Why did Surrey decide to develop Ask Me What Matters locally?
Surrey chose to take part in Ask Me What Matters (AMWM) because it built naturally on their strong participation infrastructure and their commitment to embedding children and young people’s voices in decision‑making. Through Surrey Youth Voice, they already had well‑established participation groups, dedicated workers for children in care and care leavers, and clear mechanisms (such as Action Cards) for turning young people’s feedback into change. Strategically, the project had senior sponsorship and strong support from systems leads, who identified a window for integrating AMWM into the IT system.
Surrey also saw clear links with other priorities, including their focus on loneliness, bullying and mental health highlighted through their local Bright Spots findings, and their successful bid for the National House Project. Together, these factors made AMWM a timely and well‑aligned opportunity to strengthen how they gather and act on well-being insights from their care experienced children and young people.
How have Surrey involved their children and young people?
Children and young people were involved through a wide range of participation routes, including two dedicated workshops (one with care leavers and one with older children in care), regular participation groups, a care leaver event, one‑to‑one conversations, text‑message engagement and through reviewing the 200+ Bright Spots responses. In total, Surrey engaged around 30 young people directly through participation activity, with further input via surveys and ongoing group discussions.
What question areas have been chosen?
Young people were clear that lots of the well-being indicators mattered and should be included in AMWM. Their priorities were explored with the Participation Champions network, where both young people and professionals emphasised that the relationship with the worker mattered far more than the exact wording of questions. Young people said they shared most openly when questions were asked naturally within a trusted relationship.
Staff feedback, gathered through a simple survey and workshops, raised concerns about the number of areas to cover, prompting further discussion with young people to confirm priorities. Both groups agreed that structured questions should act as prompts for deeper, relational conversations rather than a checklist, with tools like sliding scales helping balance meaningful dialogue with the need for consistent data.
Surrey ultimately used the Bright Spots wording for most of their questions, enabling regular comparisons between Bright Spots findings and AMWM data. The final set of 11 questions is split across care and pathway planning, with several questions asked to all children and young people. Both groups are asked about their happiness yesterday, whether they feel worried or anxious, their safety online and at home, and whether they have a good friend or a trusted adult. Children in care are additionally asked how happy they feel with their life overall and whether they get help from an adult when they worry. Care leavers, through Pathway Planning, are asked about feeling safe in their neighbourhood, how anxious they felt yesterday, and how positive they feel about their future.
How is it working in practice?
Surrey’s initial focus was on collecting structured AMWM data. An IT-system change opportunity arose i.e. agreement for data fields to be modified. This deadline drove the decision to prioritise getting questions into Care and Pathway Plans quickly, with the understanding that deeper work on how questions should be asked, and how they shape conversations, would follow once recording and data‑collection reporting processes were in place. Although there were early plans to test the questions with Participation Champions or a small number of teams, the local authority opted for a full roll‑out instead.
AMWM questions are now embedded in six‑monthly care and pathway plan review meetings, and optionally can also be explored during regular visits with young people, shared with health, education and social care professionals as prompts. AMWM questions have been embedded in care and pathway plans since July 2025, and the performance intelligence team has developed a dashboard to share and analyse the data. The dataset can be filtered by service, team, worker and by key cohorts including gender, age, ethnicity, placement type and location, period of care, disability and UASC status. They can track individual responses over time. A new snapshot view presents all questions on a single page using a colour gradient from most to least positive responses.
Data is gathered through the six‑monthly care and pathway plan cycle. In the initial roll out period a high proportion of ‘No’ responses (around 40% for some questions) were recorded. Work to explore this with practitioners was undertaken, with expectations that this will reduce once wider communications go live. A dashboard filter can now removes ‘not recorded’ responses. There has been further work to include reason options for non-response e.g. child too young; not the right time to ask the child etc.
Joint work with Coram Voice has compared Surrey Bright Spots local findings with AMWM data. Thematic findings (e.g. on emotional health; on safety) from AMWM are already being shared with senior governance forums e.g. presentation to the Corporate Parenting Board. Wider local authority partners are starting to draw on AMWM data, including comparisons between disabled and non‑disabled young people. Insights also feed into participation groups, where young people can use the findings to raise Action Cards on behalf of their peers.
What’s next for Surrey and Ask Me What Matters?
Surrey have asked practitioners (via a short survey) to reflect on how they use the Ask Me What Matters questions in their conversations with young people; what works well, what young people are telling them, what contributes to ‘not recorded’ responses, and what support would help deepen these conversations. Learning on understanding what helps practitioners bring AMWM into conversations, how naturally the questions fit into real‑life practice, and how young people respond when asked the questions they said matter most will support continued development of the work. Separately, a communications plan outlining the AMWM journey and next steps has been developed.
Surrey is next focused on developing AMWM-specific resources. Their priority has been embedding the question in their case recording system (LiquidLogic) and allowing staff to build confidence through use before designing training. Surrey have contributed to the AMWM video being coordinated by Coram Voice, with eight children and young people recording their experiences. The film will be shared across Surrey and incorporated into user perspective training courses.