As November has come to an end, it also marks the end of the first ever National Care Leavers Month! Previously only a week of celebrations, this month has seen organisations, Parliamentarians and the public come together to celebrate and empower our care leavers across the nation. Below are some of the incredible activities our teams at NYAS have been involved with!
Madlug pop-up Experience & podcast
We started the month in Leeds at the Madlug pop-up experience to record a special episode of the Relational Social Work Podcast. NYAS has partnered with Madlug, an award-winning bag brand that helps give dignity to children in care, as part of our own My Things Matter campaign to end the use of binbags for children and young people moving in between care placements. Local authorities can sign up to our campaign pledge and then receive free travel bags from Madlug to give out to any child or young person in care who is moving homes. So far, over 70 local authorities have signed up to our campaign and over 10,000 bags have been provided via the campaign and Madlug!
During the podcast, we joined Dave Linton, the founder of Madlug, to talk about our partnership and some of the campaign successes to date. The podcast also featured speakers from The Care Leaders, Coventry City Council’s Lifelong Links Service and two incredible live performances from Leigh and Scarlet from the National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum and Care to Dance. It was a fantastic way to start National Care Leavers Month and our episode is available from wherever you get your podcasts or listen now.
Care-experience as a protected characteristic Parliamentary Roundtable
We were thrilled to be invited to Terry Galloway’s Parliamentary Roundtable in the House of Lords on making care-experience a protected characteristic. Care-experienced children, young people and adults are much more likely to face discrimination and disadvantages than their peers but are not protected against this under The Equality Act 2010, as other groups are with protected characteristics.
Terry, one of our Trustees, has been campaigning across the UK for changes to the law at local and national level. So far, his campaigning has led to over 120 councils across the UK choosing to treat care-experience as if it is a protected characteristic. During the roundtable we heard from local authorities, politicians and care-experienced young people on why this campaign is so important for our care-experienced community and the positive impacts it has already had in areas that have started treating care-experience as a protected characteristic.
Beyond the Bill: Improving support for care leavers
At the end of November, we attended a Barnardo’s panel event in the Houses of Parliament, focused on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and how this can improve the support and lives of care leavers. The panel was made up of truly inspirational speakers, including BBC presenter Ashley John-Baptiste, CEO of Barnardo’s Lynn Perry MBE, care leavers Tia and Jake, MP and Minister for Children and Families Josh McAlister OBE, MP and Chair of the Education Committee Helen Hayes and Stockport Council Leader Mark Roberts.
It was great to hear from Tia and Jake, who told their care-leavers’ stories with such strength and determination. Their voices were so inspiring and highlighted exactly why improved support is needed in mental health, housing and all areas of care-experienced individuals’ lives.
Hearing from MPs Josh Mcallister and Helen Hayes was extremely insightful and demonstrated a real desire to improve the lives of care leavers across the country. Emphasis was made on making sure all care leavers experience the same as each other with no discrepancies based on locality, so no care leaver experiences a worse experience than another just because of where they are based. Hearing from Josh McAllister MP was reassuring and showed how he deeply cares about improving the experiences of care leavers across the country.
