Education Sector Engagement

The Care Leaver Covenant is updating the app / 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 week (October 2019), which also coincides with the new academic year, 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

June 2019

• Secure senior management buy-in for the Care Leaver Covenant
• Complete Care Leaver Covenant SOI through senior management or the Vice Chancellor / Principal’s office
• Establish a whole institution working group including ‘student voice’
• Review and audit current care leaver commitments
• Consider the institutional response under the three pillars
• Consult with care leavers, charities, care leaving teams and appropriate documentation (DfE HE Principles)

By September 2019

• Develop Covenant offer and new opportunities to fill gaps in provision
• Develop employment plan / opportunities and augmented HR processed for care leavers as employees, those in the community and student care leavers.
• Liaise with Spectra First over marketing your offer on the Care Leaver Covenant website and app.

By October 2019

• Market and celebrate new and revised offer during national Care Leavers’ Week.

By March 2020

• Monitor implementation of the offer.

In 2014, Buttle UK recognised that the successful Quality Mark had achieved its goal in raising awareness of looked after children and care leavers among universities and colleges. In 2015, Buttle UK made the decision to discontinue the scheme. The last awards were made in 2015 and all have now expired.

The Care Leaver Covenant has a different remit to the Frank Buttle Kitemark. However, it also stands as a badge of recognition.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

No. We are asking you to creatively respond under the above areas and although we strongly believe that HEIs (and to a certain extent FECs) should be able to provide opportunities for many different types of care leavers, we appreciate the complexity of this in some institutions.

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

We have created some basic examples below, which might be included as part of your Care Leaver Covenant, for example:

Student:

In addition to the current package of support detailed, University of (x) has been selected to take part in the NNECL Quality Mark pilot and upon the outcomes of this activity, our institutional response to supporting care leavers will be adjusted in line with these recommendations.

Employment:

The University of (x) has set up a working group with a particular remit to support care leavers’ access employment opportunities. We intend to undertake a scoping exercise and hope to implement these outcomes by March 2020. We welcome feedback and questions around this activity. The chair of this group is (x) and can be contacted on (x).

The University of (x) offers employment opportunities to all students who have self-declared as care leavers on our ambassador / mentoring / buddying scheme. Please contact (x) for further information.

The University of (x) is developing its staff mentor scheme to support care experienced staff members. To be launched in (DATE).

The University of (x) is creating a Staff Care Leaver Network. This network will have responsibility for overseeing the employment pillar of the Care Leaver Covenant and will seek to publish a whole institution response by (DATE).

The University of (x) is pleased to offer one six-week paid internship within Human Resources. Should you like to find out more, please send a short email to (x)

Community:

Through the establishment of a working group we have required that all schools and colleges within University of (x) send bulletins of community engagement activity, such as law clinics, student optometry appointments, talk series etc. to Student Services so that they can be uploaded on to the care leaver area of the website

Through the establishment of a working group we have asked that all schools and colleges within University of (x) tweet community engagement activity and hashtag the local authority and #careleavercovenant

The university of (x) will create a bulletin to be sent to the Local Authority, which could be sent to care leavers with regular opportunities on campus, such as events and clinics .

…we welcome your innovative support and offers through 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.

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.

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.

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 app and with Local Authorities for care leavers to access.

Within universities (and colleges) we have discussed public engagement and how particular information is fed out and what more could be done to target particular audiences.

The DfE has recently 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. NNECL also have a rich back catalogue of research which gives a very insightful perspective on supporting care leavers in HE. We are very supportive of the Centre for Social Justice’s May 2019 publication of “12×24” and we would also suggest using the final resources published as part of the Buttle Quality Mark.

Over the coming weeks we will be populating an area of the Covenant website with interesting practice from various institutions, so I would encourage you to check back here. We will also be running an event early in the summer to consolidate this.

The oversight and maintenance of each HEIs / FECs commitment to the Covenant is that particular institutions’ responsibility. We would be pleased to see a care leaver forum appointed within each institution which might 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”?

Moving forward, we will support the work of NNECL in their Quality Mark Pilot which we would hope to feature a robust evaluative element and would encourage HEIs to consider connecting with NNECL on this following its launch in spring 2020.