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On 2 June 2010, the Care Leavers' Association ran an event in Manchester for young people in and leaving care from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.
The event was part of the Speaking Out project, which aims to look at the issues that these young people face within the care system; to raise awareness of young peoples' views and to make recommendations for positive change.
Speaking Out was attended by more than 80 people. The majority of those who attended were young people from the care system. The CLA aims to make this project as young-person-led as possible and so a steering group of young people was recruited early on to oversee the project. The Speaking Out event was facilitated using the 'Open Space' participation technique, which allowed young people to shape the agenda of the day themselves.During the event a whole range of issues were raised and discussed, ranging from foster care placements to age assessments. Each group came up with a series of recommendations that they thought would tackle the problems discussed. At the end of the day, all delegates voted for the the recommendations that they thought were the most important.
The Top Five Recommendations were:
- To provide better connections to young peoples' communities and culture
- To extend the age limit for support
- To provide honest and open services
- To provide a better standard of information about the support available to young people
- That all young people should be entitled to the same level of support.
You can read the full event report and set of recommendations by downloading it here: Speaking Out Event Report
Since the event a steering group of young people have been meeting regularly to make sure that the issues from the event are raised with policy makers.
The project has created a Speaking Out Policy Brief for all professionals working in this field.
You can also download the full Speaking Out Project Final Report which gives an update on all the Speaking Out work.
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