Education Sector Engagement

Further and higher education can be transformative for care leavers and the institutions that make up this sector can lead the way in care leaver engagement.

Whole Institution Approach

Whole Institution Approach is the strategic idea that care leaver outreach should not only be a widening access/participation activity – rather education institutions should also consider their role as employers and community hubs when thinking about care leaver support.

For ideas and inspiration on what your institution could offer, read about the three pillars of the Whole Institution Approach – Student, Employment and Community – and check out FAQs below.

You can also view all existing Covenant offers from Education Institutions in the Care Leavers Opportunities Area.

Sign-up to become a Signatory here!

Get Involved

Get involved and collaborate with the Covenant.

We encourage all education institutions to adopt all three pillars of the Whole Institution Approach to provide as much care leaver support as possible.

For more information and support, sign-up here or email education@mycovenant.org.uk

The 3 Pillars of the Whole Institution Approach

01. Student

Student is the focus on the student lifecycle – widening access, participation and inclusion elements.

For HEIs, based around the expectations of the OfS, the DfE Principles and aligned with developments of the NNECL’s Quality Mark and the recent Pathways to University from Care report from Sheffield University.

For Colleges this would be linked to the requirements of Ofsted as well as the OfS.

This pillar invites institutions to look at their current provision for care leavers (care experienced), build from the excellent work of initiatives like ButtleQM and academics such as Dr Katie Ellis, Dr Zoe Baker and Dr Neil Harrison to develop new approaches from this information, advice and guidance.

02. Employment

Employment is the way in which institutions should be able to creatively respond as an employer for care leaver employees.

From application support, or adapted application processes and mentoring – should an individual self-declare – to specific internships, work experience, apprenticeships or traineeships for care leavers.

This is very much open for institutional specific responses, but we believe that every institution is in a position through supporting care leavers as students, to translate aspects of this to offering opportunities to current and potential employees.

We are conscious of the financial constraints on the sector and recognise that different sized institutions could offer more or less than others, but we are inviting intuitions to think creatively about solutions.

Please do note, that a response to this pillar in terms of planned, ongoing activity and a proposed timeline will be seen as a constructive response

03. Community

Community takes the focus slightly outside of the organisation and looks to the relationship and engagement within the local community.

We are suggesting that many HEIs / FECs already link with their local communities in terms of active engagement and partnership working, but this is not mapped out and promoted to the care leaving community in an accessible way.

This activity could be in the form of student clinics – medical or law in universities for example, to health and beauty, culinary school or sports coaching in colleges, or information on talk series and open events etc.

The Covenant is asking you to consider how this information is publicised to a care leaving audience and how this might be augmented to enhance the reach and ultimately access – we are not asking for new initiatives, but a focus on what is already there and how we can support the care leaving audience to access this.

This pillar also links positively with the development of the Civic University Agreement and the necessary mapping exercise highlights the enhanced way that institutions work and partner with the local community, isolated and marginalised groups.

FAQs

What timeframe should our institution be working towards?

The Care Leaver Covenant updates the website with all institutional commitments when they are submitted. We are hoping to raise the profile and publicise all commitments frequently through the year, but would hope that throughout care leavers month (November), we would have a strong focus on the excellent commitments and response of this sector. With that in mind we have created a draft timeline which an institutions might like to consider.

Proposed Action Plan

Short Term

Secure senior management buy-in for the Care Leaver Covenant
Complete Care Leaver Covenant Web Form – you are now signed up, but there’s more work to be done…

Medium Term

Establish a whole institution working group including ‘student voice’
Review and audit current care leaver commitments
Capture the institutional response under the three pillars, using the Care Leaver Covenant Pro Forma
Consult with care leavers, charities, care leaving teams and appropriate documentation (“Pathways to University from Care” for example.)
Develop your Institution’s Covenant offer, detailing any new opportunities to fill gaps in provision

Long Term

Develop an employment plan / opportunities, including HR processes for care leavers as employees and student employees
Liaise with Spectra (Care Leaver Covenant) over updating your offer on the Care Leaver Covenant website and Connects
Monitor implementation of the offer

How can we work with the Covenant?

Engagement is tailored, not prescriptive. Work with the Covenant as an active partner or ask us to be a critical friend, drawing on guidance, independent review and wider sector connections to support you embed sustainable solutions.

The Covenant will support you to build meaningful links with local care-leaver communities and explore new ways to support students before, during and after study as well as local care leavers in the community.

We have the NNECL Quality Mark - do we need to sign up to the Care Leaver Covenant too?

The Care Leaver Covenant works alongside the NNECL Quality Mark. It positions support for care experienced students as a whole institution priority not only improving the student lifecycle, but giving focus to employment pathways as well as community reach and engagement.

Through the QM, institutions are benchmarking excellence in the student pillar. The Covenant is then challenging institutions to take that a step further and think creatively about want more could be done.

By signing the Covenant, institutions also join a national communication network, ensuring that opportunities and offers from other signatories reach their target audience.

"We" have already signed, where does this leave us?

We are incredibly grateful to those early signatories for their support and encouragement of the Care Leaver Covenant, particularly when this approach was gathering momentum and coming into being.

We hope those institutions who are already signatory members might revisit their initial offers, and to take into consideration the Covenant’s developed approach (and current research) along with the baseline expectations from overarching bodies in supporting care leavers in further and higher education.

We invite organisations to explore pillars two and three and to start thinking about how your signature to the Covenant could be enhanced to reach out to all members of the care leaving community.

We already reach out to schools to raise aspirations and encourage care leavers to visit the HEI / FEC. Could we include this as a specific demonstration under the Care Leaver Covenant?

Yes. This could be a way of highlighting and publicising what your institution is currently undertaking to support underrepresented groups. However, we would encourage you to think about how you currently do this. Evidence suggests that long term sustained engagement from an early age is most effective and best practice models link closely with Local Authority Virtual schools to identify pupils and develop effective informed strategies.

We are installing a system to track care leavers’ experiences and progression. Could we include this as a specific action under the Care Leaver Covenant?

Yes. However, your organisation would need to indicate how the outcomes of the data collected is fed back into policy design or targeted support.

Can we use our commitment to the Care Leaver Covenant to support our Access and Participation Plan?

Yes. Through your Access and Participation Agreement, you are required to demonstrate your HEI’s recognition and targeted support of underrepresented groups. As Care Leavers are one of these key groups, by signing the Care Leaver Covenant, your organisation would be demonstrating realistic and achievable offers of commitment for the care leaving community.

How have other institutions responded?

Many HEIs and FECs have put together a working group with representatives from across the organisation – including care leaver representatives – to plan out how the HEI / FEC would like to support the local and national care leaving community.

These groups have put in place a plan of action under each pillar – along with timelines for delivery.

Do we have to have a completed response to students, employment and community in place to sign up to the Care Leaver Covenant?

No. Signing up to the Covenant is a commitment to creating and evolving practice. We strongly believe that that HEIs (and to a certain extent FECs) should be able to provide opportunities for many different types of care leavers, but we appreciate the complexity of this.

We suggest that you clearly detail your responses to the particular areas you feel that your institution is able to, which we can capture and publicise, and we would also seek to publish suggested timelines from institutions for the development of further opportunities, or proposed plans, should these arise.

We have a comprehensive student and community Covenant and we are committed to developing the employment strand but we aren’t quite there yet, what should we do to sign up to the Covenant?

We would very much like to inform care leavers of your commitment to them not just as an education provider, but also as an employer. We would be pleased to see a plan of action around the employment strand, highlighting your direction, which we would be able to display with your Covenant commitment as an ongoing activity.

Our ongoing work has suggested that there are three particular growth sectors, these being: digital, hospitality and construction, and while we appreciate that some of these opportunities are outsourced within institutions, we believe that there is room and scope for procurement discussions as well as considering CSR priorities, which could include employment / work exposure for care leavers.

We are an FEC and have a closed campus, how do we respond to the community pillar?

Within colleges we have discussed student led services, such as discounted treatments within health, hair and beauty, tasting menus within cooking and culinary schools for example, these could be shared through the Care Leaver Covenant’s Connects platform and with Local Authorities.

We are reviewing our student provision; can you give us support or point us in a direction?

The DfE has published their “HE Principles” document, which gives a perspective on what an HEI / college with HE provision should be considering through their “student” provision – taking into account the full student life-cycle.

Dr Katie Ellis’s “Pathways to University from Care” recommendations are a very good place to start, as is NNECL’s rich back catalogue of research

We are very supportive of using the final resources published as part of the Buttle Quality Mark too, which have some excellent reflective questions to challenge thinking.

Who is going to hold HEIs / FECs to account?

The oversight and maintenance of each HEIs / FECs commitment to the Covenant is that particular institutions’ responsibility. We would encourage a care leaver forum / working group within each institution which would have the responsibility for oversight, review and “checking in”, or a line within each institutions’ commitment to invite care leavers to “ask about our institution’s commitment to the Care Leaver Covenant” – ensuring the work is kept relevant.

Moving forward, we fully support the work of NNECL’s Quality Mark which we would know features a robust evaluative element and would encourage HEIs to consider connecting with NNECL and finding out more.

Get Involved and Collaborate with the Covenant

We would encourage all education institutions to adopt as many elements of the strategy as possible to support their care leavers in the best way possible.