Why did Coventry decide to develop Ask Me What Matters locally?
Coventry joined the Ask Me What Matters (AMWM) project because it aligns with the principles of Coventry Family Valued, the practice approach that underpins work with children, young people and families across the city. Coventry aspires to work in partnership with children and young people and recognises the importance of ensuring their voices shape service development and improvement. AMWM was seen as an opportunity to strengthen this approach by providing real-time insight into what matters most to children and young people and by creating additional opportunities to listen, learn and act on their feedback.
The project builds on existing initiatives, including All About Me, regular participation in the Bright Spots Programme and the city-wide One Big Voice survey. It also supports Coventry’s strategic pledges around safety, well-being, relationships and opportunities, helping to evidence progress towards priorities such as strengthening loving relationships and increasing safe accommodation for care leavers. AMWM fits well with ongoing work to improve the language used in children’s records and other areas of practice, ensuring that children’s experiences and perspectives are better understood and reflected in service development.
How have Coventry involved children and young people?
Young people were involved at the start of the work. Workshops brought together care‑experienced young people including unaccompanied asylum‑seeking children to identify the themes and questions that mattered most to them. Follow‑up sessions with the Voices and Little Voices groups enabled young people to review and refine these ideas. Their involvement widened further at the Care Leaver Awards, where a co‑designed stall allowed more young people to test draft themes and share broader views.
These ideas are now going to be put through a final review process with young people to ensure they are the most relevant ones for young people aged over 18 (Coventry will pilot the AMWM approach with the leaving care services initially).
What question areas have been chosen?
In the first phase of work, young people selected well-being areas that reflect what genuinely matters in their daily lives and relationships. They prioritised communication and feeling listened to, education and future aspirations, understanding their own story, practical life skills, and culture, identity and friendships. They also highlighted loneliness and support networks, access to records, mental health and how adults recognise when they’re struggling, wider independence skills, and understanding their rights and the local offer.
In total, after the initial phase of work, there were 23 questions for children in care and 19 for care leavers.
Coventry is clear that conversations must be centred on what matters to the child, rejecting tick‑box practice and form‑driven interactions, while acknowledging the tension between capturing useful data and protecting relational practice.
How is it working in practice?
Progress has been slower than originally anticipated and, as time went on, Coventry recognised that the project’s initial scope had become too broad and was no longer sufficiently connected to the views and experiences of young people. In addition, it was recognised that for children in care, considerable developments had already been made to ensure that what matters to them most was being captured and reflected in their plans, through All About Me, and their needs being tracked through Valuing Care. Reflecting on feedback and learning from the work to date, partners agreed to scale back the original ambition and refocus activity where it could add the most value.
As a result, the project has been reoriented to focus on care leavers, with AMWM questions due to be incorporated into pathway planning processes. This provides a more direct and meaningful way of capturing young people’s experiences and using their feedback to inform service development. While the project has evolved from its original design, this has helped ensure it remains aligned with its core purpose of listening to young people and responding to what they say. There continues to be commitment across services to embedding this more targeted approach and using the learning to strengthen practice and improve outcomes for care leavers.
Coventry has ensured that the voices of children in care captured through AMWM have supported other initiatives, such as the development of the Practice Principles.
What’s next for Coventry and Ask Me What Matters?
There is a renewed focus on working with a small group of care-experienced young people to refine the final questions to be included within the pathway plan. Once this is complete, the questions will be rolled out. It is intended that young people will continue to have a role analysing the data and to inform the actions that are taken as a result.
A key learning is that implementation is messy, non‑linear and iterative. All agree that original timescales were unrealistic. In Coventry, success depends on aligning AMWM with existing practice, keeping relationships at the centre and resisting over‑complication, while staying alert to the risks of over‑designing systems or delaying progress in pursuit of perfect alignment.