Agenda item

To provide information to the Corporate Parenting Committee about the Brent Care Journey partnership and how it is contributing to our participation work and achieving good outcomes for children.

Anna Willow (Barnardo’s) introduced the report, which provided a summary of activities undertaken by the Brent Care Journeys Programme, key achievements in 2022, and areas for priority in the remaining three years of the partnership. She highlighted the following key points:

·         The first full co-designed project had involved a group of ten care experienced young people who had been late into care, and started with discovery about a problem that democratically people agreed on. The next phase of co-design was ideation, where the subject matter became very broad before being narrowed down and defined into a few prototypes that project members wanted to try out in the real world quickly, cheaply, and with as few risks as possible.

·         Since the first full co-design, the Programme had now done a second whole co-design phase which integrated social care staff, children and young people’s services, and young people, and worked to break down the systemic roles and barriers that existed.

·         The report explained where the programme was at three years through the 5-year partnership. Over the past 2 years, Brent Care Journeys had engaged over 200 young people.

·         Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) added that the work being done with Barnardo’s through Brent Care Journeys was not a traditional commissioned service where they were paid to deliver a service for Brent, but a different way of working with a full partnership approach. The partnership agreed they wanted to bring young people into the heart of service design to deliver projects with the voice of young people.

The Chair thanked Anna and Nigel for their introduction and invited contributions from the Committee, with the following points raised:

The Committee commended the fact that Brent Care Journeys had been able to engage 200 young people since 2020 but highlighted that, due to lockdown, it was likely there would have been some missed opportunities. They asked whether there were any ways the number of young people engaged could be expanded using provision in the community that was already available. They also wanted to know what other opportunities there were for Brent Care Journeys to partner with organisations facilitating young people to gain further skills. Nigel Chapman felt there were opportunities for Brent Care Journeys to link up to local community groups to offer activities and opportunities for young people, including career opportunities. Anna Willow agreed, advising that their role was to find different ways of doing that. Brent Care Journeys were trying to expand the way in which all parts of the borough had a sense of duty and responsibility for children leaving care. They were aware of the demands on statutory services to give Brent’s children the opportunities they deserved, and agreed that needed to be done together. Over the next year within goal setting and service planning, Brent Care Journeys could begin thinking about creating more informal partnerships with the communities they worked with.

The Committee noted that Brent Care Journeys had been able to engage young people who were not involved in CIA, and asked what it was doing differently to groups run directly by the Council. Anna Willow advised the Committee that Brent Care Journeys was very reflective in what it did, and worked with young people to get ideas about what they might do, then tested those ideas and learned from them repeatedly. When things did not work, they stopped doing them and learned from them. Now, Brent Care Journeys had created a relationships first approach and were fortunate to have time to do the work. Anna Willow highlighted that unpicking the power of authority was enticing for young people as well as being part of those deconstructed environments where things could be changed both dramatically and on a smaller scale. The Committee heard that deconstructing the power had proved challenging on occasion, as there were certain ways where it would not be appropriate to deconstruct responsibility. In working together with young people, Brent Care Journeys had to overcome some of those obstacles. For example, a potential barrier was that officers at Brent Care Journeys were employed and paid to do that work, and so had worked hard to create paid roles for young people with professional expectations in order to share that authority. 

The Committee asked whether Brent Care Journeys worked with Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASCs). Anna Willow confirmed that UASCs were the fastest growing cohort of new members, mainly boys. Brent Care Journeys had worked to understand where young people were to engage the least heard voices, as the programme existed primarily to address inequalities experienced by looked after children and care leavers. As a result, the programme had approached semi-independent providers and engaged some members there, who had then validated the space for other young people to join. There was a very organic way of working with UASCs because much of the membership came about by word of mouth. There was now a successful ‘power group’ for young people every morning, led by trained young people, where they ran therapy and art sessions known as ‘therapart’.

In response to whether members could attend the performance and exhibition that Brent Care Journeys had worked on, Anna Willow advised that the performance had culminated in October 2022 so was no longer being performed, but if Brent Care Journeys were successful in receiving money for that in the future they had learned a lot about how to do it and had some completed works that could be exhibited. Members asked that councillors be invited to any future performance.

RESOLVED:

i)              To note the report.