Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): I welcome Ms Eithne Gilligan, Ms Ruth Barry and Mr Darren Smith to address the Committee. It is over to you. You have 10 minutes or thereabouts, and then we will open it up for questions.

Ms Eithne Gilligan (Voice of Young People in Care): Thank you very much. Good morning, members of the Committee, and thank you for the opportunity to address you all about the work of Voice of Young People in Care (VOYPIC), particularly our survey of children in care. We are very keen for you to get an insight into our work and the needs of young people who leave care, especially when it comes to their learning and employment prospects.

I am Eithne; I am the policy manager with VOYPIC. With me I have Ruth, who is our senior policy officer, and Darren, who is a trainee and intern with us on our Working Together for Change project. Our plan this morning is to introduce VOYPIC to you. I will do that, and then I will ask Ruth to take you through some of the findings of our survey that we think are of most relevance to you. After that, Darren will share his experience of leaving care with you. That will add a personal account of the challenges faced by young people when they leave care, and I hope it will start a conversation about how we support young people towards their independence.

VOYPIC is a charity. We work across all of Northern Ireland, and our aim is to promote the rights and improve the lives of children and young people in care. We work with very young children in care as well as care-leavers up to the age of 25. We were established back in 1993, and the services that we offer now are advocacy, mentoring and participation. We also have the policy and research side of the house; that is us.

We are here to talk to you in particular about the innovative survey that we introduced to Northern Ireland in 2010. We are responsible for and very proud of developing that unique survey. We call it 'Our Life in Care', and it is a computer-assisted self-interview (CASI) survey, which means that children can complete it online on their own or they can get some help to complete it offline and we download and analyse it afterwards. It is specifically for children and young people who are in care aged eight to 18, regardless of their placement type, so we included children's homes, foster placements and those at home under care orders. We included everybody.

We did the survey because we believe that it promotes children's rights and their voice, because it reflects their views and experiences of life in care. Over three years we surveyed 333 children and young people. I will hand over to Ruth now to share some of what we learned from the survey.

Ms Ruth Barry (Voice of Young People in Care): Good morning, Committee. Before I present some of the findings of the 'Our Life in Care' survey, I want to take a moment to give you a brief description of the number of children in care and those getting ready to leave care, just to give you a bit of context. The most up-to-date statistics show that there are approximately 2,857 children and young people in care. Of that population, just over half are entitled to access care-leaver services. Of those, only 71% of those young people who left care were in education, training and employment. As the Committee can see, just over one quarter are not in education, training or employment.

The purpose of today is to look at 'Our Life in Care'. I will focus on three key areas that I want to draw the Committee's attention to: extending support for care-leavers; promoting and supporting learning and achieving; and promoting positive images of care.

Across the three years, 21% or 72 of the children and young people who responded to the 'Our Life in Care' survey were 16 and over. We had three categories: eight to 11; 12 to 15; and 16 and over. That will give you some context. We asked the young people about their relationship with their personal adviser and about their pathway plan. You have the statistics in front of you, but I will touch on a few of them, due to constraints in time. As you can see, only a quarter of the young people aged 16 and over have a copy of their pathway plan and just over one third completely agree with the decisions made in that pathway plan. All three surveys highlight the need to improve support for young people in transition from care to independence. In particular, I draw the Committee's attention to what has been going on across the UK. There have been legislative and policy reforms on support entitlements for young people leaving care and in care. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, in particular, places a duty on local authorities to asses a care-leaver's request for assistance up to and including the age of 25.

I move now to promoting and supporting learning and achieving. Of the 333 children and young people we surveyed across the three-year pilot, 277 — 83% — were of statutory school age, which is eight to 16. Of that group, three quarters reported that they never missed or dodged school. However, almost a fifth reported dodging school sometimes or a lot. Although this is a small sample, it suggests that looked-after children and young people may be missing school more often than the general school-going population. We were able to analyse our findings further. When we looked further into the findings, we found that the majority of over-12s who had been out of education for more than three months were living in children's homes. Across the three surveys, a total of 56 over-12s had been out of education for more than three months and, of those 56 young people, 36 were living in children's homes. That link between missing school and placement type is evident across all three of our surveys. While education can last a lifetime, the opportunities for children to learn in their early years is critical. Missing the chance to learn and achieve risks compounding negative messages about looked-after children in education.

When we look at educational attainment across the general school-going population, in comparison with looked-after, we see that there are important differences to consider. For example, fewer than one quarter of care leavers left school with five GCSEs grade A* to C or higher. That is compared with more than three quarters of the general school leavers. In addition, just over a quarter of care-leavers left school with no qualifications, compared with only 1% of the general school leavers.

We acknowledge that, in recent years, key policy and programme initiatives have worked hard to narrow the gap in educational outcomes for care-leavers. We have had Include Youth's Give and Take scheme, for example, and our Working Together for Change programme. However, we have concerns about the potential of current funding for VOYPIC and others to provide the most appropriate and effective training for care-leavers.

The last area I will focus on is promoting positive images. Through our work with the young people, we see how much they have to celebrate and be proud of. From the findings in front of you, you will see that big numbers of young people are involved in their local youth and community groups and volunteering in the local community. They and we are keen to promote positive images of children in care. They are acutely aware of the negative stereotypes of children and young people who grew up in care, and they want to replace them with accurate images and stories. Positive messages should be promoted and could help support school and community integration. We believe that it is vital for children in care and care-leavers to feel part of and feel valued in their local community.

I will finish on a lighter note. I have a few quotations from our young people who took part in the survey. As part of the survey, we asked them about their ambitions and what they hoped for in the future. Among the responses were:

There is quite a lot in there. Another said:

Another young person said:

I will hand back to Eithne now, who will introduce Darren.

Ms Gilligan: We asked Darren along today to share some of his story with you. Darren's first experience of VOYPIC goes way back to 2005, when he was living in a children's home. He came along to one of our annual conferences. They were just big parties really, but we called them conferences. Our advocacy service was also a regular visitor to the children's home where Darren lived, but it was only a couple of years ago that Darren started volunteering with VOYPIC as a young rep. He will pick up the story from this point on.

Mr Darren Smith (Voice of Young People in Care): Good morning. Thank you for inviting me here today. I would like to tell you a bit about my experience of leaving care and the impact that it had on my education and employment.

I was taken into care at the age of 12 and was placed in a children's home. It is fair to say that I had a rough time from the age of 12 to 16. I started going out with the older kids from the children's home, and we got into some pretty risky stuff. I got into trouble with the police for breaking windows and damaging staff cars. Then I met a girl, and all that changed. I stopped getting into trouble with the police because she was a good influence on me.

Like any teenager, I did not think about leaving home or setting up on my own. I had no idea where I wanted to go when I left home. The first time I ever thought about it was at my looked-after child (LAC) review just after my 17th birthday. I told my social worker that I wanted to get my own place. I ended up moving into a place that she found for me on my 18th birthday, but, no joke, it was like a health and safety hazard. There was no paint on the walls, no washing machine, no fridge-freezer, and the kitchen and bathroom were very poor. I had to use local launderettes for months, and applying for cash for that was a regular task for me and my PA. In fact, getting enough money to set up and run my own home was an ongoing struggle for me, and the support from my social worker was not always the best.

I had a social worker until I was 20 and a PA until I was 21. I had four social workers and two PAs during my time in care. A PA is a personal adviser who supports you from the age of 16. I get on well with my PA. She is called Holly. She understood me, and, if I asked for help, she would help me. I did not get on well with my social worker and only saw her four or five times after leaving the home. I relied more on Holly because of our good relationship. She helped me to sort out my benefits and the allowance to set up my own home and supported me when I was moving out of the children's home. Even though she helped me, I never had help or support in household skills like budgeting, cooking or cleaning. In the children's home, everything was done for me. Thinking back now, I could leave dirty clothes in the laundry room and come back in a few hours and they were done for me. Maybe that was lazy, and it did not make me into a great housekeeper today.

After a few months, me and my girlfriend moved into a better flat with a housing association. That made things easier, as I did not get lonely.

I will tell you a bit about my education and my efforts to become independent through training and employment. I left school at the age of 16 with no GCSEs, and I have taken part in training and employment programmes and got qualifications through those. Before I left the children's home, I joined the Give and Take scheme at Include Youth. You may know that scheme. It works really well for a lot of young people, but I just went for the crack and to get out of the children's home. I did, however, gain my essential skills and got a good job placement and worked for six months at Olympic Lifts but then was made redundant.

At 18 years of age, I was placed on the Southern Trust employability scheme, and I worked at maintenance in Craigavon hospital. The work did not really suit me. I was not making any progress or building up any skills. It was Holly to the rescue again: she told me about the Wider Horizons programme. It sounded very exciting to me, but, because of my criminal record, I could not get on to the chosen programme that I wanted to in Canada. Instead, they offered me a six-month training programme in multimedia that included three weeks in Spain. I got my ILM level 2 and my ECDL through that, and I got a distinction for my acting skills and performance.

After that was a tough time for me. My girlfriend moved out of the flat, and I spent a few months feeling very down. I took up the next opportunity with the Prince's Trust and successfully completed youth work and health and social care training.

My next opportunity came through VOYPIC, where I was still volunteering as a young rep. Last year, I was encouraged to apply for their Working Together for Change programme. I have almost finished my training, and I am an intern with its Lurgan office. The last nine months or so have been busy, and I have had the chance to think about what I want to do with my life. That is the thing: when I look back now, I got a lot from my training opportunities but not as much as I could have. That is the point that I want to make today. As a care-leaver, I found it tough to make the most of the opportunities at the time. I see now that I was not mature enough to get my own place at 18. Getting to 21 is all very well and exciting, but, for someone in my situation, it meant losing the support of my social worker and my PA because I was not seen to be in education, training or employment.

I am nearly 23 now, and I have ideas about what I want to do with my life. I know what stopped me getting the best out of school and what could have helped, and I think that it is worth saying because, if it works for me, it could work for other kids in care. A few things that got in my way were uncertainty and instability after coming into care, peer pressure and lack of support for what was going on for me. Things that helped were understanding relationships, taking time with me and more opportunities and support. I am clear about what I want to do next: I want to study youth work and would really like to go to university, but getting the financial support for that is very difficult. VOYPIC can support and encourage me, but there is no support from my local trust, and that includes financial support. For now, I will finish my training with VOYPIC and then continue to volunteer with it. Thank you for listening to me.

Ms Gilligan: Thank you, Darren. I will finish off the presentation by drawing your attention to three issues that we believe would help to improve outcomes for care-leavers. We would like to see a shared strategy and more collaboration between the Department for Employment and Learning, the Department of Education and the Department of Health. We think that we need a shared strategy to promote education, training and employment for children in care and for care-leavers. We want what they have in Scotland. We want extended support for care-leavers in Northern Ireland at least in line with the provisions in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, which was implemented last year. We feel that it is discrimination against children in Northern Ireland to see so much going on elsewhere. We are terribly jealous of our colleagues in Who Cares? Scotland. Lastly, we want corporate parenting duties to extend to all key Departments and statutory agencies in Northern Ireland so that there is a greater sense of responsibility and ownership for the outcomes for children in care. Thank you, Committee, for the opportunity and for giving us the time to tell you a little about us. We welcome your comments and questions.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Thank you for your presentation. Darren, I commend you and congratulate you for speaking to the Committee today and sharing your experiences with us. We wish you well as you seek to move on. You said that, when you turned 21, you lost your PA: did you find that a big loss?

Mr Smith: Yes, because I used her a lot, even for little things such as having to fill in forms. At the time, I was not the best at it. I got help through VOYPIC to do that and then lost that support.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): I notice from your presentation that 17% of folk do not know of their pathway plan. Where is the breakdown in communication that leads to 17% not knowing their pathway plan?

Ms Gilligan: Great question: it is one of the big issues for us across the survey. A care plan, up to the age of 15 or 16, needs to inform the pathway plan from 16 onwards to leaving care. We encourage children and young people to be part of their LAC review every six months, but it is not necessarily a very comfortable or easy experience for those children. Unless they are involved and unless the time is taken to support them towards that review and towards an understanding of their plans as they move through care, it is difficult to think that they will have ownership or understanding of that or be completely comfortable with the decisions that are going in there. We certainly promote it. Our advocacy service is part of supporting children at LAC reviews and contributing to their pathway plan, but we believe that more could be done.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): How closely do you work with schools and colleges? It is about getting these ones through the schooling system and trained up.

Ms Gilligan: We have done that more in the last couple of years. We are getting a greater commitment from the Department of Education to a policy for looked-after children, and we look forward to seeing that policy out for consultation from the Department. We would never get to the point of saying that things are good enough; we think that more could definitely be done. Some great work is going on in individual schools, but we need to think about corporate parenting. Schools, head teachers, teachers, classroom assistants and so on need to get that sense of being part of the corporate parent and part of the responsibility. We found that from looking at and engaging with education. Last year, we had a great session with the Minister of Education and a group of young people. It is a really tricky time for them. If children are coming into care and changing school at the same time, there is a lot of stigma and challenging times and experiences for them. It is not a coincidence that attendance can drop at that stage because of how challenging going to school can be with all the trauma and change that is going on at home.

We have good relations with schools. We are part of regional groups looking at education and further education. I think that there is a willingness there; there just needs to be more of the same.

Mr Hilditch: I do not know whether I should declare an interest having won a Northern Ireland football shirt at your recent anniversary ball.

Ms Gilligan: Congratulations. Thank you for your support. Does it fit?

Mr Hilditch: No.

I am interested in what you have looked at in Scotland and how we could learn lessons in Northern Ireland. What are the differences? Can we maybe look at something with our neighbours?

Ms Gilligan: Just to pull it back a wee bit; we have something called Five Nations One Voice. We have an informal arrangement with the Republic of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales where all five voice organisations for children in care meet together to share their experience. Hopefully, we will work together to get, across the board, equal support across the five nations. There have been changes in England and Wales as well. There is a new Staying Put scheme in England, where children in foster care can stay up to the age of 21, and, in Wales, there are arrangements for children staying on if they are still in education or employment. Scotland is really out there; it is the vanguard. They are looking at support right up to the age of 25 and putting a duty on corporate parents to assess the need of any child who expresses their desire to have continued support. We are really seeing a big change there. They have also really embraced the idea of corporate parenting across the board and extending that to the likes of schools and others. We see a lot of great work there. That is not to say that they are not still experiencing some resistance, but they are really pushing at a very open door. They have a desire for corporate parenting to improve in Scotland.

Mr Hilditch: Thank you. Maybe we could get more details on Scotland.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): We can seek a research paper on that.

Ms Lo: I was going to ask more or less the same question. I used to be a social worker, and I know VOYPIC and Joy Allen well. Can you tell us more about what you mean by corporate parenting duties? You are talking about all key Departments, so that is DE, DEL and DHSSPS, is that right? How do you define corporate parenting duties?

Ms Gilligan: At the moment, the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety is seen as the key or lead corporate parent at departmental level. Each of the five trusts is the local corporate parent for all children in care.

Ms Lo: That is a new term for me. I stopped social work in the '90s.

Ms Gilligan: They take on that corporate parenting responsibility once a child is brought into care. I suppose that, looking at it now, we recognise that not everything can be done by that Department. Obviously, the lead in their education is the Department of Education, and then, thinking past primary and secondary education to independence and moving towards employment, that shifts to the Department for Employment and Learning. It is about extending that sense of corporate parenting and not leaving it specifically to DHSSPS and thinking beyond just their very basic welfare, where they are living and getting through the basics to really thinking long term and joining up that stage of the care planning into pathway planning.

One of the things that were introduced in the last couple of years was personal educational plans for each child in care. The plan is that they should be part of every care plan and lead into the pathway plan if there are opportunities for further or higher education. We are seeing that working across education and social care, and we think that we could broaden that out. There is fun in there as well, Anna. What we are really interested in is seeing the new council arrangements and thinking about swimming classes, leisure centres and health in the wider sense, not just the basic safeguarding end of things. We are really thinking beyond Departments and into local authorities and wider.

Ms Barry: In Scotland, one of the things that came through the Act was that each local authority — it would be a trust over here — would have a corporate parent strategy. It is really looking at what is in that area, like swimming classes or other things that can actually benefit children and young people in care and help to facilitate and promote their achievement and success. As Eithne said, it is about looking beyond who we see at the moment as our corporate parents and actually getting the involvement of local areas in taking ownership and responsibility for their children in care.

Ms Lo: It is a challenge to get that, but that is a good vision.

Ms Barry: Yes.

Ms Lo: Can I just ask one more question about your survey? You said that 14% had been out of school for more than three months but 59% of them got help to return. Did your survey find out why those children were out of school for three months, which is such a long period, and what sort of help got them back into school?

Ms Barry: We did not ask specific questions around why they were out, but we have a notepad section of our survey that allowed the young people to write freely, so you have a range of things from the difficulties around what is going on when they come into care and they just do not feel like going into school to bullying or different things. There can be a range of supports, like working with us around self-confidence and working through some of the issues that are affecting that young person at the moment. It can be the work that a residential care worker or social worker does. There can be a wide range of reasons why they are not going to school. It is clearly an issue. We are all in agreement that more needs to be done to help and facilitate young people who are experiencing a really difficult time in their life to get back into education.

Ms Lo: Are schools doing enough to get young people in care back into school? So often it is seen as the social worker's job.

Mr Smith: When I was in school, the teachers did not really understand; they thought that I was in a children's home because I was bad. They did not really support me as much as they should have. I was getting in trouble for anything. Even if I did not do it, it was my fault. That is why I left school.

Ms Lo: Did you feel stigmatised in school as someone from a care home?

Mr Smith: I got away with a lot too. There were times when I should have been suspended, but I think they felt sorry for me because I was in care, so they let me away with it. Other young people started to see that, and they were getting annoyed too.

Ms Barry: Again, it reiterates the need for more holistic and complete training for teachers and everyone working with young people in care. That might help teachers to understand the difficulties, the trauma and everything that could be happening in the life of that young person.

Ms Lo: It should be in the school induction or whatever you call it for a child to come into school.

Ms Gilligan: The Buttle Trust introduced a mark for further and higher education providers for children in care. Stranmillis University College is part of that, so we have been doing some good work with them and considering how they could integrate it into their teacher training.

Ms Lo: That is very important. Thank you, and thank you, Darren.

Mr Ramsey: Darren, well done for coming along this morning. You are a really honest young man, and I hope that you secure the career you want. I was a youth worker myself before I went into politics, so I know how rewarding it is for young people. Good luck with it. I am sure that you will be a great PA or mentor to a lot of younger people coming along.

Chair, it reminded me of our NEETs inquiry when I heard the conversation this morning. I am not sure how far we have moved on.

The NEETs inquiry identified that young people leaving care are the group who are most vulnerable and marginalised, less likely to have educational attainment and more likely to be in the NEETs category, as you have identified. One of the key elements coming out of it was tracking and auditing where young people move to and from. Is there any dialogue or communication with, or any statistics coming from, the Department of Justice or the youth justice system that enable you to help young people and to know where they are or where they are not?

Ms Gilligan: At a very practical level, we deliver our visiting advocacy service to Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre. We can offer advocacy for any young person who is in a JJC, particularly those who are care experienced, and be part of their discharge planning. We can offer that help. We contributed to the youth justice review and have maintained our interest in that, because that is such a big part of it. Along with our colleagues, we are very closely allied to Include Youth and the Children's Law Centre, so we have that angle on it. There is an awareness, but, again, it is a bit of a mantra of mine that more still needs to be done. If Justice were to take on that corporate parenting sense of responsibility and increase its focus on it, that would really help.

Mr Ramsey: I asked the Minister yesterday about the Youth Employment Scheme (YES) programme and youth training programmes in general. While we have Steps 2 Success, in my constituency, there will be no further enrolment of any young person because there are no schemes. What schemes are happening at the minute? Include Youth is a regular attender at our meetings and always showcases the talents of young people, as you have done through Darren this morning. The concerns about the European social fund (ESF) compound it. Can you give me any indication of what the Department is providing in youth training?

Ms Gilligan: I will speak to our own training programme. It is very timely, because we will have spent out ESF at the end of this month. We actually decided not to apply for the next round because it just seems prohibitive for us, as such a small organisation with such a small programme for such a small group of young people.

It is very frustrating, because, while we have been running the programme, we have been evaluated at an informal inspection by the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) and the feedback that we got was fantastic. ETI involved young people in the evaluation and told us, "Your programme is so good because it is so small. Those children and young people coming out of care need the sort of ratios and support that you are able to give them in such a small group." We are flexible and can respond to what is going on in their lives. If there is a new trauma, a change of placement, or a crisis, we can work around them. That is what we do. We have been doing it for 22 years now. However, equally, she said, "But you are very expensive." We know that; we can do the math.

The ESF programme, which you are clearly exercised about yourselves, is just not a fit for us. We are very concerned about how we are going to be able to run a programme that is really fit for purpose when it comes to young men like Darren, who need a second chance or maybe even need a third or fourth chance. We are the ones who are able to give that to them. I do not have an answer for you on the funding, I am afraid. We are struggling. We know what works for young people, and it needs to be provided.

Mr Ramsey: Bronwyn raised a point about gathering the Department's thoughts in and around targeting in the NEETs strategy. We talk about multimillion pounds, but where is this money going?

Arlene Foster confirmed yesterday that, this week, she will be making a fairly substantial bid for funding to the Executive for the economic inactivity strategy. The economic inactivity strategy is looking at the most vulnerable and regional imbalance, particularly hotspot areas. One can imagine that the grouping that you are representative of is reflective of that. I encourage you to find a wee bit of detail. She also confirmed that it will not be application driven but programme led. You need to be initiating a conversation with DETI. DSD has also been awarded over £300,000 in the Budget to look at economic inactivity. I encourage groups like yourselves, which are making a difference in young people's lives, to be in there making a good call for it.

Ms Gilligan: I appreciate that, thank you.

Ms Lo: Is that for the next three years? Or, is it for just one year?

Mr Ramsey: It is for immediately. I am not sure of the time frame, but it is for immediately.

Ms McGahan: Thank you for your presentation. Darren, I wish you all the best for your future. I live within the Southern Trust area. Recently, I met Action for Children foster care. On the back of that meeting, I put a question in to the Health Minister asking how many kids in the Southern Trust area are in foster care. It is sitting at 366. Only 1·61% of the overall budget is set aside for fostering, which does not seem like a big pile. Part of the reason why some kids are not at school for three months may be that we have a lack of carers in the Southern Trust area, for example, where the kids come from. That means that they are placed in another area outside of where they live, such as Bangor or Belfast. That has a detrimental impact. The new councils need to have a regional strategy specific to each trust area to try to get that joined-up approach, because it is sad that we still have that silo mentality. I have had meetings with the Southern Trust regarding the provision of special educational needs. That does not fit into their statutory duty, and they do not want to know. They may make referrals, but they do not want to know, because it is not their statutory duty to look at the whole area of education, skills and so on. It is an area that I am interested in. I probably will do a follow-up regarding the Southern Trust area on the issues that are outlined in your report.

Ms Gilligan: I think that you are right; there is pressure on placements. Certainly, recruiting enough foster carers is an ongoing issue. When a child is placed into care, with foster carers, the desire is to maintain the stability in the school. So, you might have those distances to travel. There is the upheaval of that as well, and it has an impact on the wider schooling experience. The child is not able to stay late for school, for example; there is the cost of transport; and the child has to get up even earlier and gets home late, and so on. So, it is another focus for us. However, I think that you are right. It is the logic between where you are living and where you are schooling. If that is up in the air, it is a challenge to put right.

Ms Barry: It prevents the young person being part of that local community. That is something we looked at in the survey. We have big numbers in volunteering and in the youth club, but you want them to be even higher. You want young people to have an attachment to the local community and to help integration.

Ms McGahan: We are not going to be able to solve that problem until more of a focus is put on recruiting carers within each trust area. My understanding is that the Southern Trust does not have a big pile, so more work needs to be done. I know that by talking to Action for Children foster care. We need to do more work around that. That is, obviously, the responsibility of the local health trust.

Ms Lo: A lack of foster parents is an age-old problem. It has been a problem for years. It is a lot better for young people to go into a foster home than to be in a home. Like you said, you have everything done for you.

Mr Smith: Yes, I was based in a children's home. I always said that if I had been put in a foster home, my education would have been far better, because the support would have been there. You would not have had a different staff in and out, and changes of personalities, for instance. I would have preferred foster care, I think.

Mr Irwin: It has been touched on by others, but the transition from care to independence is a very important stage. Darren, you managed through it. You said that it was difficult, and you felt that you had not got enough support at that stage. It is a vital stage in a young person's life, because he can go one way or the other, so it is crucial that there is more help at that stage. Do you see it as being one of the most important stages in the young person's life?

Ms Gilligan: Coming into care is obviously a critical time. At that stage of care, maybe having left the family home, the young person must be supported to reach an understanding of what is going on and why it is going on, and given a sense of what is going to happen next. Darren referred to the instability. He can speak to that himself if he likes, but he does talk about not knowing why it happened, not knowing where siblings were any more and not necessarily knowing where he was going to be next week. That goes back to Mr Buchanan's earlier point. What is the breakdown there? Why are we afraid to support even young children towards an understanding and insight into what is happening? I think that is critical.

We agree with you that, from 16, 17 or 18 on to 21, it is vital. I do not know the numbers, but there are very few young people in our population leaving home at 18. There are not that many leaving at 21, and some of them are not leaving at 30. Why do we expect what all of you have already recognised as one of the most vulnerable groups of young people to be fit for independence and holding down a tenancy of their own at 18? Some of them, if they are in foster placements and they stay on in education or employment, can choose to stay on under a scheme called Going the Extra Mile (GEM). They can stay on until 21. Young people coming out of children's homes in Northern Ireland do not have that option. We really are hot and heavy on that one, and we think that it is a big challenge. Why are the most vulnerable children and young people in Northern Ireland leaving home at 18 when we do not expect it of other families?

Mr Irwin: Yes, it has an effect on their future life. It is good that Darren has come through that, even with difficulties. I commend you for that.

Ms Barry: That is why we are looking towards Scotland. They have support up to 25. It allows young people to go in and out and not necessarily have the door shut at 20 or 21. For Darren, I am sure that that was a big issue. The support was cut off then, because he was not in education, training or employment. It is about getting away from that conditionality. Every young person, regardless of whether they are in education, training or employment, should be able to access those services. They should not be cut off at 21. They should be extended right up to 25. Should they choose that they do not want that support for six months, that is fine, but they can come back. There is not a closed door. That is why we are looking towards Scotland for what we would like to see in Northern Ireland.

Mr Anderson: Thank you all for coming and for your presentation, especially you, Darren. Sharing that experience, you certainly showed courage and determination. It is not easy to come along in front of a Committee and share that, so well done, and I wish you well for the future. Some of my points have been touched on. You mentioned that you spent some time working in Craigavon hospital. Will you tell us something about your experience there and how you found that?

Mr Smith: Because I wanted to do electrical engineering, I talked to a girl at the employability scheme, and she said that she could get me into maintenance, so I went up. All I was basically doing was walking around the hospital to see if there were any faults, and, if there was a fault, I would just stand and watch the maintenance person do it, so I was not learning any skills or making any progress. That is why I gave that up. I know that the employability scheme has worked for a lot of people, because my brother got a full-time job from it, and he is doing well out of it.

Mr Anderson: Really, what you found when you went along was that you were not really encouraged to progress. It was just more or less turning up —

Mr Smith: Holding a screwdriver.

Mr Anderson: I can understand. I think that is something that may need to be looked at for young people like you going out there.

Ms Gilligan: There is great potential in the employability scheme. It is maybe about fine-tuning some of those things around the needs of the care-experienced young person at that stage. It is the added value that we are calling for.

Mr Anderson: I think that there needs to be a better understanding of what is needed.

Ms Gilligan: It is back to the school situation really, yes.

Mr Anderson: Darren, you also talk about your personal adviser. I think that you spoke highly of that person, but you lacked support from the social worker. Did you have a number of social workers?

Mr Smith: Through my time in care, I had a few social workers. I always relied on my PA, because we had a good relationship and a good bond. I was able to talk to her more. I did not seem to get on with the social worker.

Mr Anderson: Was it more of a personal thing? Were some of the social workers OK?

Mr Smith: I did get on with social workers. At the start, I got on with my social worker. When I started wanting to move out and all, it was just —

Mr Anderson: Things changed.

Mr Smith: Yes. It was not the same kind of relationship with her.

Ms Barry: Something that came through in our survey was the high number and the high turnover of social workers.

We recognise that social workers are the gatekeepers; they have such an important role for those young people.

I would like to share a few findings, if I may. Our 2013 survey showed that 50% of over-12s in care had four or more social workers since they came into care, so there is quite a high turnover, for various reasons. There are changes due to resource challenges. We recognise the pressure that social services are under. However, we need to ask how much change is reasonable in the lives of children and young people. There will always be change, but we need to mitigate that and prevent there being four or more social workers. We see relationships as a golden thread, and, as Darren said, his relationship with his PA gave him that really good support. We need to put time, money and effort into —

Mr Anderson: What is coming through here today is that it is down to that personal relationship on a one-to-one basis. The stronger that is, the better young people and people like you will progress. It is difficult with social workers working within different resources and suchlike.

You told us that you got into trouble between 12 and 16. If you had to relive that, what do you think you could tell us that could help someone in a similar situation?

Mr Smith: It is maybe about having more activities. I was living in a children's home, and there were no set activities or anything to do. You were just sitting about the house, and you got bored, so you went out with other young people and started wrecking a car. It is about peer pressure, but it is mostly boredom and not having stability to talk to someone if you get angry. I have anger management problems, so, if I got angry, that is what I would have done; I would have just wrecked the place. I had no one who could have sat me down and talked to me.

Mr Anderson: When you went into the home, you found that you were left to your own devices.

Mr Smith: Yes.

Mr Anderson: And you needed more guidance and more to do.

Mr Smith: Yes.

Mr Anderson: That is what you were looking for. There is an issue there as well. You picked up on a point of there not being understanding in certain cases of young people from backgrounds like yours. If that was worked on, we could see differences and a change of attitudes.

Thanks for coming along and sharing your experience. You have shown that courage, and I wish you well in the future.

Mr Smith: Thank you.

Mr Flanagan: Thanks for the presentation. In my experience, social workers are very badly under-resourced. Is that an issue that you find in your sector? Is trying to get access to social workers, who can effectively help you and your clients, a problem at the minute?

Ms Gilligan: They are certainly under pressure; I do not think that anybody would say that they are having a great time. They are certainly under pressure, and you will know the sort of priority issues that they are dealing with and that we are all concerned about in the area of sexual exploitation of children and how that reflects on children in care and in children's homes and so on. There is a lot of pressure.

Largely, we find that there is a great level of cooperation. We get a lot of referrals of children from their social workers and PAs to our services. While everything that we do is on a voluntary basis and is led by the child, having a supportive referral from a social worker or a PA can really help with the effectiveness of us providing that additional support. There is a high degree of recognition of and support for our services.

Mr Flanagan: Do any changes need to be made in the way that the social worker system works to improve the services that young people receive?

Ms Gilligan: It goes back to the continuity of the relationship. I know that the Department is undertaking a review of the strategy for looked-after children. We have raised the issue of continuity of relationship, the need for that relationship to be steady to understand the child and to be solid and effective so that the support can be delivered and maintained. That would be top of our list.

Mr Flanagan: In your experience, are there sufficient numbers of social workers in all areas?

Ms Gilligan: I could not speak to levels of case management at the moment. Sorry.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): OK. That is all. Thank you for —

Ms Lo: Sorry, can I just ask one question? As I said earlier, I left social services in the 1990s. You said that you had a personal adviser: where does that person come from? Is it social services?

Ms Barry: Yes, they are part of the trust.

Ms Lo: So what is the difference between a social worker and a personal adviser?

Ms Gilligan: They are not necessarily social work-qualified.

Ms Lo: But they can work in tandem with a social worker.

Ms Gilligan: Yes. At the moment, the system is the appointment of a social worker and a personal adviser.

Ms Lo: You find that the personal adviser is more helpful to you.

Mr Smith: Yes, they are far easier to talk to.

Ms Gilligan: At that stage, because the focus is on the transition to leaving care, their focus might be very practical. It might be about, "What do we do next and who do we need to contact?". It will be very focused on the transition towards leaving.

Mr Smith: I think that the social workers have so many cases that they do not have the time to sit and talk to a young person. The personal adviser had time to talk, and that was why I had more of a bond with the PA.

Ms Lo: Absolutely. That is what you need. Thank you.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Thank you, Eithne, Ruth and especially you, Darren, for sharing your experiences with us today. We will follow that up.