23 Oct 19
Every child and young person who comes into care needs to know why and have opportunities to discuss the reasons this happened whenever they feel unclear. Our new Bright Spots Insight Paper ‘Understanding why you are in care’ explains why this is important to children and young people and shares ideas and resources for how to support them with this.
From our Bright Spots work we know that this remains a key issue for children and young people throughout their time in care and beyond – only half of 4-7 year olds in care feel that the reasons why they are in care have been fully explained and a quarter of care leaver have not had an explanation or would like to know more. A lack of knowledge about the reasons for care was associated with feeling unsettled in placement and low subjective well-being for children in care.
Services have started to develop solutions to help children understand why they are in care, from expanding life story work to workshops for social workers on how to speak about difficult issues. Read more about them in the Bright Spots Insight Paper: Understanding why you are in care.
We shared the learning from the insight paper at our peer learning seminar on the 14 October. If you want to find out more about Bright Spots work and be kept up to date with future events sign up to our Bright Spots newsletter.