Participation in Action: Children in care council members launch website

Members of Wirral’s children in care council were celebrating last month after two years of hard work culminated in the launch of a website and “welcome pack” designed for all children who enter care in the authority.

Thorough consultations and focus groups, meetings with senior staff and lengthy debates over the content and design of the resources presented enormous challenges. But the group remained unfazed and were happy to put in the hours for the benefit of their peers.

Kim, the 21-year-old chair of the council, says: “There were months where we went through ideas, spider diagrams, how it would work, how a forum could be monitored so there was no bullying and stuff like that. We consulted all young people in care in the Wirral, so it wasn’t just the views of the 20 of us in the group, but the views of everybody.”

Wirral has around 700 children in care, so gathering the views of all the children was a significant task. The group initially went to 100 children to find out what sort of information they needed, which resulted in the idea of a website.

Fiona O’Shaughnessy, head of participation and inclusion at Wirral Council, says: “Where adults sometimes want to give lots of information out, young people were saying: ‘give me short bits of information and tell me who to go to if I need to find out more’.”

The site has information on various topics, from adoption and bullying to health and leaving care.

It was important for the site to also include a section on children’s rights, as Kim explains: “A lot of young people in care don’t know what they are entitled to. Some people who are quite confident like me might just ask, but can now go on the website.” Kim also says it was important to highlight the issue of bullying because “a lot of young people in care get treated differently”.

Funding and support
O’Shaughnessy says it was important that the young people engaged with the senior management at the council to secure funding and support.

“We are very fortunate that our director has attended nearly every children in care council, which meets once a month,” she says. “The young people’s first step was to get the senior staff on board. This is important because there is a cost involved in creating the website and the packs, and there is no additional funding.

“They have learned a lot about the council’s processes and how to speak in meetings. They have also learned how we best use the resources we have got, because there is not always funding.”

But for Kim, all the challenges pale into insignificance when she thinks about what the group has achieved.

“It made me feel important, like we are actually doing something and achieving something and helping people in the process,” she says. “It has been fun but hard – it has taken a long, long time.

“It is a great achievement that it has launched now because at the beginning, it seemed an impossibility, but everyone is just made up that we have achieved this and proved that we can.”

To see the site, visit www.therightsideofcare.com.