By Nikki Luke and Áine Kelly
Does the information you currently record about care leavers, in pathway plans and for national statistics, capture what matters to them?A new report, Success – whose definition counts? , calls for a complete rethink of how we measure success for young people leaving care – based on what care leavers themselves value.
This follows a four-year research project that we carried out for Become, the charity for children in care and young care leavers.
The voices of care leavers were at the centre of everything we did. A fantastic design group of care-experienced young adults – who chose the name ‘Future of Care’ – co-produced all the materials used in the research, helped to analyse the findings and contributed to the writing up of the project report and a journal article.
What matters to care leavers
We began the project with a series of focus groups asking care leavers from several local authorities what ‘success’ meant to them.Perhaps unsurprisingly, they defined it in terms not captured in the limited set of measures collected for the annual children looked after return. This includes data on whether young people are in employment, education or training or whether their accommodation is considered suitable.
In contrast, care leavers told us success was about doing something you enjoyed, that fitted in with your goals and was financially viable.
They also felt that whether your personal adviser thought your accommodation was ‘suitable’ was less important than whether you felt safe there and had opportunities to make it a home, for example, by putting up pictures or choosing your own furniture. A sense of stability was seen as an important part of success across all areas of life.
Valuing relationships, identity, wellbeing and everyday successes
Also, care leavers’ definitions of success emphasised a range of topics that are not captured in national statistics at all – and were not always recorded in pathway plans:- Echoing a key message of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, care leavers told us that having positive, supportive relationships – whether with friends, family or romantic partners – was a key element of success. They challenged the idea that success meant total independence, which was often seen as the ultimate goal for care leavers. Understanding the network of social and professional relationships a care leaver has is crucial to supporting resilient outcomes.
- Care leavers also talked about success in the small, everyday things - from “buying your first mop” to making a meal or turning up for appointments, where someone has struggled with these things. With this in mind, we suggest that pathway plans and celebration events should include a focus on these everyday successes.
- Authenticity and identity were important to the care leavers we spoke to. Personal advisers should talk to care leavers about the aspects of their identities that are important to them, and how these can be nurtured and developed.
- Mental health and wellbeing were seen not as a separate aspect of life but as a thread running through everything. One care leaver said: “When people come out of care they have scars, you’re in care for a reason, nobody comes out unscathed.” Professionals working with care leavers need to understand that healing is not linear: pathway plans should acknowledge the ups and downs and focus on day-to-day functionality.
As one care leaver told us: “Success isn’t a destination others impose on us. It’s a journey we define for ourselves.” Since national measures do not capture these different starting points and journeys, these should be recorded and celebrated in pathway plans.
A new way of measuring success
The Future of Care design group then worked with us to turn the responses from the first round of focus groups into a new Success Survey that can be used to prompt discussions between care leavers and personal advisers and feed into pathway plans, measuring progress and identifying support needs.As well as asking how things are going now, and in comparison to six months ago, across 13 areas of life, the survey asks how stable things are in each area.
It also provides short scenarios about care leavers’ circumstances and asks: "Which one sounds most like you?" This can be a less intimidating way to broach a topic. It also provides some concrete examples – such as the balance of good and bad days, and whether a relationship feels supportive – that can aid with discussing more abstract concepts like mental health and relationship quality.
Finally, the survey asks care leavers to identify the areas of life that are most important to them right now – a question that is not always asked.
National measures can be slow to change, but we hope that local authorities will use the learning from this project to think about what topics your pathway plans cover, and how the questions are asked.
The value of co-production
You might also want to take something from our co-production approach. As well as the involvement of the design group, an important step in the research was holding a second set of focus groups to show care leavers the Success Survey and get their feedback on what worked and what needed changing.We would encourage professionals to take a similar approach. Consultation should not be a one-off event: after gathering people’s views and analysing them, we need to go back to check that we have understood their intentions and to ensure that any outputs are an accurate and sensitive reflection of what they shared with us.
In their collective foreword, members of the Future of Care Design Group wrote: “Professionals sometimes attach labels to us, but these labels don’t reflect everything about us as people. We want professionals to recognise that success is not ‘one size fits all’. Please see us as whole people — in daily interactions, in planning services, and in measuring success.”
Nikki Luke is research fellow and Áine Kelly research officer at the Rees Centre in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. They are happy to share the survey the survey with interested local authorities - please email nikki.luke@education.ox.ac.uk for a free copy.
