News

16th Regional Child In and Leaving Care Event

On Saturday members of SCLU and the Sheffield Children in Care Council travelled to Wakefield to the 16th Regional Children in and Leaving Care Event. At the event were children in care and care leaver groups for all around Yorkshire including Bradford, York and Leeds.

The first part of the morning was spent talking to guest speakers including Mark Riddell, the national implementation advisor for care leavers, Liz Howard from Social Worker England and Chris Thompson the children’s writer for the Children’s Commissioner. We sat in groups and we learnt about each of their roles and they asked us what life is like as a care leaver. They then formed a professional panel and then as a group we asked lots of questions such as “How can we change the stigma of care leavers” and “What are you going to do to get more care leavers’ into university”.

At lunch time there was an opportunity to talk to care leavers from other groups and to learn about their projects.

After lunch it was workshop time and we all split off into groups to do different activities. This included a singing and drumming workshop, journal making and outdoor team building activity.

Overall the day was really fun, we met lots of really nice people and we learnt a lot. It also gave us some ideas about what projects we could complete in the future and how we could make positive changes to the care system in Sheffield.