New Belongings Programme

Work together to make things better

The core message of the New Belongings programme is simple: to deliver the best support and services to care leavers you must work alongside young people.

The authorities developed lots of different ways to support care leavers – you can read about these in The Story of New Belongings report – here are just some examples:

• In Hertfordshire they embedded co-production and co-produced practice standards for Personal advisers to support them to deliver a more consistent service to young people.
• In Stockport they introduced Ring Door bells to help care leavers feel safer where they lived.
• Wandsworth developed services to meet the emotional health and well-being needs of their young people.
• In Dorset care experienced Taskforce leaders shared their views and experiences about challenges to their mental health, this led to the amount of nurse support available doubling.
• Oldham developed targeted support for young parents whose children had been adopted.
• In North Yorkshire they extended leaving care support post-25 through Always Here.
• North Tyneside involved their leaving care workers to gather young people’s priorities for change.
• Coventry have developed a range of initiatives that brought people together and supported care leavers to develop relationships.

The importance of local solutions

We want the examples of work produced by the local authorities to inspire you to go on your own co-production journey. Whilst there were many great ideas we do not want other local authorities to see these as off the peg solutions to just pick up and roll out in their local areas.

The important lesson from New Belongings is that the value comes from working with young people locally to develop solutions that they feel will make the most difference to them.

Not only does this identify the changes that are relevant to care leavers in their particular area, but the process itself has benefits for the young people participating.

Making change happen through co-production

We identified 5 cornerstones to make the New Belongings approach successful:

1. Co-production
2. Senior leadership commitment
3. Resources to engage and deliver
4. Partnership working
5. Peer learning

Co-production process

We developed this triangle of young people’s involvement to reflect the work of the 8 authorities.

1. Setting expectations by asking local authorities and senior leaders to set out their commitment to co-production and involving young people from the beginning.
2. Young people’s priorities – Work with young people to identify what is important to them through an authority wide survey (Your Life Beyond Care) and by follow up work to identify their priorities for action.
3. Working together to develop and deliver action plans with suggested changes.
4. Continuously sharing progress with staff, young people and others.
5. Staff and young people jointly reviewing progress and develop further plans.

Evaluating progress

The evaluation of the programme found that the local authorities involved experienced:

• Increased funding for the leaving care service (new posts and targeted provision)
• Improved relational practice and connectivity (relationships between leaving care workers and young people, as well as improving social activities for care leavers)
• Additional opportunities and resources for care leavers (e.g. through the Local Offer, as well as education and workplace opportunities)
• A greater focus on suitable and affordable accommodation (Ring Doorbell and Guarantor scheme)
• Greater awareness of young people’s needs and views through their direct contribution (developing mechanism to listen to care leavers voices,- Task Force leaders, care leaver Champions)
• Increased co-production with young people (identifying solutions to problems, such as the Care Leaver Standard)

Keep working at it

In our final meetings with local authorities:

• 98% of participants agreed that the programme had helped their local authority listen to the views of a wider group of care leavers.
• 9 out of 10 felt that their local authority had  new ways to involve young people in decision making and service development

The New Belongings model is a successful way of working alongside care leavers – it puts care leavers’ voices and experiences at the centre of service delivery and design. All services can use some or all of the New Belongings approach to support their journey towards co-production. Hopefully the Story of New Belongings can inspire some to go on that journey

Listening and acting on young people’s voices should be at the heart of children’s social care. We encourage all services that work with care experienced young people to embed participation and co-production in service development.