Care Leavers' Association

As noted elsewhere, Victoria Hull recently took a post with the Who Cares? Trust in London. This means that we are temporarily down to one paid member of staff. Vicky Halliwell, our Office Manager, will be working for four days a week. She is away during the week begining 5th of July but returns on 12th July. During that time, the office will be closed. Following Vicky's return and for the rest of the summer we will still be understaffed. We will have some volunteer and some paid staff to work with Vicky but we will not be able to be as active and responsive as we normally try to be. We aim to fill the National Director post by October (and have two new posts by then, also). In the meantime, please do bear with us. It will be worth it in the end but things will inevitably be slower for a while.

Victoria Hull, who has worked for the CLA since late 2004, has left the organisation to join the Who Cares? Trust at their head office in London. Victoria is their new Policy, Research and Projects Officer. Victoria joined us as National Development Worker five and half years ago and recently became our National Director. She has played a leading role in helping the Association to develop. In recent years she was in charge of significant initiatives in relation to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and children missing from care and raised the national profile of these issues. Her final project was the successful 'Speaking Out' event held in Manchester (see elsewhere in this 'News' section). We are obviously sorry to lose Victoria. However, her new post offers her the perfect opportunity to build on the experience and skills that she gained while with us. It also allows her to continue working to improve the lives of children in care and care leavers. We wish her well and hope to keep in touch and work with her in the future. We will be advertising for her replacement in due course, along with two new posts for which we have recently recieved funding.

Speaking Out Report

On 2 June 2010, the Care Leavers' Association ran an event in Manchester for young people in and leaving care from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

The event was part of the Speaking Out project, which aims to look at the issues that these young people face within the care system; to raise awareness of young peoples' views and to make recommendations for positive change.

Speaking Out was attended by more than 80 people. The majority of those who attended were young people from the care system. The CLA aims to make this project as young-person-led as possible and so a steering group of young people was recruited early on to oversee the project. The Speaking Out event was facilitated using the 'Open Space' participation technique, which allowed young people to shape the agenda of the day themselves.

A 21-year-old care leaver has released a single called Keep Dreaming to promote this autumn's National Care Leavers' Week.

The single is released this week and the title has been adopted as the theme for National Care Leavers' Week, which starts on 24 October. Simmons will perform it at an award ceremony for care leavers in London during the week. He said: "Children in care are almost the hidden, forgotten community. You don't hear anything in the news about their stories. They go untold, whether it's physical, mental or sexual abuse.

For more information and to hear the song go to http://kay-jaymedia.com and for some recent press check out Children and Young People Now at http://www.cypnow.co.uk/news/ByDiscipline/Social-Care/1008315/Care-leaver-releases-single-highlight-forgotten-community/