West Sussex

Participation, Advocacy and Rights for Looked After Young People

Looked After Children are a key recipient of this local authority’s Children’s Services, and are already well equipped to inform service provision. This project worked specifically with Looked After Children, drawing on their experience to develop methodologies for engaging young people in the care system in service provision, and identifying barriers and strategies to overcome any issues.

Professional advocates from the Children’s Society Participation Advocacy and Rights project helped to build on their best practice and provide innovative approaches to participation. Looked after young people, aged 17 and over, mentored younger children in care through interview panels, consultation and the training of social workers and members of The Children's Society. 

What they learned

Be clear, be representative and get people on side early on:

• Common understanding of goals needed between partners
• Awareness of equal opportunities and representation
• Need to work with ‘yes’ people.

Use a multitude of channels to connect with young people:

• Letters were sent to young people from the Director of Children’s Services to underline the importance of the project to the Council’s decision makers
• The use of drama, social networking, photography, film and music to plan and develop projects engaged young people.

Invest for the benefit of all

• Employing young as training consultants gave them permission to pass on their skills and knowledge and made them feel valued
• Investing in young people brought benefits for the authority as well as the young people themselves
• Joint working with partners in East Sussex and Brighton and Hove added value to strategic direction.

Translate council process and language to deliver a positive experience

• Translating bureaucracy: a focus group of young people provided ‘translations’ of official documents for young people
• The production of a film, The Real Tracy Beaker
• Involving young people in participatory budgeting
• Identifying that the support of foster carers is crucial to the success of the project
• Understanding the difficulties of corporate parenting.
• Maintaining good communications with young people is vital.

Reach out consistently and connect on young people’s terms

• West Sussex has made it common practice to involve young people and to ensure that they are viewed as customers
• They used film and magazines to help disseminate the results of the project
• The Beacon project fed into the longer term Children in Care Council agenda.

Spread the load – involve people for sustainability

• In West Sussex, they involved a mix of staff and volunteers in their work, to avoid over-reliance on individuals.

Find out about the authority’s ongoing good practice at www.westsussex.gov.uk