Dear Friend,

This month we have been celebrating the success of our work and our partners and highlighting the importance of collaboration.

It was fantastic to attend the SCVO Gathering last week and meet with many likeminded people when we shared our work on creating #Changemakers in the care experienced community. As part of the SCVO event, alongside our colleagues at Barnardo’s and CYCJ, we donned our glad rags for the Charity Awards as representatives of Inside Out, our care experienced steering group at HMPYOI Polmont. Sadly, they were pipped at the post by the very excellent Simon Community but the boys and young men of Inside Out will forever be winners in our eyes. We hope they enjoy their celebration event this week.

As lead hosts of the National Leadership Network we, and our fellow partners are supporting their efforts to recruit care experienced people aged 14+ from across Scotland who will be responsible for decision making, allocating funding and evaluating the work of the NLN. If you know anyone who might be interested, please direct them to the NLN Twitter page or email ypceleadership@thenln.org

Save the date! Yes, our National Conference will be taking place in person this year! We’re excited to reveal that the full day event will be taking place at the University of Stirling on Wednesday 23rd November. More details including speakers and booking info will be shared after the summer but for now please mark this day off in your diaries! We can’t wait to get so many of you back in one room together to share, learn and connect.

This month we have also marked the first stage of being secretariat to the newly formed Cross Party Group on Care Leavers. It was great to get so many passionate people from across the sector in one virtual space to discuss the plan for future meetings, all based around the policy priorities identified by our Care Leavers Forum. We’d love to see more of you at our next meeting, especially those with lived experience of care, so please do email jack@staf.scot to be added to the CPG mailing list.

Our focus groups and forums are taking a wee hiatus over the summer break (as I hope some of you are too) but we will be back in September with our Care Leavers Into Employment, Local Authority Manager’s Forum and Participation Practitioner's Forum followed by Supported Lodgings, Supported Carers and Implications of Continuing Care focus groups in October. Thank you to all those who’ve attended our groups so far. Your valued feedback has been shared with MSPs in our quarterly Policy and Practice Briefings and collaborative opportunities have arisen. If you’ve not yet joined one of these groups, we’d love to see some new faces there to ensure we can capture and connect as many voices of the workforce as possible.

Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate our Chair and CEO of Aberlour, SallyAnn Kelly who has received a hugely well deserved OBE for services to children and families in Scotland. For as long as I have known SallyAnn, she has never wavered in her demand to achieve the very best for young people, particularly those in our care. We look forward to continuing to work with her do ensure the outcomes for care leavers in Scotland are no different from anyone else.

Best wishes,

Jo Derrick

Staf CEO 

• The findings of the Scottish Universities Insight Institute (SUII) into Socially Just Justice was launched at the CYCJ National Youth Justice Conference last week. Check out the great video which was created with and voiced by members of Youth Just Us.
• Youth Just Us also took part in lightening talk on Inside out  and ran a workshop on rights, relationships and creativity and they were joined by Grant Trainer from Police Scotland who had lots of positive feedback to share on our work.
  
• Youth Just Us took part in CYCJ young people’s sessions on the care and justice bill and a few members also responded to the consultation directly.
  
• Ruth and Kev facilitated workshops at the Making Children's Rights Real: UNCRC,GIFREC and The Promise.
• Youth Just Us were treated to a private tour of the Yard Works Festival and the murals thanks to Gaz Mac at SWG3. 
• Youth Just Us are currently keen to recruit more members to be part of the fun so are working on designing flyers, a brand new video, and much more. If you, or someone you know is passionate about having fun, influencing change and are aged 16-25 with experience of both the care and justice systems then get in touch with Ruth.

Inside Out - Care experienced steering group at HMPYOI Polmont 

• Representatives of Inside Out attended the Scottish Charity Awards where they were shortlisted for the Pioneering Project Award. They sadly missed out but they will be having their own celebration event this week. 
• The boys and young men have been working on their second edition of the newsletter where they have been exploring creative writing and coming up with some cracking jokes, blogs and interviews. This will go out to all the children and young people currently in Polmont.
• We are continuing to form our own guidance to help care experienced boys and young men in Polmont.

You can keep up to date with Youth Just Us and Inside Out at @YJVScotland on Twitter.

The Real Toolkit, a leaving care resource by Staf, is  available here. 

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram to keep up with our progress or if you'd like to get involved please email katrina@staf.scot.

Scottish Care Leavers Forum 

The group are writing up what they hope to achieve over the next few months in relation to the policy areas they are concerned with – Finance/Education/Terminology which have been fed into the workplan for the Cross Party Group on Care Leavers. They have also started to plan the event in December, and we will start to invite people over the next few weeks and focus on the social media/engagements for this.  We have been discussing developing a module with CLD standards Scotland for care experienced to be discussed in community development/education courses – the group would love to see modules developed where care experience is spoke about in primary and secondary education too. The group have also met with Who Cares Scotland? and Aberlour to input on the Care leavers guaranteed income are planning a meeting with the  First Minister in the coming months. 

Get in touch with katrina@staf.scot if you'd like to get involved and influence change for care leavers! 

National Leadership Network
Update from NLN Development Co-ordinator, Gary Brown

• The Interim Oversight Board have led the work on a paid opportunity to be part of a group who will be responsible for decision making, allocating funding and evaluating the work of the National Leadership Network. Check our Twitter page (@ypceleadership) or email ypceleadership@thenln.org for more information.
• A draft version of a potential website has been designed by a young person. We have been asking young people about their thoughts on the need for an NLN website and most people we have spoken to think we should develop one.
• A recent meeting with young people and staff interested in the NLN highlighted issues of complex communication in the care experience community and issues around paid work for people with care experience regarding support, organisational needs being met and more.
• Interactive sessions on the NLN have been delivered to Resilience Learning Partnership and Who Cares? Scotland staff teams.
• Planning continues for national roadshow. The first 3 events will take place in Aberdeen, East Renfrewshire and Rossie. All events are being planned with partner agencies and young people.
• The NLN is now on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
• Gary Brown recently took part in a Facebook live session with Olivia Khan from South Ayrshire Champs to talk about the NLN and leadership in general.
• NLN staff continue to meet with many relevant project and organisations. Recently this has included Intandem where we were keen to know more about their work focused on the looked after at home community. We also met with Jimmy Paul to find out more about WEALL Scotland (Wellbeing Economy Alliance) and the work they do.

We are continuing to share various opportunities and experiences for young people and offer support when required.
For more information on any of the above please contact ypceleadership@thenln.org

Improving Victims Experiences of the Justice System: Deadline 5 Aug

Physical Intervention in Schools Guidance Consultation: Deadline 25 Oct

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.