Dear Friend,

With the sun making a warm, impromptu, and welcome appearance this month it feels like spring may finally be upon us. It’s certainly been a month of optimism here at Staf as we have been safely but excitedly moving from behind our spare room/bedroom/makeshift home offices and venturing into the great outdoors.

The Staf team were delighted to present our work at the Scottish Parliament where we manned an exhibition stand; handing out information about what we do to support care leavers and the workforce and ensuring the voice of those we represent gets heard. Part of our display involved bespoke succulents, in pots featuring our values of We Listen. We Care. We Love. Representing nurture and growth and tying into the Seeds for Change initiative established by Project Return, we hope these plants will sit proudly on the desks of the many MSPs we engaged with and act as a reminder to #KeepThePromise for care leavers and the workforce. Watch our short trailer to get a taste of the week!

It was particularly heartening to have so many of our Partners and Supporters, Members and Care Leavers join us to share our voices with MSPs and to hear that keeping The Promise remains high on the government’s agenda when Deputy First Minister John Swinney spoke at our reception at the end of our week at the Parliament. Our event sponsor Paul O’Kane MSP also reiterated the Scottish Labour party’s commitment to The Promise and we were delighted to hear that our work to create a Cross Party Group on Care Leavers has been approved. More on that to follow...

John Swinney also mentioned the recently released research by CELCIS on the practice of Continuing Care in Scotland. It’s an important study which highlights some areas of great implementation but also issues around consistency and understanding of the policy and the impact this has on its delivery and uptake. Please do take some time to read and reflect on what this means for you and the young people you support and we will follow up these discussions at our forthcoming Implications of Continuing Care focus group.

Whilst some things are now back to in-person we were also pleased to deliver our online Staf Summit attended by a great many of you. With a focus on securing the financial wellbeing for care leavers our speakers and delegates engaged in great debates about the merits of policies such as a Guaranteed Income for care leavers, similar to what was recently announced in Wales. We continue to work with Aberlour and other partners to call for and deliver a pilot with and for Care leavers which given the current economic climate is, unfortunately, never more needed. To find out more about what was discussed please check out our resource page here.

This month we were also delighted to present at the National House Project conference. Many thanks to Celeste Berteau from Life Changes Trust for doing that on our behalf. We will be delivering our case studies of the Scottish Local House Projects soon but in the meantime, you can watch the brilliant Cinderella Story video created by the young people involved in the project in collaboration with Braw Talent. It really does sum up the impact this new model of housing delivery has on care leavers and the importance of relationships.

As mentioned previously, we are also very pleased to be welcoming some new members to our small but dedicated team. This week Chris Walsh starts at Throughcare and Aftercare Workforce Lead and I’m sure you’ll be hearing from him soon or meeting him at one of our focus groups. We are also delighted to announce Marie Gibson will be joining us as our Youth Justice Participation Worker who will be supporting Ruth and Kev deliver the next exciting chapter of Youth Justice Voices, and the successful candidate for our Learning, Evidence and Impact Lead will hopefully be revealed in our next newsletter.

With the first quarter of 22 coming to an end, and winter (possibly) behind us, we look to a near future where we all get a chance to have more in person get-togethers and make those all-important connections of which we’ve been deprived of for so long. We are acutely aware that COVID is still impacting just now and many of you/us are either ill or covering capacity within teams at a time of the year when we collectively are pretty exhausted and ready for a break. We choose to present the positives here at Staf but we also acknowledge that there are a great deal of challenges and some days are really hard. Until next time, Stay Safe and Well.

Best wishes,

Jo Derrick

Staf CEO 

March has been yet another productive and inspiring month for the hard-working young people of Youth Just Us with team building and planning sessions in person bringing all the fun!

We are delighted to announce Marie Gibson has accepted the part-time Youth Justice Voices’ participation worker post - thank you to everyone who took the time to apply.

We were pleased to share our work at Transforming Scotland’s Justice System conference, alongside CYCJ. One of our Youth Justice Visionaries discussed their role in influencing the national Youth Justice Policy and Action Plan for Scotland.

Inside Out, our steering group for care-experienced boys and young men in Polmont in collaboration with Barnardo’s, are continuing to concentrate their efforts on creating accessible information and guidance, based on their own experience to help other young people in Polmont. The group also continue to enjoy the social aspect of the project with regular games and team building activities.

We have exciting things planned for 2022 and are working to expand the project into a national network – so watch this space, exciting times are ahead for Youth Justice Voices!

Come and Join Us

Youth Just Us is always happy to welcome new members. If you’re aged 16-25 with experience of the care and justice systems in Scotland and want to help influence change, gain new skills and make friendships, then get in touch with ruth@staf.scot.

You can follow @YJVScotland on Twitter.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram to keep up with our progress. 

Scottish Care Leavers Forum Steering Group 

The Care Leavers Forum are raring to go and are moving to weekly meetings as there's so much to discuss!

Some members of the group attended the Staf event at the Scottish Parliament and enjoyed their first we hope of many opportunities to speak directly to those who can influence policy change. 

If you know of any young people with care experience who would like to be involved please email katrina@staf.scot 

National Leadership Network

Here is an update from Gary Brown and Lisa O’Leary who are the staff leading on the National Leadership Network (Young People with Care Experience).

With people with care experience front and centre, the National Leadership Network aims to support personal and professional development in all aspects of leadership. We are keen that people with care experience shape what the Network is, what is does and what it focuses on. We are also keen that people define what leadership means to them.

With our partners Children and Young People’s Centre for Criminal Justice (CYCJ), Columba 1400, Resilience Learning Partnership (RLP), Staf and Who Cares? Scotland, we aim to work with people of all ages while they follow their own leadership journey.

Over the last month or so we have:

· Completed a partnership agreement to work with the National Leadership Network partners

· Started working with a group of young people who will oversee the next 6 month’s activity

· Started planning for a national roadshow to engage with the care experienced community

· Started to plan for broad engagement and participation

· Met with the Champs Board Network regarding working together

· Met with many including those connected to secure care such as Starr, The Good Shepherd Centre and Scotland Excel

· Met with colleagues from Each and Every Child regarding training for the Network

· Presented at Generations Working Togethers International Conference and Collective Leadership Scotland’s Illuminating Leadership Festival

· Delivered a presentation at Life Changes Trust event – ‘All good things, leaving a legacy’.

And much more

We are currently planning our engagement with the care experience community to find out what leadership means to them and what opportunities and experiences they are looking for. We are also working with people who want to make positive change and work towards a fairer, more equal society to live and work in. If you would like to get in touch with Gary and Lisa please contact gary@thenln.org / lisa@thenln.org

Children's Care and Justice Bill - policy proposals: Deadline 22 Jun 
We will shortly be reaching out to our members and the young people we work with to collate their views and respond on their behalf. 

Prevention of Homelessness Duties: Deadline extended to 31 Mar 

Meeting since 2014, the Implications of Continuing Care focus group offers a safe place to discuss issues and practice arising from Part 11 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. The recent work of this group has discussed commissioning placements, fostering fees and payments and shared good practice from across Scotland.  

At this meeting we will be discussing the recent CELCIS research on Continuing Care in practice.