Jake! Jake is probably one of the main reasons I carried on, because Jake is really good at engaging me with it. The trips sweetened the deal, I guess. . . Kath [project team member pseudonym] is just the same as Jake, they work very well together. Young person’s view 18

Value of co-production I think Jake is quite levelling when you're in a session with Jake with young people, and even when there are other speakers on there as well it's not aimed at either the staff or the young people, it's aimed as if you are all in that together; and I think that's quite a good thing in groups that I've been in with Jake where we've had young people have been sort of the group's spokesperson, or they've been doing the writing and, and it's sort of, it made a difference. I think it's being able to make people be more honest about what they're there for. Young person’s view 19

Broader implications • The project raised awareness widely of the importance of this life stage for looked after young people who are moving into adulthood • LIFT offers a model to empower young people and staff: vocabularies have changed and expectations in respect of good – a distinct from ‘good enough’ – practice have been raised • Several participating organisations have made detailed plans to sustain the momentum achieved already 20

Thank you very much! Nat O’Brien Jenny Dagg Dr Leslie Hicks Senior Project Co-ordinator, Catch 22 National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum Nat. OBrien@catch-22. org. uk Senior Lecturer School of Health and Social Care University of Lincoln jdagg@lincoln. ac. uk Reader School of Health and Social Care University of Lincoln lhicks@lincoln. ac. uk Lift project details: https: //www. catch-22. org. uk/expertise/young-people-and-families/care-leavers-research/ Evaluation summary: http: //www. catch-22. org. uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/LIFT-Childrens-Homes-Project. Evaluation-Report. pdf 21