Category: Publications

26 Aug 21

Last week Coram Impact and Evaluation team published the independent baseline evaluation report from our New Belongings programme.

New Belongings is a three-year programme being delivered by Coram Voice. The programme works with eight local authorities in England, supporting them to engage care leavers in service improvements using a co-production approach. With funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Segelman Trust the programme began in July 2019 and will run until July 2022.

Using a range of tools such as the Baker and Dixon self-assessment for local authorities and the Your Life Beyond Care survey for care leavers, this evaluation report provides a baseline assessment of the starting point for the eight participating local authorities. 1,258 young people completed the survey mostly during March-May 2020.

These tools will be administered again in spring 2022, allowing pre- and post- data to be compared, which will enable the final evaluation report to describe any changes the New Belongings approach contributes to improving services for care leavers in participating local authorities.

The New Belongings baseline report gives us some interesting insight into how young people felt during the beginning of the pandemic and some a key message about their lives as care leavers.

• High levels of anxiety, loneliness, low life satisfaction and lack of close friendship were as common among care leavers during this period as before the pandemic, but did not increase.
• A higher proportion in our sample felt able to cope financially and reported lower levels of stress than a pre-pandemic group of care leavers.
• Access to the internet and being able to afford smart phones also increased.

The leaving care support in the local authorities involved in New Belongings had been assessed as good or outstanding in six of the eight local authorities, with the other two judged as requires improvement.  The Baker-Dixon self-assessment mirrored Ofsted findings with those judged outstanding scoring themselves highest and those requiring improvement scoring themselves the lowest. Yet all the local authorities felt their services were ok or better. Despite this a significant proportion of care leavers in these local authorities were still struggling:

• 32% of them did not feel safe where they lived
• 29% felt unable to control the important things in their lives and
• 21% felt lonely often or always

The findings shows the need for continuous improvement in leaving care services with a renewed focus on the issues that care leavers report are important to them. It could also indicate that some of the additional support introduced during the first lockdown had a positive impact on care leavers lives.

Read the full report

17 Aug 21

Coram Voice has today (17^th August 2021) published our organisational response to the Independent Review for Children’s Social Care’s Case for Change.

The response draws on our work to give children and young people a voice in their care. Through the Bright Spots programme we have gathered their opinions on everything from frontline advocacy to research and practice improvement. Coram Voice has also been working with the Review team to give children and young people the opportunity to feed into the Review through A National Voice, the National Children in Care Council. Their views are being collated by our A National Voice ambassadors and will be published and shared with the Review team separately.

Coram Voice organisational response to the Case for Change focuses on the important role of independent advocacy in improving children’s services. It also draws on the learning from the Bright Spots Programme and what the over 15,000 children and young people who participated have reported makes their lives good.

The Review asks the core question of us all, what the purpose of children’s social care should be. We believe that the aim must be to make the lives of care experienced children and young people better, by focusing on the issues that matter most to them. To do this we need to ensure that their voices are at the heart of the care system, and as our response highlights, independent advocacy is an important part of making sure that this happens.

Download and read Coram Voice response to the Case for Change

19 Jan 21

Coram Voice has today (19 January 2021) published the report ‘Always Heard 2020’. It details information on the work done in the last year by Always Heard, the national advocacy advice helpline and safety net service for children in and leaving care in England, as well as the barriers to advocacy faced by children and young people.

Coram Voice delivers this vital service on behalf of the Department for Education.  Always Heard is the only national service that provides the ‘no child turned away’ advocacy guarantee. Every young person who contacts us looking for advocacy gets an advocate.

The coronavirus pandemic made 2020 an extraordinary and challenging year for everyone and disrupted the lives of children and young people and those who work to support them. However, it is still the case that too many children and young people are denied the local independent advocacy support they need and are entitled to.

In 2020, Always Heard:

• Provided 15900 information and advice sessions online or via our helpline service increasing understanding of young people’s rights.
• Supported 700 young people to be provided with intensive Safety Net advocacy when no one else would help.
• Signposted 8500 advice contacts or referrals to local young people’s advocacy services.

We also work to change the systemic barriers to accessing advocacy. We share the voice and experience of young people who face barriers to advocacy with their local authorities. We support and challenge local authorities to put in place the advocacy service their young people are entitled to. We also share information about barriers to advocacy with the Department for Education, Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner to help them address these.

Among the barriers to advocacy for children and young people in 2020 were:

• At least 37% of local advocacy services are unable to provide interpreters for young people who are refugees or migrants.
• 57% of local advocacy services don’t provide freephone access.
• At least 37%of advocacy services do not offer advocacy support to the full age range of children in care and care leavers (0-25).

Read the Full Report

25 Nov 20

‘What Makes Life Good, Care leavers’ Views on their Well-being’, published by Coram Voice in collaboration with The Rees Centre and released today (25 November 2020) has shown significant differences in the experience of care leavers between local authorities in England.    

It found disparity in the percentage of care leavers with low well being ranged from 14% to 44% by local authority. Similarly, in one authority, half of young people did not always feel safe in their home, in contrast to another local authority where the same was true for only one in five. 

The report is the first of its kind in examining the well being of care leavers from their perspective and enabling comparisons across local authorities by analysing 1,804 care leaver responses collected between 2017 and 2019.

Findings also showed that: 

• Care leavers did worse than the general population on a range of measures.
• There was a steep decline in well-being after young people left care.
• Care leavers who reported that they had a disability or long-term health problem were particularly vulnerable.
• Overall, although a majority of care leavers had moderate to high well-being, 30% had low well being. Our analysis identified the 10 key factors associated well-being.
• The care system can get it right. We can learn from the positive experiences of those with high well-being.
• Many young people were especially positive about the support they received from their leaving care personal advisers (PAs).

Brigid Robinson, Managing Director of Coram Voice, said: “Our What Makes Life Good report firmly puts the voices of young people leaving care centre stage by understanding from their experiences, what makes life good. Our aspirations for young people leaving care should be the same as for our own children; that they thrive and grow to become confident young adults able to find their way in the world.    

“To achieve this, we need to understand what is important to them; what they love doing, their hopes and feelings and what could make things better. What Makes Life Good does this, and through this unique insight into young care leavers’ subjective well-being, provides clear recommendations for policy and practice to make life better for young people leaving care so they can flourish into adulthood.”  

This research highlights the importance of understanding how care leavers themselves feel about their lives. Understanding the factors that can improve care leavers’ well being is essential to delivering high quality services and support, instead of basing it purely on objective measures and professional assessments such as whether care leavers are in education and employment.

Key recommendations for local authorities, guided by factors that care leavers have identified, include:  

• Improving connections, building trusting relationships and addressing loneliness 
• Providing emotional and mental health support to address stress, negativity and help care leavers feel good about their future 
• Providing money management and financial support to help care leavers cope financially 
• Improving accommodation support to help care leavers feel safe and settled in their homes 
• Identifying and supporting young people with disabilities and long-term health conditions.
• Levelling up provision so that more young people get the positive experiences we see in the best areas.
• Addressing the cliff-edge of care at 18.

The report is part of a series of reports analysing the responses of 10,000 care leavers and children in care on what makes a positive difference to their well-being. This report follows a series of recent Children’s Commissioner’s reports and comes ahead of the government’s imminent review of children’s social care. 

Full report

Brief report summary

Two page short summary