Young People Leaving Care Funding:
Insights from our Learning Programme Insights Report 10 December 2021
Young People Leaving Care Funding: Insights from our Learning Programme 2
Contents Introduction 3 Esmée’s Young People Leaving Care funding
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The Learning Programme
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What have Learning Programme participants been doing
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What has the Learning Programme enabled 12 1. Reflecting on their own practice 12 2. Sharing learning and providing peer support 14 3. Drawing out collective learning 18 4. Influencing in the sector 20 Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
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Next steps
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Home
Introduction
The Leaving Care Funding Stream
The Learning Programme
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
What has the Learning Programme enabled
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Next steps
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Introduction In 2017, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation launched our Young People Leaving Care funding, open to voluntary sector organisations who are working to support care leavers. Shortly afterwards, we commissioned a Learning Programme to facilitate learning, collaboration and alliances between the funded organisations, and with Esmée ourselves. This report shares background to our Young People Leaving Care funding, as well as exploring: • What the Learning Programme entails, and how it has evolved over the past four years.
Over the past four years Esmée has learned so much from meeting and listening to people with care experience and frontline workers. We’ve also seen relationships and trust grow in real time between organisations we fund. It’s shown us the extra impact that enabling genuinely co-created learning can make on the work we fund. And we’re excited to share what we’ve done through our Learning Programme with any funders or commissioners who are thinking about a similar process. Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
We have had the privilege of working as the facilitators of the Learning Programme for four years. During this time, we’ve gone from the first steps co-designing the Programme to where we are now – with organisations sharing their learning within and beyond the programme, and working together in ways that they might not have imagined at the outset. It’s a very different style of support from other programmes and we’ve reflected on this throughout this paper. We’d like to thank all the organisations taking part in the Learning Programme for their commitment and dedication. Janet Grauberg and Louisa Thomson (Learning Programme facilitators)
• What difference the Learning Programme makes for participants. • What we (Esmée and the external Learning Partner) have learnt so far about working in this way.
Home
Introduction
The Leaving Care Funding Stream
The Learning Programme
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
What has the Learning Programme enabled
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Next steps
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Introduction
Why Young People Leaving Care? Esmée believes that more can be done across the UK to reduce the risk of young people falling off a ‘cliff edge’ of support when they leave care. Recognising that the care leaver system is complex, our Young People Leaving Care funding has focused on supporting organisations that work to ensure every young person flourishes as an adult, and on working with others to shift the system more widely. The overall goal is ambitious – to make a significant difference for care leavers so that: • More care leavers are able to develop and sustain stable supportive and fulfilling relationships.
The background
As a funder, Esmée is interested in how we can actively drive change on specific social issues over the long-term using the range of levers at our disposal. In 2020, Esmée launched a new strategy which involves providing longer-term grants as well as strategic support to organisations and initiatives. There is a greater emphasis on influencing, recognising Esmée’s position to broker alliances and convene networks around specific issues. The Young People Leaving Care funding sits within Esmée’s aim for ‘A Fairer Future’, and contributes to our impact goal of challenging and changing injustice and structural inequality.
• Young people have more say over the decisions that matter to them, their voices are listened to and acted on. • There is consistent and good quality support for young people that leads to successful transitions and independence. • The system responds quickly to messages from research, learning about good practice and the voices of young people. There is challenge when things go wrong, and sharing and spreading of what works well.1 Home
Introduction
The Leaving Care Funding Stream
There are currently 80,080 children in care in England – a number that has been rising steadily.2 The number of children leaving care annually (for example, to return home to their parents, moving into independent living, or being adopted) has been around 29,000 for the past few years.3 Young people leaving care have poorer outcomes than their peers including premature independence, a lack of support networks, poor mental health, and a higher likelihood of not progressing to further or higher education. In addition, many care leavers can experience loneliness and struggle with a sense of belonging and security. These issues became more acute during the COVID-19 pandemic.4 At the same time, ongoing pressures on the care system became even more apparent. There were numerous reports of care leavers facing increased financial hardship and reduced access to their entitlements during the crisis period of the pandemic – within a wider context of rising youth unemployment.5
80,080
1 This is based on a Theory of Change for the Funding Stream that was developed and produced in early 2019 as part of Esmée’s strategy development. 2 Based on DfE figures up to March 2020. 3 These figures refer to England only. Legislation and policy differ somewhat across the four UK nations, but the experience of young people leaving care has more similarities than differences (For example, see: The British Academy – Young People Leaving Care: A four nations perspective) 4 Covered in our first learning paper ‘Supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19: Lessons from the Leaving Care Funding Stream’. 5 For example, see: Become Charity – Recovery Plan: Children in care and care leavers
children in care in England2
The Learning Programme
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
What has the Learning Programme enabled
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Next steps
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Esmée’s Young People Leaving Care funding The funded organisations
2019
2018
2017
Articulate
Break
The Big House
Carefree Cornwall
Children and Families Across Borders
Kinship
Family Rights Group
The National Network for the Education of Care Leavers
Coram
Greater Manchester Youth Network Derby Theatre
Drive Forward Foundation
Element
Photovoice
Howard League
Leap Just For Kids Law
Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum
Curious Monkey
Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit New Belongings (Coram Voice)
Voices of Young People In Care
Social Finance
Blue Cabin
Become
Include Youth
Aquarius Action
Clan Childlaw
2020
2021
Each and Every Child (hosted by The Robertson Trust)
Just Right Scotland
South London Refugee Association
Innovation Unit
Who Cares? Scotland Women in Theatre
Leicestershire Cares St Christopher’s
Voices from Care Cymru Home
Introduction
The Leaving Care Funding Stream
The Learning Programme
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
What has the Learning Programme enabled
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Next steps
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Esmée’s Young People Leaving Care funding
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The funded organisations
organisations are funded through Esmée’s Young People Leaving Care funding.
work exclusively with care leavers, and the remainder more broadly with children and young people but have specific projects that engage care leavers.
There are also organisations developing new tools for personal advisers and young people to use, as well as researching particular ‘sticky’ issues (such as the criminalisation of young people living in children’s homes).
Income The majority of participants are charities and range from annual incomes of £89k a year to £24m and an employee headcount of two to 4856:
£10-£100k
Small
£100k-£500k Medium (lower)
£1m-£10m
£500-£1m
Medium (upper)
Large
£10m and over Major
These categories are based on the NCVO Annual Almanac classifications.
Where are they working?
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Scotland
Northern Ireland are organisations working across England or the UK, although Esmée funding might be for a project based Wales in a specific country or region
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The Leaving Care Funding Stream
Funding Grants range from £50k to £1m
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grants are for three years.
The Learning Programme
The areas that organisations are working on include the creative arts; accommodation; advocacy (for care leavers’ rights); influencing better quality statutory provision and practice; employment and life skills support; legal advice; immigration aid; and projects that help develop and sustain healthy relationships, and improved mental and emotional wellbeing.
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grants are for project funding.
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
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grants are for core or unrestricted funding.
What has the Learning Programme enabled
The organisations have a range of relationships with local authorities. Some are commissioned to deliver core services such as advice and accommodation, and others offer time-limited programmes such as arts or drama, which local authorities can purchase for groups of young people leaving care. Finally, some undertake research or campaigning that focuses on issues for care leavers that local authorities and national governments have the power to change. Many are also using the funding to support their organisational resilience and sustainability – and two were funded as small start-ups in the early stages of their journeys.
6 Two organisations are Community Interest Companies, and two are Private Limited Companies. One organisation is a charitable trust (that hosts a partnership project).
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
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The Learning Programme There has been a trend amongst large funders and foundations in recent years to commission learning and evaluation partners to account for how grants are being spent, what is being achieved, and feedback findings in real-time, to help funders with their decision-making. This Learning Programme is tangibly different. Rather than focus on collective impact and evaluation, the brief from Esmée was for a range of enabling, facilitation and mediation skills that would provide advice and critical challenge across the Young People Leaving Care funding.
The main aims of the Learning Programme were to: • Enable participants to learn from each other – sharing learning and providing peer support • Draw out collective learning on the areas that organisations are working on (in particular on healthy relationships to support successful transitions to adulthood, and consistently high standards of statutory support informed by young people’s views) • Engage with a wider group of stakeholders interested in improving outcomes for care leavers. The Learning Programme started in March 2018 with a co-design session with 13 of the initial grantees.
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The Leaving Care Funding Stream
The Learning Programme
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
The Learning Programme operates through: • Phone calls to introduce organisations to the Programme. • Opportunities for everyone to come together from across the Programme twice a year at learning days. Attending these is a requirement of the grant agreement and the only ‘compulsory’ part of the Learning Programme for organisations. Esmée gives participation payments for two staff members’ time and travel.
What has the Learning Programme enabled
• Activities in between the learning days including webinars and workshops led by participants, open and themed Zoom calls, newsletters, and prompts around action plans. • More formal activities or training commissioned from specialist external providers. • Building relationships with key stakeholders outside of the programme. • Spin off thematic groups – on employment, creativity, relationship-based practice.
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Next steps
What have Learning Programme participants been doing?
Keeping in touch
Getting together to learn, share and network…
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learning days between 2018–2021 (in-person and subsequently virtually during the pandemic).
These involved: – External speakers and guests: including New Philanthropy Capital, On Road Media, the Department for Education, Doink, Life Changes Trust, and Paul Hamlyn Foundation. – Plenaries at two separate learning days on the Independent Care Review in Scotland and Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England followed by group discussions. – Practice presentations: on storytelling, evaluation practices, communicating and influencing. – Action Learning Sets: topics included supporting young people to transition beyond the project, finding innovative ways to get referrals, addressing digital fatigue, and balancing online and faceto-face delivery. Home Introduction Introduction
The Leaving Care Funding Stream
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– Workshops led by participants – topics included working with local authorities, criminalisation in children’s homes, coproduction, conflict management, social pedagogy, employing care-experienced young people, identity formation, and translating creative practices to a virtual setting. – Action plans and postcards filled in by projects at the in-person learning days.
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Over 150 people on the Learning Programme mailing list.
Regular e-newsletters: averaging at two a month – sharing upcoming events, news, announcements in the sector and participants’ work.
Active Slack channels with participants discussing #CurrentlyWorkingOn #Help #Training #UsefulLinks.
Absolutely loved hearing from the Scottish Care Review. A true example of best practice. Really exciting. Participant
It’s great to have this back up to facilitate learning. Participant
Six feedback surveys with participants asking for their views on priorities, feedback on Learning Programme activities and ideas for the future.
It has felt so refreshing to have funders genuinely focused on learning and what emerges from dialogue with each other, rather than didactic reporting on outputs and how well stuck to the plan. Participant
It was inspiring – gave you an opportunity to look over the wall. Participant The Learning Programme
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What have Learning Programme participants been doing? Sharing learning and expertise with others
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webinars led by participants (July 2019 –October 2021)
– Just For Kids Law on Using Strategic Litigation to Achieve Change. – Articulate on their Arts, Creativity and Employment (ACE) project looking at barriers and enablers in care leavers working in the arts. – Social Finance on the Leaving Well pathway planning tool, and how best to support Personal Advisers in using it. – Photovoice on ethics and storytelling. – Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit and South London Refugee Association on care leavers with insecure immigration status (jointly with Paul Hamlyn Foundation).
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– Leicestershire Cares on working with businesses to secure employment opportunities for young people leaving care. – Coram Voice on their Bright Spots research on what matters to young people leaving care. – Just For Kids Law on campaigning and influencing around the DfE guidance for care leavers introduced in April 2020. – Coram Voice on the results from the Bright Spots survey undertaken during the first lockdown and the changes local authorities made as a result. – STAF presenting their Relationships, Empathy and Love (REAL) toolkit – an online resource for young people and professionals.
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open Zoom calls during the pandemic (March–May 2021) with an open agenda for participants to talk about issues they were grappling with. The last one of these focused on ‘emerging from lockdown’. themed Zoom calls (April–September 2020) on COVID specific issues – employing young people with care experience; working with local authorities and supporting staff online. This included two sessions for more senior staff in organisations focusing on organisational sustainability in a post-pandemic world.
I very much enjoyed the sense of being part of a funding stream which has the capacity to have an impact beyond that of each organisations’ individual work. Participant
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What have Learning Programme participants been doing
What has the Learning Programme enabled
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journal clubs (January–March 2021) experimenting with a professional development model that involves reviewing evidence and personal action planning. We discussed Deepr’s Human Connection framework, Youth Endowment Fund’s work on engaging young people through the pandemic, and Become’s Spotlight Enquiry.
I’m delighted that there are set aside days and times to connect and learn with others that are on the funding stream… it really makes you feel more connected to the Esmée family. Participant
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What have Learning Programme participants been doing? Developing their knowledge
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individuals trained by Thempra in 2020 (this included Esmée paying for social workers to attend). individuals attended Against Violence and Abuse (AVA) Digital Safeguarding training.
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organisations received consultancy support through Esmée’s Funding Plus offer, which included support with strategy development, impact and evaluation, governance, communications and staff mental health and wellbeing.
Thematic working: Creative organisations on the Learning Programme individuals from participant organisations funded to attend Sound Delivery’s ‘Being the Story’ event in Spring 2019. individuals taking part in Most Significant Change training provided by the Centre for Youth Impact in late 2021.
There are eight arts and cultural organisations on the Learning Programme that design and deliver opportunities and outlets for creative interests and talents, and others that include creative practices as a key element in their projects. Creative practices are hugely beneficial across a range of outcomes for careexperienced young people (for example, wellbeing, confidence, identity). They provide spaces for young people to explore issues through different art forms, and work in a way that often contrasts to the other interactions that care-experienced young people have with other professionals in their lives.
We brought the creative organisations on the Learning Programme together to explore: • The innovative work taking place – digging deeper into the ways creative projects work and how these practices support care-experienced young people. • Existing evidence about the impact of creative practices on outcomes for care-experienced young people. The intention is now to develop: • A framework that articulates the value that comes from creative practices for care-experienced young people. • Actions for the workforce in the culture and care sectors to support social workers to be more confident using arts-based practices, and to develop the skills and experiences of artistic practitioners to work with care-experienced young people. The next steps will involve further developing the arguments for the importance of creative practices, leading to a collective call for action.
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The Leaving Care Funding Stream
The Learning Programme
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
What has the Learning Programme enabled
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Next steps
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What have Learning Programme participants been doing? Involving Young People in the Learning Programme In early 2020, the Care-Experienced Young People’s Network (YPN) was launched as part of the Learning Programme. Participants fed into the design of the recruitment process and promoted the opportunity with young people they work with. Ten young people have been supported by a careexperienced project lead to develop and realise their own ideas over an 18 month period. The original intention was for the YPN to help shape priorities and agree campaigning actions with the Learning Programme, ensuring it was grounded in young people’s voices. The timing of the YPN launch at the start of the pandemic took it in a different direction – very much guided by the YPN members themselves. Overall, the YPN have been campaigning for improved support for care leavers.
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In 2020, the YPN focused their activities on researching the impact of lockdown on care leavers and creating content that would aid care-experienced people to cope during the pandemic. They produced: • A series of podcasts on the experiences of care leavers around education, housing and mental health. • A review of key findings on the impact of COVID on care leavers. • An active twitter feed including hosting the monthly #CareConvos discussions. • In 2021, the YPN have been working on three research projects: • Policy making: How involved are careexperienced young people (CEYP) in policy decision-making and what impact does their involvement have? • Relationships: How does being careexperienced impact your personal and professional relationships? • Housing: What are the barriers to CEYP in finding and maintaining stable housing?
The Leaving Care The LearningThe Learning Funding Stream Programme Programme
These projects involved primary research with many organisations on the Learning Programme as well as reaching a wider pool of professionals and CEYP. In Care Leavers Week 2021, the YPN launched their housing campaign resource for contributions and encouraged people to share what they would tell their younger selves about getting their first home.
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
What has the Learning Programme enabled
Listen to the YPN’s podcast
Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Next steps
What has the Learning Programme enabled? The Young People Leaving Care funding represented a different approach for Esmée. We wanted to understand: • What participants do with the learning they gather from others • If it results in a change back in their organisations • If they do anything differently as a result
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1. Reflecting on their own practice Participants have highlighted how engaging with other organisations on the Learning Programme has supported reflection on their own work. During the pandemic, participants particularly welcomed conversations with their peers about working online and how to ensure that young people remained engaged.
Examples include:
They also valued conversations on relationship-based practice and the centrality of young people’s voices and agency – these discussions have inspired them to incorporate refreshed approaches into their own project delivery and organisational practices.
• Women in Theatre were inspired by hearing Photovoice talk about giving young people cameras as a way of displaying the trust they have in participants.
Specific training sessions and skills sharing have also prompted participants to challenge themselves to think differently about their work.
• Lifelong Links (Family Rights Group) prompted St Christopher’s to have conversations about commitments to young people after they move on to live independently which were aided by being able to cite concrete examples from another organisation.
• Photovoice embedded many of the techniques from the Doink creative evaluation session and noticed that many of their participants are now more involved in and excited about evaluation. • St Christopher’s reviewed their reducing criminalisation policy and training around this for staff who start with the organisation after engaging with Howard League.
Home Introduction Introduction The Leaving Care The Leaving Care The LearningThe Learning What have Learning What have Programme Learning Programme What has the What Learning has the Learning Funding Stream Funding Stream Programme Programme participants participants been doing been doing ProgrammeProgramme enabled enabled
Some organisations have articulated how the Learning Programme has inspired them to grow and be more ambitious. Leicestershire Cares’ journey around taking a bolder role in influencing policy illustrates this. Articulate (a small charity based in Scotland) have also shared how the learning programme gave them the capacity to broaden their horizons – engaging with the Scottish Care Review, fundraising for their own building and developing a clearer five-year organisational strategy.
I am fairly reflective anyway, but the programme has put new learning my way and various meetings and mailouts encourage me to reflect and learn, and keep seeing our practice through a critical framework. Participant
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 1. Reflecting on their own practice Case study
St Christopher’s – changing practices around young people’s stories At one of the learning days in 2018, On Road Media led a session with participants on supporting young people to tell their story and shared a practical checklist on how to handle media requests. This had a profound effect on one of St Christopher’s participation workers who felt the session gave her the tools and language to push back with requests for young people to be involved in media events and give them the space to confidently think about the opportunities being presented. What was your main takeaway from the session? Within our organisation I support young people to share their stories to help shift understanding and shape practice at all levels. Young people express that this helps them in a variety of ways – feeling valued, making sense of themselves, developing confidence at relating with unfamiliar people and a sense of contributing to a better society for future children in care.
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The Leaving Care Funding Stream
Despite knowing the benefits I had fallen into a trap of protecting young people from a situation where they are forced to tell the story others want them to tell. I realised by acting as gatekeepers to opportunities to tell their stories we were keeping young people from what could be a powerful and transformative experience if done well. The session helped me remember how these stories are not just stories they are people’s lives. How did you use the tools On Road Media provided? The checklist gave us a useful framework to help young people find out exactly what they were being asked to take part in. We shared this with the adults that support them too and they had a framework to build conversations around and reflect with someone they trust on whether or not this is something they want to do. We have used it across the organisation – it has meant we can ask young people to lead on how they want their stories to be told. It has been a good tool for us as
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professionals to check in together about why we want a young person to tell this story and ensure that we are going to approach it for the right reasons and in the right way before we even get to the point of reaching out to young people. What have the young people you work with done differently?
person referred to the tool when talking to a local authority participation worker and asked them to state really clearly why they wanted their involvement in an activity and then asked why, if they value it would they not provide a payment. That young person said the tool really helped them feel in control but also that it was legitimate to raise.
I have shared the tool with young people who in the past have done work for their children in care council or local authority. They were so impressed and it really helped them see their worth. One young
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
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What has the Learning Programme enabled?
2. Sharing learning and providing peer support The ripple effects from the Learning Programme may not always be obvious or consistently shared back with the facilitators. The groupings below provide a flavour of what sharing learning and peer support looks like in practice – although it is by no means exhaustive.
Micro collaborations
Connecting with others
These are largely following up after a learning day or webinar – sharing particular tools or approaches mentioned in the sessions. Examples include:
Many different types of organisations are involved with supporting care leavers. The Learning Progamme helps facilitate connections between organisations that are not from the same sector (for example, immigration and the arts). Participants regularly report the benefit of hearing about other people’s work. Sometimes these led to deeper partnerships, whereas for others, it was an opportunity to step aside from the day to day and engage with others facing similar challenges.
• Leap shared their Theory of Change; Carefree Cornwall their young people’s participation model and Family Rights Group their social connections tool which allows workers to map the strengths of existing family relationships • St Christopher’s recommended courses that they had found beneficial on the care and protection of unaccompanied asylum seeking children. • GMIAU shared specialist resources with CFAB to support at training session they were running for social workers at Community Care Live. • Social Finance and St Christopher’s shared their experiences of working with a particular local authority and some of the challenges they had both seen with pathway planning.
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The Learning Programme
We learn so much from hearing from others about what they are working on and you can’t plan for what you learn just by being sat next to each other.
These events are great on lots of levels – learning, knowledge of other organisations’ work, dissemination of our own work. The networking opportunities have been particularly good for us. We’ve made a number of contacts through these days that have contributed significantly to our work.
It’s completely invaluable to have access to warm contacts at lots of similar organisations to share ideas without formal partnerships. Building these contacts is time consuming, so to have a bank of them already there working on similar things is just fantastic.
I am going to follow up with potential collaborations – possible training on legal rights for children and young people. Build more links with others about designing projects. (Post learning day action plan)
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 2. Sharing learning and providing peer support Case study
Howard League and making the most of Learning Programme networking opportunities Howard League saw some obvious benefits in the Learning Programme from the start – their project relied on speaking to residential providers and other organisations in the space of children and care. They were optimistic that there would be opportunities to network, learn from other organisations as well as disseminating their findings into the criminalisation of children and young people in residential settings. Their collaborations have included: • Drive Forward Foundation: they came to a Howard League event which lead to Drive Forward Foundation’s young people’s policy group becoming interested in criminalisation. Howard League came to one of their meetings, and ended up joining forces to present to a Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) meeting pushing for a pan-London protocol.
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• Just For Kids Law: Howard League already had a relationship with them prior to the Learning Programme but they continued their discussions and during this period producing a legal guide for representing looked after young people at police stations. • St Christopher’s: Howard League interviewed several of their Head Office staff and visited different residential homes as part of their research on child criminal exploitation. • Break: Howard League focused on Norfolk to understand how multiagency working could help prevent unnecessary criminalisation.
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What have Learning Programme participants been doing
In terms of benefits to the other organisations, I’d say the two key benefits were providing them with an opportunity to share good practice and a chance to talk about and reflect on the work they were doing to prevent the unnecessary criminalisation of children in care.
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 2. Sharing learning and providing peer support Supporting each other’s work There are examples of participants acting as a supportive community, inviting others to their events, and advertising when they need help with a particular piece of work. • The arts projects have been increasingly collaborative as a group: – Articulate, Howard League, Just for Kids Law and Element all went to see The Big House’s Bullet Reloaded production. – Curious Monkey, The Big House, Leicestershire Cares and Articulate all ran sessions at Derby Theatre’s Culture Cares Conference. – Photovoice ran a session at Curious Monkey’s Care about Care event in 2020 about their photo advocacy and storytelling methods. This also provided an opportunity for their participants to engage with theatre.
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• Voices for Care wanted to speak to participants who had experience of Staying Put arrangements to help them learn about the When I am Ready approach being used in Wales. • Photovoice have tapped into support from Blue Cabin to help scope their approach to the resources they are producing as part of their projects. • Organisations at different stages of their grants have also shared ideas around aspects of their journey – for example, those who were part of the first wave of grants talking about progression from their projects, or sustaining work at the end of a funding period.
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Skills and practice sharing
Partnership working
The participant-led webinars and workshops in the previous section are the main ways that this has happened. Other examples include:
There have been examples over the past four years of organisations forming closer partnerships through working together on a specific project or campaign.
• Social Finance made their Leaving Well tool available to other participants. They engaged with St Christopher’s to learn more about innovating ways of gathering views and experiences of care-experienced children and young people.
• Leap have trained eleven staff in Break’s children’s homes in their conflict management approach.
• Articulate received help from a number of organisations with creating job specifications and tightening up employment policies.
• Just For Kids Law are working with The Big House to enable their staff to advocate for care leavers. • The two case studies on Leicestershire Cares and Howard League illustrate examples of partnership working.
• St Christopher’s delivered a session to the Howard League sharing young people’s views of residential care. They also shared what matters to young people in these homes with Social Finance to help with the Leaving Well tool.
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 2. Sharing learning and providing peer support Case study
Carefree Cornwall sharing practice Carefree Cornwall were one of the first organisations on the Programme. To begin with they weren’t sure what value the Learning Programme would add. Over time, this shifted considerably… What were your initial reactions in hearing about the Learning Programme? I was a bit hesitant in case it wasn’t useful, and I’d just be going because it was a condition of the funding. I admit I was very cynical early on. What were the first meetings like as part of the Learning Programme?
What changed and helped shift this? As the Learning Programme evolved, it became easier to be honest about what we were all finding difficult. I could see the advantage of both giving and receiving support from other organisations working with care leavers. I think that was down to relationships and getting to know people through the learning days. That takes time to build. All the sessions were well facilitated too. It became like a regular conference – people doing the same sort of work, but from different perspectives and having good arguments at points.
We traipsed up to London and I felt we were all eyeing each other up out of the corner of our eyes. We were on our best behaviour, wanting to show Esmée that we’re really good at what we do, and putting on our best show in front of the funder.
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How have you worked with other organisations on the programme? STAF got in touch with us last year – we’d met in a few breakout sessions at learning days. They were running an online event for their members who work in rural settings and wanted us to share how we work in a rural local authority. It was online and we talked about our campaign on transport for care leavers and the pros and cons of rurality during a pandemic. I’ve stolen loads of ideas off other people. We’ve drifted off a bit recently due to the sheer volume of work, but we’re looking forward to when there are face-to-face meetings as part of the Learning Programme again.
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What has the Learning Programme enabled?
3. Drawing out collective learning Our role as facilitators has also involved ‘holding’ a set of common themes and issues that we revisit throughout the different learning activities.
These include: What are the characteristics of practice that helps us build good relationships with children and young people? Enabling more care leavers to develop and sustain stable, supportive and fulfilling relationships will help make a difference over the longer term. Workshop discussions and the Thempra social pedagogy training has opened many participants’ eyes to this approach and how it can be applied to their own projects. STAF co-produced a toolkit on working with young people in a relationship-based way with an Advisory Group of young people and professionals from Scottish local authorities. They shared the toolkit with other participants in a webinar in November 2021, and it could form the basis of similar work in other UK nations. There are ongoing discussions to share the wealth of insight that exists on what helps to build and sustain positive relationships and what can get in the way.
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How can we better listen and act on the views of children and young people?
Navigating and achieving in the current local authority funding and operational context
Young people need to have more of a say over the decisions that matter to them, their voices are listened to and acted on. Participants have shared examples of how young people influence their work.
Changing the care system means engaging with government at different levels – to influence policy, but also incorporate practices and projects that support care leavers to flourish.
This includes:
• Participants have shared their experiences of working with local authorities – from encouraging referrals from social workers, to finding ways to share learning and engage with different departments beyond Leaving Care teams.
• Being embedded in organisational delivery: Voices from Care have ten volunteers who are care-experienced and co-created materials with them to raise awareness of WIAR. Carefree Cornwall train young people to deliver participation programmes and 30% of their staff are care-experienced. • Engaged in governance and policy development: Voices from Care have young trustees and an advisory group; Drive Forward Foundation have a policy group for young people; Social Finance have young people on their advisory board; GMYN have a youth panel across the boroughs they work in; Break have a Speak Up Forum across their organisation.
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• There have been many practical tips shared with the cohort, including the importance of knowing about the local offer, designing work that complements what local authorities are doing, and building relationships at different levels.
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 3. Drawing out collective learning
What has the Learning Programme enabled? 4. Influencing in the sector
4. Influencing in the sector Understanding, capturing and communicating the impact of our work
Influencing has been a key thread from the outset, starting with discussions at learning days to support organisations with influencing and communication strategies. As the Learning Programme has developed, discrete areas of collective action are beginning to emerge.
The care system needs to respond quickly to messages from research, learning about good practice – challenging when things go wrong and sharing and spreading what works well. • Participants have explored how to make sure that evaluation is proportionate and useful to support learning and development of their projects as well as understanding the difference they are making for young people. • There is a strong desire across the programme to explore creative practices in evaluation and ‘asking the right questions’ in ways that are less onerous or potentially disruptive of project activities. Are we measuring what matters to young people? What drives our decisions about what to measure? What approaches have worked well?
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These have often been in response to wider issues and spotting opportunities, while respecting that many organisations on the programme are also part of other networks. For example, in February 2020 a webinar took place on care leavers with insecure immigration status jointly hosted with Paul Hamlyn Foundation that brought together organisations to discuss how to support Local Authorities in identifying young people with insecure immigration status, connecting them to good legal advice and supporting them on their pathways to citizenship, and how to raise the profile of this issue with local and national government. Targeted influencing work has also been taking place on employment and the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 4. Influencing in the sector
Collective action on employment for care-experienced young people In 2020, organisations on the Learning Programme came together to talk about supporting care leavers into employment against the backdrop of the pandemic where there were well documented challenges around accessing education and training remotely as well as rising youth unemployment rates. This has now evolved into in-depth work with local authorities and influencing the system to support better routes for care leavers into employment.
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To begin with, this led to a campaign with Catch 22, The Children’s Society and others to highlight the need to ‘Keep Care Leavers Digitally Connected’ based on experiences during lockdown. This was based on a survey with responses from 11 local authorities and six voluntary sector organisations, covering over 6000 care leavers. The survey highlighted gaps in the Government’s distribution of laptops to young people in the care system and contributed to an extension of the Department for Education’s laptop scheme, and to The Children’s Society adopting digital exclusion as one of its ongoing campaign themes. We then teamed up with the National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum to raise the profile of care leaver employment and are still working together.
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• In January 2021 there was a ministerial roundtable, attended by the Minister for Children at the DfE (Vicky Ford), showcasing the support offered by two participants: Drive Forward Foundation and Leicestershire Cares. The roundtable highlighted the ways in which the Kickstart scheme was not working for care leavers, which the National Leaving Care Adviser (Mark Riddell) agreed to pick up with DWP. It also highlighted the mental health challenges faced by many young people leaving care, which became a theme for Catch 22’s National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum (comprising 110 local authorities). • In February 2021, a peer learning programme was launched for 10 local authorities interested in sharing practice, jointly hosted with the Catch 22 National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum. This has heard contributions from the Care Leaver Covenant, as well as practice examples from participants: Drive Forward Foundation and Leicestershire Cares.
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
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• In August 2021, we presented early findings from the peer learning programme to Ofsted inspectors. The aim of this is to help spread the word that Ofsted are interested in care leaver employment and that local authorities then give it more attention as a result. Through the partnership with Catch 22 we have also influenced the National House Project who are funded by DfE to develop a standard format for local authority Care Leaver Local Offers. The standard form now includes a section for local VCS organisations to provide information about employment and other services so that the Local Authority and young people leaving care are aware of what’s on offer.
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 4. Influencing in the sector Case study
Leicestershire Cares and the impact of influencing Leicestershire Cares have been active participants in the Learning Programme and the care leaver employment work in particular. They have: • Presented at the ministerial roundtable sharing their experiences of working with ‘care-experienced young people to address their barriers to meaningful and sustainable employment • Presented at the APPG for Looked After Children and Care Leavers evidence session • Delivered workshops to local authorities across the country speaking about how they developed care-experienced communities and connected care leavers to the business community
They also partnered with another participant, Drive Forward Foundation, to write to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care about raising awareness of the Review which led to a virtual meeting with the Chair attended by young people involved with both organisations. They gave feedback directly on the Review’s Case for Change. As a medium sized regional charity, these opportunities have given Leicestershire Cares a chance to present their work at a national level. Accessing these wider networks is something they had found more challenging in the past.
Leicestershire Cares have identified three main benefits: 1. Time to reflect on their work Resources are always an issue so the Learning Programme was like having our own policy and development department. It enabled us to reflect, learn and sit at the policy making table with confidence. 2. Having a role in campaigning for lasting change which has also helped them attract new donors. It was empowering to think our reflections and learning on our practice could be fed into national policy arena. We always seek to do more than just deal with immediate
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issues and in the case of the care system there is a huge need for systemic change. The learning programme enabled us to channel our learning into relevant policy discussions. 3. The space to build lasting relationships with young people. The young people who have participated have seen change is possible and their voices and lived experience is important. It has given us a ‘voice’… We also want to continue to explore more creative ways we can work with young people so their voices are heard, for example arts, social media, podcasts, film and video.
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What has the Learning Programme enabled? 4. Influencing in the sector
Independent Review of Children’s Social Care In January 2021, an Independent Review of Children’s Social Care was launched looking at the needs, experiences and outcomes of children supported by the care system in England and what is needed to make a real difference. The review has a central big question: How do we ensure that children grow up in loving, stable and safe families and, where that is not possible, care provides the same foundations?
Throughout 2021, the Review has involved a call for advice; engagement with people with care experience; engagement with the workforce; and publishing a case for change for consultation. At the June 2021 virtual learning day, we invited speakers from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care to present their work so far. Participants then broke into discussion groups to discuss four key themes: love, stability, safety and young people’s voices identifying practices that the system needs to stop; practices that make the most difference and should be prioritised in the system before presenting their top choices to all attendees. The Case for Change, published in the summer of 2021 said relatively little about care leavers and we wanted to take up the challenge of ‘looking at the
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stars rather than staring at the lightbulb’, which had been put to us at the June learning day, and put forward an aspirational vision for leaving care, drawing on what we’ve learnt through the discussions on the Learning Programme and beyond.
On the day, Graphic Change captured the discussions visually. see next page
In the autumn of 2021, Become planned a process of engagement with the young people they were working with to reflect on the current system, dream about what a good experience would look like, and start to design its key features through a project called ‘Sky’s the Limit’. They agreed to share the resources with other participants to enable them to undertake similar engagement work with young people leaving care. Become will submit their work, and any additional materials from other participants, into a submission and discussion with the Care Review.
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Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far The Learning Programme operates with a set of shared ground rules about honesty and openness, and a commitment from participants to take time away from the day-to-day to reflect and share. Engagement levels with the Learning Programme are high. From an early stage, participants were willing to lead sessions, and embrace the opportunity to think outside their organisations and learn from others. This is particularly pertinent for delivery and operational staff who often have fewer opportunities to network across the sector (compared with more senior strategic staff).
In three of the feedback surveys with participants we asked to what extent learning days had helped with the following:
94% felt the days were useful for supporting collective action
85% said they were useful for learning about other organisations
71% valued the days for reflecting on own learning
Percentages are based on the number of respondents rating either ‘4’ or ‘5’ in terms of usefulness, with ‘5’ being the highest score Home Introduction Introduction
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Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Learning about design The tone of the Learning Programme plays a fundamental role in shifting the power balance in the relationship between funder and funding recipient. While running the Learning Programme is a team effort between the learning partner and Esmée staff, having external facilitators provides some distance and a safe space to collaborate. Funders are present, but not directing activities. Organisations funded through Young People Leaving Care funding actively support each other, are generous with their knowledge, rather than being in direct competition. They also have the opportunity to lead and be in control of learning. Home
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Through the evolution of the Learning Programme, we know that: It takes time, resources and energy: relationships do not develop overnight, and it has taken nearly five years to get to this point. A lot of facilitation and nudging is required to help people follow up on the connections they have made. The temptation after learning days can be to ‘go back to the day job’ and not follow up on ideas and actions. Action plans, regular updates via email and Slack have all helped address this.
Variety is key: we have learnt that collective learning works best when it involves a range of different formats – mixing face-toface engagement (when this was possible prior to the pandemic), with online opportunities, and regular updates in between. The pandemic meant that the Learning Programme created additional opportunities for participants to connect – the take up of these (particularly in the early months of lockdown) would not have been so high without the groundwork of sharing and collaborating that was seeded in the early years of the Learning Programme.
Learning activities can have different functions: including creating the conditions for practical problem solving and sharing challenges together; formal activities and training to develop knowledge and skills; as well as informal activities to support sharing information and building a network between projects. This creates a powerful combination of tangible external expertise, and ongoing opportunities to access a range of organisations working on similar issues and/or in similar contexts. The Learning Programme
What have Learning Programme participants been doing
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Collective action takes time and trust: the collective action projects grew out of both the longevity of the programme and the trust that had developed between participants over time. These side projects have been more successful where other organisations were commissioned to lead the work. In essence, the Learning Programme sparked an idea, and facilitated the space to develop it – but its execution then drew on broader skillsets and expertise. We have found it harder to encourage participants to lead their own collective action projects (despite funding being available for this), which is largely due to time and capacity. Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
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Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far Learning about design We have also learned a lot about how to engage individuals:
The fact that the Leaving Care Funding Stream has grown from 21 in 2018 to 37 in 2021 has necessitated constant reflection on the design of the Learning Programme and how we are meeting the needs of a diverse pool of participants.
We also know that people’s capacity and willingness to engage can ebb and flow – there are some grantees who we do not hear from as regularly. However, beyond the learning days (which participants are paid to attend), participation is optional, and we try to create different types of engagement that might appeal in different ways.
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What have Learning Programme participants been doing
Purposeful – in order to encourage organisations to want to put time into participating, rather than feel they have to because their funding requires it. Collaborative – creating space where learning is shared.
Whist there have been a few individuals from organisations who have been consistently present at all the learning days, it is more normal for there to be different staff attending each time, along with new joiners to the programme. Some activities and discussions risk feeling repetitive to those who have been involved for longer – we try to mitigate this by actively inviting organisations to prepare and lead sessions, but also keeping a mix of external speakers and making the most of the connections that happen in between the points where all participants come together. Home
Overall, we feel that learning on the programme has to be:
Flexible – with multiple ways to engage.
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Running a Learning Programme: key principles and lessons so far
Learning for Esmée as a funder One of the aims of the Learning Programme has been for Esmée to reflect on our own learning from having a more focused funding stream with a learning programme attached. Renaisi have facilitated two sessions with the Esmée team to dedicate time to questions such as: • What is different as a result of the learning programme? • What do Esmée staff do differently? • What are the wider benefits (and challenges) for Esmée in working in this way?
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The main reflections are:
Impact on Esmée
Relationships with funded organisations
• The Learning Programme has helped Esmée take steps towards using its influencing powers and helped the Foundation understand where it could have a voice. This was a factor in the new strategy’s more explicit focus on how Esmée can use other tools beyond funding.
• Funding managers feel they know the organisations funded through the Young People Leaving Care funding stream better. They see them more regularly at Learning Programme sessions, and participants tend to get in contact more regularly.
• Esmée has changed the way it recruits to new positions, working with one of the funding stream participants – Drive Forward Foundation.
• Funding managers have a good understanding of what participants are working on, the challenges they face on a day-to-day level and their overall progress, which has aided decision-making when it comes to continuation funding. • Funding managers have been able to signpost participants to other support or Funding Plus, drawing on what they hear through this increased engagement.
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• Including young people’s voices in the Learning Programme helped ground Esmée in the importance of this more widely. This is something that is now being increasingly integrated into decision-making in the Foundation. • Trustees have been more confident to speak about issues in the care sector drawing on the experiences of participants on the Learning Programme. • The Learning Programme has helped Esmée get closer to organisations in the sector, to understand their contexts, and to external issues that influence the care system.
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Next steps We know that the care system will not change overnight. All the organisations funded through Young People Leaving Care funding are focused on Esmée’s long-term, shared goal: to ensure every young person flourishes as an adult.
As the Learning Programme enters its fifth year, our aspirations are to increasingly look beyond the Funding Stream and engage with wider stakeholders:
The organisations funded, alongside young people in and leaving care every day, are entirely focused on their outcomes. The Learning Programme was not set up to analyse or interrogate those outcomes as this would potentially take time and energy away from the organisations’ main work. Instead, we wanted to give them the tools to enrich their practice. We wanted the Learning Programme to add energy and resources through additional connections, relationships, and the power of reflection.
• Continue to identify and generate opportunities for collective action.
• Focus more on how we harness the insights from across the Young People Leaving Care funding and explore the role we can play in contributing to lasting change in the sector.
Alongside this, we are increasingly thinking about the future of the Learning Programme. If we stepped away, would participants continue to network and support each other? We are likely to focus less on large learning events, but instead fund different kinds of spaces for participants to maintain connections and peer learning.
• Commission additional pieces of work that help move on sticky issues in the sector. • Support and share promising practice – for example: around the role of the arts in the lives of young people with care experience. • Share more practice highlights and case studies to spotlight examples that others in the sector could benefit from or could be scaled or replicated.
We have shared our approach in this paper, taking stock and articulating what a Learning Programme has contributed in bringing together organisations in a potentially powerful and deliberately generous space.
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Author Louisa Thomson Renaisi Associate
Kings Place 90 York Way London N1 9AG T 020 7812 3700 communications@esmeefairbairn.org.uk www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk Registered charity 200051 @EsmeeFairbairn