Open Forum Events are pleased to introduce to you the new Children in Care: Equality & Empowerment conference.
This event forms part of a series of highly insightful and informative meetings focusing on improving the lives of looked after children and care leavers. The conference will provide the opportunity for key stakeholders, and most importantly people with lived experience, to come together to discuss and debate the actions required to improve the lives and outcomes for young people.
There are many reasons why children and young people enter the care system, often in difficult and traumatic circumstances. Compared to their counterparts, children in care face a plethora of added issues and the challenge is to ensure that they are supported by a system committed to safeguarding the welfare and opportunities for children or young people in care. Being in the care system must not be allowed to dictate their futures and life chances must not be diminished because of the circumstances in which they find themselves.
The conference will brief delegates on the current situation within the care system and provide an update on the latest developments and thinking, guided by a programme full of expertise and experience.
The agenda has been designed to feature plenary presentations to disseminate information and share best practice, delivered by both professionals and experts by experience. Interaction and engagement will be a theme throughout the day, with time set aside for panel discussions, knowledge sharing and informal networking.
Book you place today at this CPD accredited conference and contribute to the narrative surrounding the issues facing those entering the care system and the support needed to ensure that looked after children and care leavers receive the best possible start in life and can look forward to bright futures.
The current cost of living crisis is shining a light on the challenges and inequalities care experienced young people have faced for many years.
At the same time, we are also in a time of huge opportunity with the government’s care review; the introduction of Ofsted’s separate judgement for care leavers and the adoption of care experience as a Protected Characteristic by a number of local authorities.
This session will open the day by outlining current issues and trends - using insights from the Young People’s Benchmarking Forum - and looking at reasons for optimism.
Exploring future move on for young people ready for independent living. Discussing the challenges with affordable and sustainable housing, the current bidding wars in the UK private rental market, the proposed Renters Reform Bill for May 2023 and the changes for UK Landlords. What does all this really mean for young people and their future housing?
The Youth-led Commission on Separated Children is calling on the government to provide legal guardians to all unaccompanied and separated children arriving in England and Wales. Guardian schemes exist in Scotland and Northern Ireland. They are using their lived experiences of the both the social care and immigration systems to call for much needed change. A legal guardian will be a consistent adult in their lives from start to finish and will ensure their rights are championed, they understand the processes and will also work with all the professionals around the child.
This session will examine how can staff culture influences the lives of children in care, positively or otherwise, and will provide an opportunity for reflection, sharing and development.
These are just some of the questions that will feature that seek to identify ways to facilitate a fostering of mutual respect, based on effective listening, collaboration and empowerment.
With these factors in mind, staff and carers are better placed to promote positive outcomes for children and young people in care.
Caroline is a person with lived experience and as a child spent 14 years being looked after by the system. She will use this presentation to inspire Social Workers and Young People to believe that anything is possible, no matter what the past and that all can have a positive fulfilling future.
From 2018 to 2021 there were 220,210 changes to care placements, each one a new loss and a new home for a young person to adjust to. This presentation will examine the effects of placement instability on children in care through out their journeys and in later life and will build on service reviews centred on the experience of young people, effective ways to improve matching, increase stability and stabilise young people. This will include personal reflections on matching, commissioning and service improvement through the lens of lived and learned experience.
Shilla’s research project examines care leaver parents’ experiences of parenting. She seeks to determine i) the likelihood of children of care experienced parents ending up in the system ii) the barriers to care leaver parenthood as well as the support needed to aid care leavers in this role. Shilla will share existing literature concerning the care-experienced community as well as gaps for future research.
This presentation will cover the results of a descriptive analysis of national data about residential care. The analysis aimed to improve the current understanding of who the children living in residential care placements are, what their journeys before and after entering residential care are like, and describe their outcomes later on.
An overview of inter-connecting themes and issues that impact upon the retention of Foster Carers, including the application of learning from an international partner agency; the impact of allegations against Foster Carers; the connection between recruitment and retention and the power of relationship-based practice
Sharing of our ‘Triangles model’ of co-design with care experienced young people and our learning along the way. Our Triangles programme aims to empower care-experienced young people and their frontline workers to identify ideas where we can create change in the system alongside encouraging and offering opportunities for personal development, outdoor education and creating relationships. We will highlight our approach to creating system change for young people leaving care, ideas we have funded and our learning from the past 3 years of Barnardo’s Care Journeys innovative programme- Triangles.
Pendulum Hotel & Manchester Conference Centre is the ideal solution when searching for conference venues in Manchester. Top-of-the-range conference suites, 3 star value hotel accommodation, delicious dining and friendly service are the ideal components for a successful conference or event in the heart of the city centre.
The 18 conference rooms are decked out with all the mod cons including state-of-the-art AV technology, projectors and screens, free Wi-Fi and flip charts. Our clients cover the whole spectrum and include government organisations, trade unions, large corporate companies, non-profit organisations, health and education sectors and small to medium-sized businesses.
From the get-go we strive for excellence in everything we do and our dedicated team of conference professionals go all out to make sure your conference, event or exhibition runs like clockwork.
