The New Belongings Programme ran from 2019-2022 and worked with eight local authorities using the Your Life Beyond Care survey from our Bright Spots programme and the Baker Dixon self-assessment-framework to better understand what makes life good for their care leavers and how to improve the support they are offering.
Using this information the authorities worked with their young people to co-produce solutions to the issues they have identified.
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.
The above video is a presentation to colleagues at the Rees Centre by Dr Claire Baker, who describes the key components of the New Belongings approach, the key tools used, and shares examples of how authorities co-produced changes to their services based on what young people said was important to them. She also reflects on the findings from her evaluation and how these supported the development of the Programme.
N.B. As of 2024, New Belongings Plus is the updated Bright Spots offer to local authorities.