Agenda item

Young People and Barnardos

To receive feedback on the work our young people have been doing including:

 Performance Report

Young Inspectors

Health and Wellbeing

Fostering and Adoption Panels

What LINX Have Been Doing

LINX gave feedback from the presentation attached as to what they had been doing since the last meeting.  More information regarding the Narey's Review was received, which is a focus group of the Office of the Children's Commissioner and 13 young people attended a meeting on 21 December 2015 where issues raised were fed into a National report on residential care.  Issues arising were around more support required for moving into independent living and transport – being transported in vehicles that clearly belonged to a children's home.  Once the report had been compiled, LINX would feedback to the Board.

The Children's Rights Alliance for England project had been extended and recommendations should come out in June/July and funding was from Comic Relief.

Young Inspectors

More Young Inspectors training had been undertaken on a residential weekend away.  Young people who were trained were helping new recruits undertake training.  Kristal, Beth and Gavin are heavily involved with the Inspection programme and enjoyed it as they got to meet new people and young people who lived in the homes they were inspecting, welcomed their involvement also.

Following on from the visits, young people detailed the action points, which they put in a report and sent to staff.  A revisit is then undertaken.  Currently they have a new visit planned for January and three in March which are all revisits, however, it may not be the same young people revisiting.

CPB Performance Report

The young people stated there were a number of positives from the report attached and that Diane Booth was due to visit a LINX meeting in March to answer any queries on the report. 

With regards the statement that CLA are 21 times more likely to be involved with YOT, it would be useful to invite someone along to a Board meeting to see what is being done to reduce this number.

Action:  YOT to be invited to a future Board meeting.

Susan Towers commented that they had worked closely with YOT Prevention Officers and felt it had helped in their settings.  CC Prynn asked what LCC had in place with the YOT Service for CLA.

Action:  Tony Morrissey to follow this up and provide further information to the Board.

Health and Wellbeing

LINX led the Board through an activity, where CC Brown carried lots of boxes with emotions on them whilst answering questions as attached.  The aim was to show how young people felt when having to make decisions and carry all the emotional baggage around with them at the same time.

Louise Burton informed the meeting that there was a full redesign in respect to mental health for children and young people.  Workshops had been designed and LCC Youth Council had been involved with particular pieces of work and CLA had been a focus.  CC Prynn asked that Kate Baggaley and Louise talk outside of the meeting to involve LINX in further work around this.

Fostering and Adoption

The attached activity was taken from Ofsted's State of Nation Report December 2015.

Six members of LINX met with the Adoption and Fostering Panel in October and following that some panellists had changed the way they asked questions in light of what young people had said.  A list of questions that young people shared with the panel is attached for perusal.

The results from the flipchart activity on how young people can be involved with fostering and adoption recruitment is also attached.

The Board offered a huge thanks to LINX for the detailed feedback on what they had been involved with since the last meeting.