Agenda item

The Panel welcomed foster carer James and his foster daughter Demi and daughter Zoe, to the meeting. The young people explained that they regularly attend the Art Café and they had received money from the Education Fun Fund to buy a sewing machine, to set up their own business embroidering cards.  They had completed an order of cards for Investing in Children and at the meeting, they presented the Chair of the Panel and the Head of Children’s Social Care with Christmas cards they had made.

Members commended the work and Councillor Quinn suggested that Demi and Zoe could consider taking orders from the Panel members for Christmas cards for 2024 which they could work on throughout the year. The Senior Partnerships Officer offered to link with James to discuss if Demi and Zoe, would like to take-up the project.

Luke and Billie-Leigh then presented highlights of the work of the Children in Care Council over the past month (for copy of presentation, see file of minutes). They updated the Panel that the Education Fun Fund has received over 150 applications to date, of which over 100 were from care experienced young people. The presentation included examples of the application forms completed by the young people themselves and case studies on how the young people have used the money which demonstrated that the fund is making a difference to the young people.

Rob Johnson, Project Manager for Investing in Children, commented on the benefits of the Education Fun Fund which was a grass roots idea by the young people and its success was helped by the support of practitioners.  Melanie Stubbs, Head of the Virtual School, commented that practitioners had listened to the young people and one of the recurring themes had been their concern at their lack of input into how pupil premium plus is spent.  The practitioners explained to the young people that pupil premium plus funding is required to be used to address the wider needs of pupils rather than being ring-fenced for individual young people.  For this reason, the Head of the Virtual School built on the idea to develop the Education Fun Fund so that young people could apply for funding to help to fulfil their ambitions. The application process is important for the young people for empowerment and to develop life skills such as money management and decision making.   

Members were heartened that the young people were asking for the amount of funding that they felt they needed, rather than the full amount and in some instances, young people were using the funding to support others less fortunate than themselves. 

Billie-Leigh reminded Panel members that they are welcome to attend all Children in Care Council meetings, not only the joint CPP/CiCC meetings, to join the conversations.