Issue - meetings

Representatives of the Senior In Care Council will give a presentation to the Panel.

Lisa Mukherjee, Participation Development Worker, Off the Record introduced this item and said that representatives of the Senior In Care Council and the B&NES Youth Forum would give two presentations. The presentations will be available on the Panel’s Minute Book and online as an appendix to these minutes. A summary is set out below.

Destiny, Jaz M and Jaz L from the Senior In Care Council addressed the Panel.

What we do

We are a group of young people aged 11-18 who campaign on issues effecting young people looked after in care by BANES. We’d like to tell you about the work we have been doing and some of our campaigns.

Our Approach

We use a ‘You said we did’ approach with everyone we work with. This means we give them feedback about what they are doing well and what they can do even better and then ask them to report back to us on the changes they have made. We are positive and friendly towards everyone we meet and that way they want to work with us.

SICC won Young Volunteer Group of the Year at the Chairman of Bath Awards 2016

Our Campaigns

We promote our campaigns in lots of different ways, for example creating Podcasts with Somer Valley FM.  We also attend the In Care Council Steering Group Meeting and the Corporate Parents meeting so we can tell them what we think and they can help us to make changes. We created a postcard about our group and sent it to all LAC young people.

The Pledge – we monitor the Pledge and discuss with BANES what we think they are doing well and what needs to be built on

We are working on a PSHE Curriculum for Life and have discussed our ideas with Kate Murphy (BANES Anti-Bullying and PSHE Lead).

We fed back the importance of LAC young people’s right to work experience being promoted to them, as a result Virtual Schools put on a work experience event.

We fed back to Corporate Parents about how our confidentiality was being compromised and as a result Ashley Ayre sent out a letter reminding schools of their obligation to respect our confidentiality.

We have been involved in recruitment for roles such as LAC Nurse, Deputy Safeguarding Lead and Participation Commissioner. We have looked at job descriptions, sat on interview panels and fed back to applicants.  We have even offered candidates their jobs.

We ran a creative workshop to speak to Social Work Students about what we look for in a social worker. As part of our involvement in recruitment – we carried out a consultation on what makes a good Social Worker with the JICC and BANES care leavers and created a document which is now featured on the recruitment section of the BANES website.

Podcasts

Last year we launched our Podcasts, created with Somer Valley FM, in which we:

•  Promote SICC and encourage other young people to join their local In Care Council

•  ...  view the full minutes text for item 54