EQUAL - What Makes the Difference

Description

Background

An estimated 5% of care leavers go to university compared with 40% of all young people. In 2004/05, 43% of care leavers had one or more GCSE/GNVQs compared with the national average of 95%.

Aims

What Makes The Difference (WMTD) is a project that aims to understand and help overcome the issues that lead to poor education, training and employment outcomes for many looked after young people in England. During the period of the project (July 2005 – December 2007) the partnership will pilot and evidence best practice across a range of leaving care services – alongside national and trans-national partners.

Objectives

To influence national policy and practice through the re-engineering of the education, training and employment support process for those in and leaving public care (15-24+ years), enabling them to reach their full potential.

To Design, develop and test an accredited preparation programme for carers and workers (foster, residential, supported accommodation, Leaving Care PAs & social workers and specialist workers) and to pilot that programme across participating authorities and organisations.

To identify models of Service User Involvement best practice and develop these across partner authorities.

To design, develop and test models for peer mentoring/support, mentoring and advocacy within participating authorities and organisations.

To design, develop and test models of education support/mentoring for care leavers across participating authorities.

To test the impact of individual tuition funding on educational outcomes for care leavers.

To develop models that increase work experience and employment opportunities for care leavers.

To identify employment best practice for care leavers and evaluate impact on outcomes.

Target Groups

Young people aged 15+ to 24.

Round

2

Round 1 to Round 2

This Development Partnership was not involved in Round one

Lead partner

Rainer (The Royal Philanthropic Society Incorporating the Rainer Foundation)
www.raineronline.org

Core partners

A National Voice, Blackburn and Darwen Borough Council, Department for Education and Skills (DFES), Gloucestershire County Council, HM Prison Service, Learning & Skills Council London East, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, National Children's Bureau, National Leaving Care Advisory Group (nlcas), National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum, Prince's Trust (London, Park Square East), Rainer Surrey 16 Plus Service, Social Exclusion Unit, Social Work Research and Development Unit, The Fostering Network, The Frank Buttle Trust, The Thomas Coram Research Institute, The Who Cares? Trust, Wandsworth Independent Living Scheme

Contact

Kevin Wood, Rainer (The Royal Philanthropic Society Incorporating the Rainer Foundation),

End-dates

Action 2: 1 July 2007
Action 3: 31 December 2007

Equal theme

Facilitating access

Beneficiaries

Other
Total beneficiaries: 40 Local Authorities

Achievements

Improvement will be evidenced via research initiatives the use of national and project agreed indicators (based upon current national target indicators) as well as evaluation via care leavers involved in the project and other partners (national and trans-national) via specific research.
The Development of an effective project with the ethos of bringing all partners together – with care leavers fully empowered and at the centre of the work – and using a solution focussed approach to define, develop and implement sustainable excellence in leaving care practice.

The creation of an effective partnership drawn from all sectors – national and local government, and the voluntary sector.

An evidence and research base drawn from around 40 local authorities providing services to care leavers in England.

A effective model for working with 40 local authorities to improve the education, training and employment prospects of young people in and leaving care.

Intended impact/ sustainability

To influence national policy and practice through the re-engineering of the education, training and employment support process for those in and leaving public care (15-24+ years), enabling them to reach their full potential.

Is this information correct?

Report an error

Equal - Digital Repository

What Makes the Difference

Partnership information