Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Insight Report 6 September 2020

At Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, we believe we have a valuable role to play – not just in providing grants – but also in our ability to bring people together, to support collaboration and share learning.

So, running alongside our Leaving Care Funding Stream is a Learning Programme to facilitate learning between grantees, and to draw out collective insight to help improve the wider care leaver system.

This report summarises the experiences of organisations on our Leaving Care Funding Stream who have been supporting young people with care experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In sharing the report, we want to celebrate what was possible during this unprecedented time, to highlight the main learning points relevant for those who are working to improve the care leaver system, and to emphasise practices and principles that should be carried forward as we transition out of lockdown and focus on future resilience.

It features insights primarily drawn from a set of learning discussions with grantees that took place between March and July 2020.

What’s in the report?

Introduction 2 Executive summary 4 What happened during lockdown 5 How did organisations adapt their practice How did organisations adapt their ways of working

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As lockdown eases, what are organisations are thinking about

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Key learning from the lockdown period 13 Conclusion 17 Participants in the Leaving Care Learning Programme to August 2020

Introduction

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

This report is for everyone who wants to improve the care leaver system.

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

What is the Leaving Care Funding Stream?

In 2017, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation launched the Leaving Care Funding Stream in recognition that more needs to be done across the UK to reduce the risk of young people falling off a cliff edge of support when they leave care.

33 organisations are currently receiving grants for work that shares a common goal: to ensure that every young person leaving care flourishes as an adult.

Organisations range from small start-ups in the early stages of their journey, to national campaigning and advocacy charities.

How does the Learning Programme work?

The Learning Programme is co-designed by organisations we fund and run by Janet Grauberg and Louisa Thomson (from Renaisi). We use insights from the programme to engage important decisionmakers in the public and voluntary sectors.

Usually, learning events take place twice a year with opportunities to network in between.

Since March 2020, the Learning Programme has brought grantees together far more regularly online to share their experiences of the crisis,

practice examples and useful resources, as well as discussing ongoing long-term challenges in the sector.

There was a high level of willingness and commitment from grantees during this period to participate in discussions which is reflected in the insights captured here. This would not have been possible without the relationships that had already formed through the Learning Programme prior to the pandemic.

A Care Experienced Young People’s Network of ten young people with care experience is part of the Learning Programme. It started in March 2020 and has been focussing on capturing the experiences of care leavers during lockdown, and identifying what support they need as lockdown ends.

The Young People’s Network also runs the #CareConvos monthly twitter discussion on @Convos4Care.

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What have we learnt?

Organisations responded with a vast range of creative and innovative practices to ensure that young people with care experience were supported during this difficult time.

For young people • Access to digital is a basic necessity and without this, many risk being further excluded from available support.

• Mental health and wellbeing needs were particularly heightened during lockdown, and will continue – emotional support for young people needs to be flexible and readily available.

• As we enter the recovery period, the employment challenges for young people with care experience will be significant.

For providing effective support in a virtual environment • Virtual delivery enabled organisations to reach more young people, and could be seen as an asset, rather than a poor relation of face-to-face support.

• The value of a trusted person was significant for many young people, and working in a personcentred way was at the forefront of most delivery approaches.

They learnt rapidly about effective digital delivery, supporting young people and staff teams remotely, and the type of support they needed from funders and partners to do this successfully.

For organisations supporting young people • The lockdown period revealed the resilience of organisations in the voluntary sector, and their agility in being able to adapt their practices online. This requires permission within organisations to experiment, as well as strong support structures in place for staff working remotely.

• Creative practices translated well to online delivery and played a significant role in engaging young people.

Executive summary

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

For funders • Investing in core support for organisations is crucial – good tech, infrastructure and a well-resourced staff team helped in navigating the changes.

• Grants with few restrictions are also essential to support organisations to be as flexible as possible.

• Having a learning programme that provided spaces for grantees to come together and share experiences throughout lockdown was valued – as a source of practical ideas, but also encouragement from a supportive community of organisations working on similar challenges.

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The main challenges facing young people with care experience during lockdown

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

I’m very much holed up in my flat at the moment…. I’m trying to keep my mind busy as when it’s not, past traumas are beginning to resurface for me.

It’s quite stressful… it’s hard as there’s not much you can do to maintain it.”

Grantees reported a set of issues that were becoming more acute for young people with care experience.

Care Experienced Young People’s Network podcast

Isolation Through having less contact with services and projects that the young people had been involved with, as well as with friends, professionals and carers.

Mental health and wellbeing Including increased anxiety and boredom, not feeling safe or having a trusted person to turn to.

Digital exclusion Not having a laptop or tablet, wi-fi or sufficient data allowances hampering young people’s ability to engage with services that were rapidly moving online.

Financial hardship Caused by unemployment and/or not being able to access part time jobs to support living costs.

What happened during lockdown

Accommodation challenges Including breakdowns in placements, or being in confined spaces within settings that they were already having issues with.

The effects of lockdown were even more profound for young people in residential homes or supported lodgings.

Students who remained on campus For students at university without family support – issues with being left in halls of residences on otherwise empty campuses, and accompanying loneliness, fears around homelessness, and worries about continuity in their academic studies.

Since the lockdown everyone has gone home from halls, and I’m by myself which I’m not always comfortable with. Knowing that I don’t have that family to go home to can be quite difficult.”

Care Experienced Young People’s Network podcast

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How did organisations adapt their practice?

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Providing something for young people to look forward to amongst the monotony and uncertainty of the lockdown was an overarching theme.

Creative activities online

Once lockdown started, many projects and programmes had to stop. Many saw an increase in demand for their services and a greater need for pastoral support from young people.

Often organisations could find themselves being the main port of call or a lifeline to young people, filling a gap in support services in their local areas.

This meant that many grantee organisations had more exposure to the day-to-day challenges being faced by young people in their homes – issues that may have been masked in other settings such as offices or youth centres.

Grantees developed entirely new ways to deliver support to young people with care experience. Many provided direct help with the essentials – including food parcels, care packages and providing wi-fi dongles to enable access to the internet. They also found that they needed to filter through the information available and signpost useful resources to young people.

Online social activities

Direct help with the essentials

How organisations adapted their practice

Campaigning and advocacy

Advice, guidance, signposting

Employment support

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Creative activities in an online context

I found the support and group chats useful. Especially the Zoom calls doing quizzes and mindfulness. It’s nice to see another face, especially when they’re familiar ones.”

I found that having a video call and seeing people’s faces is a lot more comforting rather than just hearing people’s voices over the phone. It feels like you’re getting more of that social interaction.”

Leicestershire Cares podcast

Leicestershire Cares podcast

Many organisations delivered creative online workshops and culture clubs with an opportunity to make something and talk at the same time – for example, live collages, doodles, writing poetry collectively, or providing materials to read, watch and listen to in advance and then discuss with peers.

• Element set young people a daily creative challenge, organised culture clubs for peer recommendations on arts and culture available during lockdown, and held individual creative consultations.

• Articulate ran online Friday Night dialogues in collaboration with artists involved a brief for young people which they then worked on over the week, and discussed in a follow up session.

• Derby Theatre started a project with award-winning children’s novelist Alex Wheatle who grew up in care. Young people were sent Alex’s book Home Girl to read and then had a chance to ask him questions. They are adapting the story for stage which will be performed next year.

• Curious Monkey ran virtual drama and poetry sessions over Zoom designed to keep the group connected and being creative during lockdown.

• Photovoice hosted a free webinar on Photographic Storytelling with basic tips and tricks for using this approach to explore experiences under lockdown.

• Big House Theatre started planning for their next production – the Ballad of Corona V, which will be a socially distanced promenade.

Below: Flyer for Big House’s next production.

Bottom row: Doodles and drawings from Element’s daily challenges

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Social activities to help address isolation and boost wellbeing

• Organisations experimented with platforms such as Netflix Party and HouseParty to set up social encounters.

• Curious Monkey delivered creative activities and ingredient packs to people’s houses, so they could cook and eat together online – for example, for a pizza and film night.

• Break delivered care packages with craft activities, and a daily themed email (for example, Motivational Monday, Workout Wednesday) with suggested activities for each day.

• Element ran weekly stretching and breathing sessions and virtual drop-ins.

• Leicestershire Cares developed offline resources for young people who do not have regular access to the internet – including colouring packs, yoga poses and breathing exercises.

• GMYN developed an online timetable of workshops and activities covering everything from mindfulness, staying safe to drumming and making origami bookmarks – through group chats, guided pre-recorded activities and one-to-one support.

Above: GMYN’s online workshops Left: Articulate’s packages for young people

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Advice, guidance and signposting to specialist support • Many organisations wanted to make sure they disseminated up-to-date information to young people reflecting the changes to government guidance. This included Become’s comprehensive summary of advice on a range of topics including work, benefits, university, feeling unwell and the impact on existing support.

Coram Voice kept their dedicated advocacy service up and running with advocates supporting young people over the phone, video or on messaging apps.

• Leap moved their conflict training online and wanted to keep the experiential elements – through movement based check-ins and grounding exercises.

• Break continued their peer network and mentoring schemes online with advice, resources and activities for young people. They also set up a support helpline across the whole organisation for young people to access.

• Family Rights Group negotiated with the National Records of Scotland (NRS) to undertake searches and compile family trees to identify potential alternative carers for children and young people at risk during the COVID-19 crisis. This service has been offered to all Scottish local authorities offering Lifelong Links.

Employment support Below: Coram Voice’s Advocacy line, Always Heard

Several grantees support young people with routes into further education and employment.

• Leicestershire Cares moved their employability workshops online, and invited business leaders to sessions as guest speakers, mock interview panels and to review CVs. • Include Youth continued to reach out to young people who they support through employability programmes using Zoom, WhatsApp and Google Classrooms to ensure that essential skills could continue to be delivered.

They supplemented this with more regular check-ins on wellbeing and care packages.

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Campaigning and advocacy • Coram Voice launched a new social media campaign to tackle the stigma around care and care experience called ‘Change the label’. They also produced highlight reports based on their Bright Spots survey with care leavers – drawing out specific lessons for services in response to the pandemic.

• Become were able to extend their Care Leavers Network beyond the group based in London who they usually brought together and to hear voices from across the country.

• Just For Kids Law worked with the campaign group Article 39 to highlight concerns with the new statutory guidance to local authorities which relaxed many duties around children in care and care leavers. As a result of the campaign, the guidance was revised and emphasised more clearly the pressures facing care leavers as a result of COVID-19.

• NNECL and Become (along with other organisations) researched the experiences of care leavers at university through a survey and the challenges they face in remaining on their courses. They called on universities, sector bodies and government to introduce emergency grants, ensure wellbeing support services are in place, and liaise with student accommodation bodies and landlords to help prevent homelessness.

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Taking collective action: Employment issues for young people with care experience Carefree Cornwall, Leicestershire Cares, Become and Drive Forward Foundation formed part of a working group of VCSE organisations convened by Catch22. Together, they aimed to influence central and local government on employment prospects for young people with care experience after lockdown.

Coram Voice’s ‘Change the Label’ campaign

Digital exclusion arose as a key issue for young people to access training and job opportunities.

The Learning Programme facilitators and Catch22 ran a survey of organisations’ experiences of the DfE laptops for care leavers programme which informed a meeting of the Ministerial Board.

The organisations pulled together good practice examples for local authorities working with local businesses to offer employment opportunities, and/or wishing to offer employment in their own authority.

The work is now evolving into a longer term ‘Computers for Care Leavers: Beyond COVID’ campaign.

How did organisations adapt their ways of working?

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Legacy from the crisis period As well as changing their young people facing work, the organisations altered many ways of working with staff.

Examples included: • Furloughing staff in rotation and using an info@ email address to enable handover of work between staff members.

• Enabling staff to work more flexibly where possible in order to balance caring responsibilities.

• For those organisations that run accommodation for young people, changing shift patterns to accommodate both lockdown rules and staff personal circumstances.

• More regular catch ups – with some having these every day as a team.

• Transferring staff supervision online, covering both wellbeing and work progress in the conversation.

There will be a visual and audio legacy from young people’s work during the lockdown period: • Articulate gallery exhibition: https://www.articulatehub.com/post/ blank-canvas----4----north-and-south • Become podcast: https://soundcloud.com/user-238728684/ become-advisory-group-lockdownexperiences • Care Experienced Young People’s Network podcasts https://soundcloud.com/careexp_ ypn?ref=clipboard • Element virtual show: https://bigrat.studio/standing-patientpeople-with-different-flavours

• Leicestershire Cares podcasts and video: www.leicestershirecares.co.uk/aboutcharity/news-events/new-care-experiencedpodcast-fostering-new-approach www.leicestershirecares.co.uk/aboutcharity/news-events/stories-careexperienced-young-people-lockdown

Leicestershire Cares video ‘Stories of Care Experienced Young People in Lockdown

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As lockdown eases, what are organisations thinking about?

At the time of writing (Summer 2020), organisations on the Leaving Care Funding Stream are developing their exit strategies from virtual engagement.

Young people have reported concerns with their confidence and getting back to ‘normal’ life, as well as more acute mental health needs amplified by the length of time in lockdown. There is a lot of uncertainty about future education and employment opportunities including what courses will be on offer, and what the prospects are for young people leaving school or university in the middle of a recession.

Demand for services are likely to increase when they do re-open, as well as clusters of support required for young people in particular situations – for example, those who turned 18 during lockdown and have stayed in their placements.

I worry that I have had too much time to think about myself. I won’t have the confidence to go out there and make stuff happen for me because I have forgotten how and it is going to be harder as no employers want people with no experience.”

Survey of young people by a charity on the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Practice

Organisational

Organisations are keen to start meeting young people again where physical distancing can be maintained. However, they also recognise that they cannot sustain the same level and frequency of engagement with young people that many have experienced during lockdown, and this requires some careful navigation.

Alongside this, there were also fears that the focus for statutory services will be on the physical measures that need to be implemented, with the value of relationships and creativity falling down (and staying down) the priority list.

Many staff are feeling a sense of ‘burnout’ and Zoom fatigue after months of working remotely and balancing home/life needs alongside heavy workloads.

Organisations face ongoing financial challenges, having used reserves to weather the storm. There are concerns that with the majority of available funding at the moment focussing on responses to COVID-19 fundraising for more ‘business as usual’ activities and projects will be harder.

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Engagement: what’s still possible

What works: About online engagement

Organisational approaches

• Relationships can be built and sustained online

• Activities with a purpose

• Confidence to test and learn at speed

• Frequency and reach

• Mixture of group work and 1-2-1

• Collaborating effectively as teams

• Varying session lengths

• Personalised approaches

• Quality and depth of engagement

• Balancing fun with conversations about circumstances

Practice: supporting young people The lockdown period demonstrated that there is a way to build and develop relationships with young people without having the cues or informal conversations that come through face-to-face engagement.

Creativity and relationship based practice is at the core of many grantees’ work with young people, and working in this way means that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. This was more apparent than ever during lockdown.

Many organisations reflected on the value of personalised approaches during this time – with a far greater emphasis on developing individual responses to individual needs in a way that had not been possible before.

Key learning from the lockdown period

Organisations learnt a lot about what types of online engagement work best with the young people they support, embracing virtual platforms that many had little prior experience of.

Overall, organisations found that online delivery worked best when: • Activities had a purpose.

• There was a mixture of things on offer – with group work and 1-2-1 support.

• Sessions were different lengths to account for varying attention spans.

• Content balanced fun and enjoyable elements with more instructive conversations about young people’s experiences and circumstances.

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

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Practice: supporting young people Working in a virtual environment also had some unexpected benefits: • The frequency and reach of engagement with some young people increased as barriers such as the cost of transport were removed.

This was particularly an issue in rural areas. Many organisations were also able to engage with young people from outside of their area more easily as well as provide resources more widely.

• The quality and depth of engagement improved in some instances – with young people being able to participate on their own terms – for example, choosing to have their videos on or off depending on what they were comfortable with.

• Increased recognition from statutory services of the role of creativity in boosting wellbeing and providing a useful distraction and a fun enjoyable way to connect.

What were the main challenges?

Switching to online working Despite the many positive developments around working online, there were a number of challenges in making this switch particularly in the early stages of lockdown. These centred on navigating tech barriers and ensuring young people had access to wi-fi data, phone credits and laptops/tablets. For many organisations, this was outside of their normal service remit, but critical to young people being able to participate and access the support on offer.

Engaging young people • Reaching new young people – particularly during the strictest period of lockdown. Where this did happen, it could be hard to build a relationship without having met face-to-face – although some helped to overcome this by having shorter introductory meetings with a young person and someone else they trusted, to help to get to know each other.

• Harder to follow instincts – Despite the benefits of reaching more young people, there were fears that opportunities might be missed by working less directly with young people.

• Sustaining momentum in between virtual engagement – particularly given the length of lockdown and ongoing uncertainty as to when previous projects would be able to start up again.

• Keeping in touch when routines are disrupted. Without the routine of college or other structures, some young people were asleep most of the working day but wanted support in the evenings.

• Uncertainty about employment opportunities available. For those providing support into employment, it could be challenging to establish what options were available and safe for young people.

Employed young people with care experience • Some apprentices were unable to complete their apprenticeships on time because the activities they were undertaking were not able to continue.

• Some employees for whom this was their first permanent, full-time role found it hard to work from home, rather than in an office environment with more direct supervision and support.

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Organisational learning What were the main developments?

Adapting quickly to change Grantee organisations were rapidly changing their practices often without their usual organisational structures in place. The immediate crisis period revealed their agility to adapt to changing circumstances and the strength of their staff teams. This included: • The confidence to test and learn at speed – having the freedom to try out new ways of working, but also recognising when something was not landing well with young people and not continuing just for the sake of it. .• Collaborating more effectively as teams – coming together with a commonly held challenge and a clear sense of what they needed to do.

Challenges

• Being able to continue to reach young people despite experiencing the effects of lockdown themselves.

• Having to rapidly update knowledge and practices around safeguarding to ensure these were fit for virtual delivery.

However, the lockdown period did place a significant strain on organisations.

Many grantees were operating with a skeleton staff and key roles on furlough.

As grantees battled to ensure that young people had online access, they also faced their own set of tech challenges at organisational level and with partners.

Commonly reported issues included: • Staff not having the right tech in place to support home working – for example, having to use personal mobiles and devices in the early days of lockdown, and struggling to access shared files.

• Organisations working closely with statutory authorities or holding individual case files took longer to establish online ways of working because of requirements set by those agencies (for example, some local authorities would not use Zoom because of security concerns).

• Organisations working with the courts faced specific challenges as some documents still had to be physically signed.

• Those organisations whose core work is training adults (for example new foster carers or kinship carers) had different requirements for an online platform to those working with young people.

Staff wellbeing was another key area of concern, particularly for those who were working remotely and supporting young people with mental health issues or other trauma. These staff were missing the informal support networks of colleagues in the office to reflect on cases of concern. It could also be harder to navigate boundaries when communicating digitally outside of working hours and balancing staff wellbeing and safeguarding.

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Local systems and partnerships – what changed?

Working with local authorities came up frequently in the discussions during lockdown.

Services and support across a local area were not available in the same way against a wider backdrop of the loosening of duties towards children in care in the government guidance.

However, there was very little evidence of local authorities applying the emergency legislation in an unhelpful way.

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Positives

Negatives

The fact that staff from statutory services and voluntary sector organisations were facing the same set of challenges helped. Some found that communications were easier and underpinned by more empathy and a shared understanding of what they were aiming to achieve for young people.

Grantees also had some more negative experiences in their relationships with statutory services.

Positive developments included: • Grantee organisations saw some local authorities embracing online activities and directly providing these for young people going beyond their statutory duties – thinking more widely about where young people are and what they need, rather than what has to be provided by law.

• Social workers placing more of a priority on wellbeing and isolation, and regularly checking in on young people.

• In some cases, social workers were noticeably easier to get hold of as they were spending less time travelling around their boroughs. This also extended to senior managers in some cases.

Challenges included: • Difficulties in establishing whether care plans are being adhered to.

• Poor communications between the different services involved in a young person’s life, with multi-agency working ebbing away in some cases where staff were furloughed or seconded, and communications could take longer than usual.

• Variations in support offered by schools and colleges, and Virtual Schools.

• Particular challenges around finding what financial and mental health provisions are in place, with long waiting lists being a common concern.

Through the Learning Programme discussions, grantees were able to see variances in practices between different local authorities. This led to reflections that when people are working more in isolation, poor practice is less visible, and as a result, an element of accountability is lost.

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The issues for care experienced young people that COVID-19 has highlighted existed before, and will continue. The challenge longer term is to try and make sure that the more positive developments that emerged during this period are not lost, and that the sector does not revert to old practices that, in some cases, were failing many young people.

This final section summarises what practices, systems and structures need to be in place in the future to help build resilience in case of a second wave or a future crisis of a similar magnitude.

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

What learning can be applied from the crisis period in the future?

The essentials What support do young people need?

• Funding to make sure that all young people have access to laptops and wi-fi • Hardship loans that can be quickly deployed

Conclusion

• Access to emotional, mental health and wellbeing support in every local area – readily accessible when young people need it the most and able to support issues around loneliness, isolation and safely making connections with others.

• Employment support that recognises the particular challenges faced by young people with care experience during a time of crisis • Grants for young people at university to support them to continue their studies and reduce the risk of homelessness

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Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Now Practices and ways of working to keep and develop • Retaining some options for online delivery based on young people’s preferences.

• Maintaining a spirit and culture of innovation – having permission to continue to adapt, test and learn.

• Demonstrating that creative practices make a fundamental contribution to young people’s wellbeing and sense of identity and should not be seen as a ‘second best’ or nice add-on.

• Flexibility for staff in their working patterns with a more person-centred approach that explored their needs and preferences.

• Work being about what you do, rather than where you are – using buildings as hubs to come together when needed.

• Using different spaces creatively in the community and outside.

• Not losing the voices of young people in campaigning for systemic change.

• Capitalise on the ‘open door’ that has emerged in some areas with increased understanding of the respective contributions of statutory support and the voluntary sector.

• Working groups for different agencies and partners to come together more consistently in every local area.

• More frequent updates and communication channels to bring ideas and challenges together and encourage collaboration.

Longer-term planning What needs to be in place if this were to happen again?

• Investment in tech for staff to enable them to work remotely effectively.

• Training and support for new processes and practices in a remote environment.

• Better understanding of staff home environments on a case-by-case basis, understanding responsibilities, pressures and what is feasible.

• Being able to manage the day to avoid back-to-back online engagement – including regular breaks and combining video calls with phone calls.

• Alternative management structures – particularly if senior leaders are having to focus on recovery, and/or take time off – junior staff can be left stranded.

• Support for staff wellbeing including regular catch ups, investment in Employee Assistance Programmes and buddying systems for more informal ‘offloading’.

• Keeping staff involved in key decisions around the crisis planning.

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Learning for funders and the Learning Programme

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream

Next steps The main benefits of bringing grantees together through a Learning Programme during this time were: • Sharing experiences from the frontline at a time when young people and organisations were working at a distance.

• The ability to share resources and not reinvent the wheel.

• Identifying opportunities for collective action based on issues that were being experienced across the four nations, and inconsistencies between different local authority areas.

The Learning Programme for the Leaving Care Funding Stream will continue to facilitate conversations between grantees as we transition to the recovery period and beyond.

This will involve considering immediate practice and operational challenges, but also thinking about how learning from this period can inform longer term changes in the sector.

The support from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation through unrestricted and flexible funding has enabled organisations to rapidly test and learn and respond to what young people need. As planned activities are unlikely to resume in the same way as before for a while, support of this nature is still required.

Organisational and financial challenges will continue, and this means also investing in structures that support resilience and lasting change. More broadly, funders need to act collaboratively and learn from this period about changes to practices and processes that have been effective.

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Participants in the Leaving Care Learning Programme to August 2020 Aquarius Action Projects

Greater Manchester Youth Network

Articulate Cultural Trust

Howard League for Penal Reform

Become

Include Youth

Big House Theatre Company

Just for Kids Law

Break

Leap Confronting Conflict

Care Experienced Young People’s Network

Leicestershire Cares

Community Law Advice Network

National Network for the Education of Care Leavers PhotoVoice

Coram

Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum

Coram Voice

Social Finance

Curious Monkey

St Christopher’s Fellowship

Derby Theatre

Voices from Care

Drive Forward Foundation

Voices of Young People in Care

Element

Who Cares? Scotland

Family Rights Group Grandparents Plus

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Kings Place 90 York Way London N1 9AG T 020 7812 3700 F 020 7812 3701 info@esmeefairbairn.org.uk www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk Registered charity 200051 @EsmeeFairbairn

Design: Steers McGillan Eves

Carefree Fostering Independent Cornwall

Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream