Minutes:
The Chair welcomed Rebecca, Billie-Leigh and Lauren to the meeting, representing the Children in Care Council.
Lauren delivered a speech on behalf of Luke in which he spoke of his admiration for the foster carer training facilitated by the young people of the Children in Care Council and how their input has been a force for positive change. Luke commented that the impact of the lived experiences of children and young people themselves help foster carers understand how important quality of care is to a young person’s future development.
Luke also referred to the experience of coming into care and the significance of this event in a young person’s life. He highlighted his concerns regarding worries that children and young people have regarding being judged simply because they are looked after and he spoke of his commitment to continue to strive to combat negative perceptions of children and young people looked after.
The young people then led the Panel on an exercise which forms part of the foster carer training. During the exercise, one of the young people shared a real life account of the day a child came into care. In the account, the child was allowed to take one item from the family home to their foster home. Panel members discussed how they would feel if they were a child in this situation and how difficult it would be to decide which item to choose.
The young people then spoke about a project that they would like to launch, with the support of the Panel. They explained they would like to create care packs to be distributed to children and young people when they first become looked after. The packs would be age-appropriate and would include small tokens which would be relevant to the individual young person, to provide them with reassurance that they are supported. The young people explained the packs would be particularly useful when emergency protection measures are required. Supporting the suggestion, officers commented on the practical processes in place for those entering care and how changes are often implemented through feedback from the Children in Care Council, for example, the work undertaken to improve wi-fi in children’s homes. The Strategic Manager for Looked After and Permanence agreed to investigate how the project could be progressed. The Panel expressed their support and requested that officers look into whether contributions from Members’ neighbourhood budgets could be used to fund the project.