Leicestershire Cares is delighted to be a finalist for the Leaving Care award at the Children & Young People Now Awards 2020, with the awards ceremony and winners being announced on 4th March 2021.
Our submission for the CYPN Awards focused on our work with young people who are in care or who have left care (we use the term “care experience”). Leicestershire Cares provides them with the skills, confidence and experiences that can empower and support them to find lasting solutions to many of the problems they face. By offering a holistic approach to supporting them, whether that’s with their mental well-being , housing issues, employment, social isolation or speaking out about the issues affecting them to seek change. Care leavers are said to be more likely to experience limited life chances and we want to shift that situation by working with them to find opportunities to make positive changes in their lives.
Our work with care experienced young people is strengthened by our strong links to local business which mean we are very good at helping young people develop employability skills and find work as well as offer a wide range of practical support to care experienced young people. Our links with business is not a one-way relationships as our care experienced young people feed their lived experiences back into the local businesses guiding them on how they can support care experienced young people into the workplace.
We are really proud of the work we do with care experienced young people and to get shortlisted for this award recognises the innovate, agile and hard work our team has done. Our work is very young person lead, so without the energy, ideas and commitment by our young people, our work would be even harder. We are very lucky to have funders that understand that empowering young people to lead and be creative in finding their own solutions to problems is a powerful way to make change in their lives.
Jacob Brown, Voices Development Officer
The Leaving Care Award
- 1625 Independent People - Reboot West
- Children's Commissioner's Office - The IMO Podcast
- City of Wolverhampton Council - The House Project
- Leicestershire Cares - Leaving Care Team
- Lincolnshire County Council - I'm One of a Kind
- MCR Pathways
Our work with care experienced young people
- Find out about the work we do with care experienced young people: mental wellbeing, employment and training, campaigning for Care Leavers rights, building social connection.
- Sign our Promise to Care
- Hear the voices of care experienced young people in our Podcasts
- Taking Hold of Our Heritage
- For more information about our Voices project contact jacob@leicestershirecares.co.uk