Engaging with the community

The corporate family sits within the wider community and engaging members of the community in improving outcomes for looked after children and young people and care leavers will help to build capacity, and to raise public awareness.

Each of us, as individual members of the community, can make a difference to the lives of looked after children and young people and care leavers. There are many ways in which we can do this, ranging from mentoring and befriending schemes, to enabling young people to participate in work experience or even find employment. If we are involved in any organised activities for children such as sports, the arts, or volunteering, we could consider how we can involve vulnerable children and work with our local authority to provide the necessary support.

For example, if we are on parent councils in local schools or other similar committees through churches or other faith groups, we should identify looked after children and young people as a group that needs special attention and consider how the parent forum can work with the school to integrate all children into the school community.

Adults spend a lot of time transporting their children to and from clubs and other activities, taking them to visit their friends, or discussing with them their experience of school, mentoring and advising, however informally or unconsciously. Often looked after children and young people do not have the supports other children take for granted, and there is an opportunity to look beyond the traditional scope of practitioners who work with children and young people and care leavers and consider what the wider community can do to fill this gap.

It is important that councils engage effectively with local communities around services to looked after children and young people and care leavers, for example the location of residential provision, as well as how to build capacity in terms of foster carers, befrienders and other less formal supportive roles.

Work needs to be done to raise awareness within communities, and encourage parents and wider family groups to take responsibility for their children.

Communities can have negative views of the care system, and of individual children and young people who are or have been looked after. It is important that as much as possible is done to counter this negativity, whether through providing better information to the public (including school children) about what it means to be looked after and the reasons why children become looked after, or through celebrating success and demonstrating the positive impact that both services and the young people themselves can have in their local community.

The corporate family can be instrumental in raising public awareness and increasing community capacity.