Using care experience as a force for good
Cameron Forester
Friday, November 6, 2015
I recently read an illuminating opinion piece by “pro-voice” activist Aspen Baker. It opens with the line: “Great social movements often have one thing in common: they are created by people with the courage to talk openly about their lives and experiences.” In the article, Baker argues that people who have lived through a certain experience should be acknowledged as experts on the issue.
Using service user feedback to help shape service design and delivery is not a novel idea. As consumers of products and users of services, we’ve all been giving customer feedback and rating our experiences on the scale of 1 to 5 for decades. So, when it comes to asking for feedback from service users, why is the care sector lagging so far behind others? In her article, Baker points out that one major barrier is stigma – many people shy away from telling stigmatised stories and many more from listening to them. The stigma that care-experienced children have faced historically could certainly be a factor here.
?In a long overdue move, policy makers are beginning to invite and to listen to feedback from care leavers. Throughout the UK, organisations are starting to acknowledge the value to the sector of the thoughts, feelings and opinions of care-experienced contributors. For example, last year Regional Foster Placements published a Panel Member Guide stating that their panels would contain “an independent person with direct experience of foster care”. I myself served on a couple of Independent Fostering Panels for Foster Care Associates Scotland in 2013. It’s great to see that including care leavers on fostering panels is increasingly being seen as good practice.??
For the most part, it’s the third sector really leading the charge in championing care experience as a force for public good. It was great to see the perspectives of care-experienced people presented so clearly to policy makers in Access All Areas, a report that was produced earlier this year by a coalition of charities including the Princes Trust, Barnardo’s, the Who Cares? Trust and the Care Leavers Association. The report collated the views of a number of care-experienced people about exactly what services are and are not working for them, and what can be done to improve these services.
?At the Rees Foundation, we’re using feedback gathered at our care leaver networking events to formulate good practice documents. We’ve also collaborated with a dozen care-experienced adults from a diverse range of backgrounds to create Living with Strangers, a learning resource for professionals whose work may bring them into contact with looked-after children or young people and adults with care experience. All proceeds from sales go directly into a crisis fund for care-experienced people who’ve been severely let down by the system.??
While it’s undoubtedly an exciting time to be working in this sector, witnessing the impact that people’s first-hand experiences are having on policy and procedure, I can’t help but wonder why something so simple and important is taking so long to become standard practice?
Cameron Forester is a care leaver working for care-leaver charity The Rees Foundation
