Positive Destinations?

One To Grow On: Part 1

In just over a week’s time, I’m looking forward to meeting with our team — a mix of service design, strategic impact and young people themselves — for a development day that we’re tentatively calling our Here and Now day. We’re working with a couple of Local Authorities to think about the fact that by the time care leavers — or care-experienced people, as I prefer to refer to them — are aged 19 to 21, they’re much less likely to be in education, employment or training.

This seems like a good thing to focus on. The Government asks all Local Authorities in England to count and report on how many care leavers in that age group are in employment, education or training. While these statistics are important, we want to look beyond this.

For me, the key principle for a fulfilled life for those leaving care is to have something meaningful going on during the their days that means they can look forward with hope and purpose.

Meet Julia

Julia is 19, she’s been in care since before she was ten. And now she’s a mum herself. She’s not in employment, education, or training. During my brief cup of tea with her, she’s really clear that what she wants for the next couple of years is to focus on her baby. She doesn’t want the same start in life for the baby that she felt she had, so her focus is on being a mum. If councils only focus on reporting statistics, which is so often the case, then what I call ‘the statistics machine’ can put a negative slant on her choice.

She won’t be in employment, education or training (also known as EET, one of the metrics government prioritises) and hers was a ‘teenage pregnancy’. But if it’s what Julia wants right now and if the meaningful role she wants is as a mum — with all of the challenge and learning that will involve — well until she says differently, it’s good enough for me.

If care-experienced young people do have something happening during their daytime to ensure they can look forward with hope, then it’s a predictor of stronger outcomes to come.

‘Positive destinations’

At least three issues arise immediately with the focus on statistics. Firstly our care-experienced 19 to 21 year-olds are clear that education, employment and training are not the only categories that count. What about travelling, volunteering, or giving your all to being a parent? Secondly, even if you are classed as being ‘EET’ that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing something you regard as meaningful or something that helps you look forward to your future. Thirdly, as always, the way that the data is collected can sometimes distort or submerge the stories underneath.

So, to better understand what counts, we’re listening to young people’s priorities and using the term ‘positive destinations’, while at the same time we’re scratching our heads about also needing to speak the same language as the government departments that require these statistics-based reports. And on a more systemic level, we’re trying to decode another set of statistics that doesn’t really tell us whether this group is content with their day-to-day story.

The starting point has to be to uphold the notion of a ‘good life’ and to not let it be crushed by a whole swarm of other measurements.

So why focus on this ‘headline metric’ for 19 to 21 year-olds instead? Because we have to start somewhere. And, to restate it, the key principle here is a proposition that trying to work with experts who have been in care and their own capabilities, so that they have something meaningful going on with their days and weeks is as good a place to start as any?

What we’re doing

We’re aiming to work on three levels with our partner Local Authorities.

Firstly, the good folk at Dartington are going to help us think about today’s 14-year-olds who are in care, and the tectonic plates of the ‘system’ that might need to shift. Because we understand that whatever we do — especially if it’s something new and different, and even if it has real impact — if it doesn’t fit with the current ecosystem then sooner or later one of them has to give. And it’s unlikely to be the ecosystem.

Secondly, we’re using service design principles to look at what it’s like when you’ve been in care and you move on into independence. The insistence on placing care-experienced experts at the centre and utilising a beginners’ willingness to challenge currently unassailable truths is appealing.

And thirdly, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and go meet those 19 to 21 year-olds who have been in care and don’t feel their current provision or focus is meaningful and forward facing. And that’s what the Here and Now planning day will kick off.

It’s very early days. Work so far has focused on the critical theme of relationships. We know we need to establish the right type of relationship with the Local Authority (the corporate parent) that seeks ways to collaborate that are different from what we’re used to. This needs to lead to a shared vision and the best possibility to do something interesting. To help us achieve this, we’ve been recruiting a core team where the single most important factor is to seek people who are great at relationships, not transactions. Because throughout my career, good and meaningful relationships are what young people — backed up by researchers and academics — have continually said makes the biggest difference to their experience of care. It’s the relationships which are the golden thread.

My instinct is that many of the key design facets of working with those 19 to 21 year-olds will be ‘old fashioned’. Recruit the right people. Give them the space, platform and autonomy to build relationships and take decisions. Use digital where we can — but especially to make the ‘under the bonnet’ stuff as efficient as possible. And remain rooted in the fact that people need people.

That’s just part of what’s going on. Lots to be inspired by, lots to ponder while we try to build the next generation of social care in the UK.

Richard is an Assistant Director in the Barnardo’s Strategic Impact Team, responsible for a programme of work to deliver better outcomes for more care-experienced children and young people.

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