Leicestershire Cares leaving care work has fed into the Bright lights and warm relationships: SCALING THE IMPACT OF SUPPORT FOR CARE LEAVERS INTO SUSTAINABLE CAREERS report.
Bright Light is a partnership pilot project between Catch22 and The Children’s Society, supporting 16-25 year old care-experienced people to find sustainable careers via jobs, apprenticeships and higher education. The research and development underpinning the report was developed by Deepr on behalf of Catch22. The report itself has been jointly authored by both organisations.
Catch22, a UK-based charity and social business, and Deepr, a social innovation and design studio, came together to gain a deep understanding of a key social issue - how care experienced young people access meaningful, sustainable work and training.
Care leavers are far less likely to be in education, employment or training (EET) than those in the general population (NSPCC 2021). According to research carried out by the Rees Centre, U. Oxford, leaving care takes a toll on young people’s mental wellbeing, with a higher percentage of care leavers reporting low wellbeing than children in care. And we’ve known for some time that stable housing, wellbeing and other factors support care leavers to achieve good outcomes in education and employment (Wade and Dixon 2006).
The report is based mainly on the qualitative research developed from a mixture of 23 depth interviews and four workshops with a range of internal experts at Catch22 and The Children’s Society, 10 care-experienced people, local authorities, employers and external service experts at the Department of Health, Leicestershire Cares and Sheffield Futures. The findings have been further validated against the evaluation research carried out by NFPSynergy on behalf of Bright Light’s funder, The Clothworkers’ Foundation, for which we are very grateful.
The report came up with 3 recommendations:
RECOMMENDATION 1: The relational and holistic (R&H) approach
RECOMMENDATION 2: End-to-end employer support
RECOMMENDATION 3: Gather more data
Read the full Bright lights and warm relationships: SCALING THE IMPACT OF SUPPORT FOR CARE LEAVERS INTO SUSTAINABLE CAREERS report
Our work with care experienced young people
- Find out about the work we do with care experienced young people: mental wellbeing, employment and training, campaigning for Care Leavers rights, building social connection.
- Promise to Care Toolkit
- Sign our Promise to Care
- Hear the voices of care experienced young people in our Podcasts
- Taking Hold of Our Heritage project. Get a digital download of the book
- Become a mentor to a care experienced young person
For more information about our work with care experienced young people, please contact Jacob Brown: jacob@leicestershirecares.co.uk