The National Children’s Bureau in partnership with the University of Kent marked the launch of a new creative project celebrating those with lived experience of children’s social care assessments, at a packed event in London.
NCB brought together children and young people, charity colleagues, leading academics, government officials and creatives for a party to celebrate the start of the Public Engagement Award. One third of the 145 attendees at the Wellcome Trust event were experts-by-experience in children’s social care.
Part of the Living Assessments programme, the project will enable young people to tap into their personal experiences of children’s social care and/or disability through diverse forms of creative expression from theatre and poetry to painting and photography.
The project aims to inspire and encourage young people to explore different forms of creativity, share their diverse experiences, and establish a sense of solidarity within the social care community.
It will also enable NCB to use creative methods to explore and disseminate the findings ofLiving Assessments, our five year social care project with the University of Cambridge and the University of Kent.
Professor Julie Anderson from the University of Kent, opened the event and introduced special guest speaker, poet and author, Lemn Sissay OBE.
During his passionate speech, drawing on his own childhood experience of children’s social care, he told the audience: “We have been hiding the stories of young people in care whilst not serving them.
“When I was in care, we were the dysfunctional ones whose stories could be shared by others for any reason – as if everyone else’s stories weren’t dysfunctional. We were hated as people in care because we were living walking proof that dysfunction is in all families.”
Speaking about how his creative journey as a poet helped him to overcome challenges he faced during his life, Lemn explained: “Creativity is not the monopoly of artists. It’s not about poetry, any parent will tell you that. Parents look for that spark in their child’s life.”
“You want them to catch that wave, that undefinable insight into themselves, that there’s something better than themselves which is magical. That’s creativity, it’s all around us.”
Attendees also heard from NCB’s own Dame Christine Lenehan who said: “When we ask young people in care or disabled young people and their families to tell their stories, it’s not easy, it’s an emotional process. The assessment industry is built on failure – ‘tell us why your life went wrong?’ – and that’s not a great place to start.
“This programme is really important, to ask some of those fundamentals about why we do what we do, but also to allow the voice and the individuality of these young people to shine through."
Three experts-by-experience at the event
Adding: “Very rarely do we see systems in place that really tell us about each young person, their strengths, their dreams and their opportunities and there are lots of ways we can do that now. At the heart of it, what really matters, is that we value that voice, we value those experts by experience, we value your unique contribution to your story and we can use your story to define solutions to your needs.
“With this programme if we can bank that creativity and those stories and make it safe for the young people involved then we will have moved a significant way forward in what we’re trying to do.”
If you are a young person with lived experience of social care and would like to enter a submission into our online gallery please email: [email protected]
If you would like to find out more about our Living Assessments project click here.