Member News: Community Foster Care - Responding to our Young People’s feedback

Every year we at Community Foster Care reach out to the children and young people in our care to find out their views on how they’re finding life, what support they’re getting and how they find the care CFC are providing. It’s so important to us that the decisions we make are guided by the ideas and voices of young people and wherever possible, we want to improve their experiences and make sure they feel heard and valued.

The 2020 Young Person’s survey gave us some really positive feedback across a range of topics like life skills, relationships, safety, learning, health and community. However, we did see some changes from the previous year and some room for improvement. The pandemic has made life harder for everyone and we want to make sure that our young people continue to feel safe and supported.

The young people’s survey results in numbers:

• 100% don’t feel at risk of violence or abuse
• 100% feel they are in a safe, loving, nurturing environment
• 82% feel confident in their progress with life skills (up from 72% in 2019)
• 64% feel emotionally fine (down from 86% in 2019)
• 100% feel physically fine
• 73% feel engaged in their community
• 100% feel they have support in managing their behaviour within their community (up from 86% in 2019)
• 92% feel they know how to stay safe online
• 8% feel unsure of the risks online
• 100% feel they know how to stay safe from engaging in risky behaviour
• 27% struggle with friendships
• 27% felt engaged with their learning
• 36% felt they’ve been struggling with their learning

We decided to respond to the feedback in video format to address the steps we will be taking to improve our support offering for our fostered children, as video is that bit more accessible. Our support workers have been working on plans for practical solutions including activity days, growing our Experienced Care Squad, life skills events, creating a buddy system, an education grant and wallet sized cards complete with various support numbers.

Source:
www.communityfostercare.co.uk

---