Ellie Seed, Senior Project Worker, Children in
Care Council (CICC), provided the Children in Care Council
update. Ellie informed the Panel that
the CICC had recently been involved in the following matters:
- Young People had delivered training
for foster carers which had involved 19 foster carers and was very
successful. Moving forward, the training will be delivered by young
people every 2 months.
- The topic of recent Children in Care
Council meetings had been independent living with some young people
feeling better prepared for independent living than
others. Ellie reported that this piece
of work is ongoing.
- A small number of young people had
recently reported negative experiences of entering the care system;
further work will take place to gain young people’s views and
feedback on their experiences, which would then be discussed with
social work teams.
- A successful fostering event was
held for the under 10s, and further work will be undertaken to
ascertain the views of these younger looked after children.
- A fundraising event was held at the
Methodist Church in Durham, organised by young people, which raised
£150.
- Links with the Regional CICC
continue and young people will run a workshop at their national
event on 3rd November.
- Two young people had been involved
in refurbishing the Chester le Street contact centre and this had
been a very positive experience. The
young people would like to roll this work out to refurbish more
contact centres, and they are asking for funding towards this, as
there is a limited budget available.
Members discussed whether financial assistance could be provided to
the CICC from their individual budgets to contribute towards
refurbishing contact centres. Officers
agreed to investigate whether corporate funding would be
available.
- The CICC host two Corporate
Parenting Panel meetings per year and the next meeting is scheduled for Monday 24 October
at 5.30 pm at the Methodist Church, North Road, Durham. The Chairman encouraged members to attend this
meeting and the Senior Partnership Officer agreed to recirculate
information on this to the Panel.
The Chairman agreed to consider the following
additional items of business: