The Care Experienced Young People’s Network (YPN) is a small group of care experienced (CEP) young people, campaigning for improved support for care leavers. The YPN have been supported by a care experienced project lead to develop and realise our own ideas since March 2020. The project is funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, who gave us the freedom to shape the YPN in a way that reflects our own interests. Following a series of podcasts and a research project about the impact of COVID-19 on care leavers in 2020, this 2-year project comes to a close by bringing together our key ideas and passions in three research projects.
The motivation behind this research project was to understand how much of a say CEP have on policies which affect our lives, and what impact our input has.
This short report presents the main findings from our research into the involvement of CEP in policymaking and concludes with our thoughts on what this means for professionals working with CEP in this space. We have not named our interviewees or the organisations they work for in this report but would like to extend our thanks for their time, honesty and interest in this work.
Involving care experienced people in policymaking: an exploratory research report