Helping people with care experience to thrive in our communities
“Through our dedicated Jobs and Training team that sits within our charitable foundation, Clarion Futures, young people with care experience can access tailored mentoring and employability support to help them improve their job prospects or even start their own business.”
By Clare Miller, Chief Executive of Clarion Housing Group
According to Barnado’s*, every year around 13,000 young people leave care.
Having spent their formative years in foster care or children’s homes, these young people have, on average, much poorer outcomes than their peers.
One in three become homeless in the first two years after they leave care. 38% of care leavers aged 19-21 are not in education, employment or training. And 57% say that managing their money was difficult when leaving care.
As part of National Care Leavers’ Month, we’re reflecting on the challenges facing young care leavers, as demonstrated by these facts and figures, and thinking about the support we can provide as a social landlord.
It all began back in 2021, when we joined the business council of the Care Leaver Covenant – a national Department for Education-funded programme supporting 16-25-year-olds leaving care to live independently.
This led to us convening a group of colleagues to explore how we could better support people with care experience living in our communities. With input from all areas of the organisation – including colleagues with lived experience – we set out to ensure care leavers could access the right support and opportunities to thrive.
In March 2023, we formally signed the Care Leaver Covenant, developing a range of commitments to support Clarion residents with care experience, with a particular focus on employment and training, tenancy sustainment, and customer service.
Through our dedicated Jobs and Training team that sits within our charitable foundation, Clarion Futures, young people with care experience can access tailored mentoring and employability support to help them improve their job prospects or even start their own business.
And as an organisation, we are proud to guarantee interviews for applicants who have spent time living in the care system where they meet the basic criteria, in the same way the Disability Confident scheme supports those who declare a disability. We want our workforce to be diverse and enhanced by lived experience to better support the needs of our residents, and this is just one example of this approach in action.
We’ve also launched our groundbreaking Hometruths House scheme, co-designed with young care leavers to support their transition into independent living. The programme offers practical workshops to build essential life skills, with participants with care experience receiving £250 in energy or supermarket vouchers to help them settle in as part of an enhanced offer. To date, more than 400 young people have benefited, with highly positive feedback.
Alongside this, our Tenancy Sustainment teams provide additional advice and guidance to young care leavers to help them settle into the responsibilities of living independently, and we also signpost to the wide-ranging support available through Clarion Futures, such as free digital skills training or money guidance.
When it comes to customer service, we’ve enhanced our onboarding process for new residents to ensure timely, tailored support. And we’ve rolled out Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) training, delivered by our expert partners at Break, equipping our teams to better support young people.
One example of the wraparound support that we provide can be found in the story of Mahmoud, who arrived as an asylum seeker as a child and was placed into care. Now living independently, we have been working with Mahmoud to help him gain employment and manage his tenancy. Through Clarion Futures, we’ve been able to provide construction and cleaning-related training alongside digital inclusion and money management support, helping him to improve his CV and build his confidence to give him the best chance of success.
Looking at the bigger picture, we were delighted to see that earlier this year, the government changed the rules so that young people leaving care no longer need a local connection to apply for social housing.
These young people are often vulnerable and don’t have the family support that many of us rely on. But even with these challenges, they’ve often been blocked from getting the housing they need simply because they don’t have ties to a local area.
We hope this change will help make sure care leavers can find safe, affordable homes where they can put down roots, ultimately reducing homelessness and rough sleeping and giving care leavers a better chance to build a stable future.
There’s a long way to go to ensure everyone with care experience has what they need to feel secure and thrive, but we are deeply committed to playing our part. That’s why we’re proud to be a signatory of the Care Leaver Covenant.
* Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: House of Commons Report Stage