Outreach and widening participation activities help to raise the aspirations and attainment of care experienced young people (CEYP) and encourage them to consider higher education.
Identifying CEYP
One of the most challenging things may be finding young people to attend your activity. The key here is to manage your (and management) expectations; particularly for first events, numbers are often in single figures. Usually, as word gets out and reputation grows, events do get bigger numbers.
For most outreach activity, schools would usually be a safe bet for bringing in young people but this is not so with CEYP. Only selected teachers, usually the Designated Teacher, will know which pupils are or have been in care so your usual outreach contact may not be able to help.
Here are some of the recommendations we’ve gathered for finding and inviting looked after young people for your activities:
- Tell everybody: use multiple channels to promote your activity, include Designated Teachers, Head Teachers, Virtual Schools, Local Authorities, Foster Carer networks. The more people who can help you access LAYP the better.
- Send direct invitations: work with local schools, colleges and local authorities to identify and target children in care who would most benefit from this type of activity. Ask your Local Authority or Virtual School to address prepared letters on your behalf. One institution told us that it even pre-pays and packs the envelopes; the local Children's Services, simply adds names and addresses and puts them in the post.
- Collaborate: in recent years we’ve seen more and more wonderful collaborations taking place to raise the aspirations of CEYP. It’s great way to share resources across a wider geographical area, and increase numbers, whilst using budget and resources effectively. Some Uni Connect partnerships and other regional groups offer targeted activities for CEYP.
- Advertise: often Local Authorities, Virtual Schools or fostering teams have newsletters that go out to workers, carers or young people. They may welcome articles or ‘adverts’ to include and may do so for free.
- Publicise on NNECL.org: add your activity or event to NNECL.org, this will help promote your event to local authorities, virtual schools, carers and young people. Importantly it might help identify CEYP that are living near you but in the care of a Local Authority further away.
- Service level agreements: a longer term goal may be to develop an SLA with the Virtual School or your Local Authority with a clear outline of what you can offer them and what you would like in return. Raising aspirations and relationships with HEIs is viewed highly by OFSTED when inspecting schools.
Activity
Having found your cohort, you need to think about the types of activity you will offer. Here are some broad examples of what takes place across the country.
- Attend and contribute to existing activities delivered by the Local Authority/Virtual School. These can sometimes be difficult to access, but provide you with a prime audience and can include talks, workshops or activities within an away day or planned activity for young people and/or those supporting them.
- Offer your institution as a host venue for local authorities: hosting a local authority event on campus can be a great way to engage.
- Deliver an on-campus activity for CEYP: provide a purpose-built activity which could be a longer residential or a series of events over a period of time. For more practical advice on running your own event, check out the hints and tips below. The Office for Students recent guidance advises against one-off events as it is increasingly difficult to measure the impact and to accurately track pupils afterwards.
- Deliver a series of on-campus events in partnership with other institutions: working in partnership often increases geographical area and provides more opportunities to engage and get involved.
- Mentoring: this may be as part of a broader programme or a targeted initiative for CEYP, and can be delivered face-to-face or via e-mentoring (or a combination of both).
- Foster Family Fun Days: a way to deliver activity for the whole family and inspire carers and other family members to be engaged with the CEYP's educational aspirations.
- Prioritising CEYP in existing activities: reserve places on existing WP/outreach activity for CEYP and encourage schools and colleges to include them in addition to their usual allocation. Note that this doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you will have CEYP attending your events.
Hints and tips
Throughout this guidance we’ve included hints and tips that colleagues told us they wish they’d known earlier. Here’s what they’ve said about developing, designing and delivering activity for LAYP.
Developing
- ‘Potential’ is a long term goal. Encourage all CEYP to be involved in your activity regardless of what their current ‘potential’ may be. Your activity may inspire them to turn their education achievements around. It will also ensure that students aren’t excluded from activity because someone else doesn’t think they could go to college or university.
- Consider the value of discrete activities specifically for CEYP so that similar experiences can be shared, but temper this with not ‘highlighting’ individuals as being different/special. Some institutions told us they go so far as not externally labelling activity as specifically for CEYP.
- Establish the level of senior managers' commitment to support for CEYP and aim to obtain unequivocal support for activity. Where this is not possible, ensure aims are proportionate to the support available.
- Be prepared for how much time it takes when dealing with lots of agencies, Local Authority teams or schools. You have to send everything numerous times.
- Prepare long lead times for new activities and have contacts in place to help spread the word.
- Include corporate parents (Social Workers, Heads of Virtual Schools and Foster Carers) in any broader parent activities.
- Aim to develop clear, transparent and jargon free information that is made readily available through Local Authorities, schools and other agencies. This way, individuals don’t have to ask but receive information automatically.
- Build in means to evaluate activity from the start, seeking support from relevant internal and external staff.
- Be assured that colleagues across the sector are happy to share even the most basic knowledge and experience with you. Just ask.
Designing
- Have realistic expectations in relation to numbers attending.
- Consider inviting a variety of ages in order to get a bigger group.
- Be aware of which students are likely to progress to HE soon and those likely to return later in life so you can adapt your delivery appropriately.
- Ensure the right safeguarding measures are in place: plan for an emergency safeguarding officer as well as having a Designated Safeguarding Officer (DSO) on site.
- Gaining parental/guardian consent can take longer than you might expect. Depending on the student, paperwork might need signing by the Foster Carer, Social Worker or the parent.
- Deliver activity outside school hours. Your cohort is likely to come from a number of schools, so negotiating time off timetable for all may be difficult. It also means that your CEYP won’t miss essential classroom time, or be treated differently to their classmates.
- Coordinating transport can take time: many CEYP get taxis to and from school and may not live in the same town or even county as their school. You can’t rely on carers for transport as they may have commitments with other children at home.
- Aim to secure resource to support outreach activities to cover travel costs for attendees.
- Try and get contact details for a Foster Carer and a school contact to help final planning and confirmation.
- Find out how long the young person has been at the school; placement moves may sometimes indicate how settled they are.
- Some students may need individual risk assessments for their own specific needs which will involve working with their social worker to identify potential risks specific to them.
Delivering
- Increase your staff to student ratios slightly, as some groups of CEYP can require additional support and attention.
- Be prepared with behaviour management techniques, keep activities interesting and hands-on to ensure engagement.
- Be flexible in your approach as CEYP often prefer to be treated like young adults.
- Working with CEYP isn’t always straightforward. They may arrive with extra friends at the last minute, which can cause issues.
- Have a back-up plan for your activity.
- Be relaxed and casual: you’ll be more approachable.
