Leaving Care

Through our enquiries service we can answer your questions and provide information on key issues on working with older young people from care.

Keynotes is a national newsletter on leaving care. To subscribe free to Keynotes or if you would like to write an article contact us.

We can offer advice and support to further develop services in your local authority/region. We are currently working to do this in most regions and are involved in over 70 local authorities. Read more about the NCAS offer.

The National Standards in leaving care work alongside a self assessment system and practice database containing examples of practice, tools and resources to improve services. Get in touch if you have practice examples to share or would like support with using the standards.

The WMTD Guide to Corporate Parenting can be downloaded free from our website. We will also work with local authorities to ensure that corporate parenting is understood throughout the authority and is led by young people. For more information contact us.

NCAS have developed a participation model for young people in and from care.
With our new Participation Service we are happy to advise and support you to develop your participation services – ensuring that young people play their full role in service improvement. We are already facilitating development of regional participation services for 29 local authorities.
Development of local Pledges, Children in Care Councils and participation services – Our methodology for ensuring young people are at the centre of the development of the Pledge and Children in Care Councils is being used already and we are able to work with other local authorities. For more information contact us.

We offer training delivered with young people in Preparation for Adult Life. The preparation materials are available free here. Hard copies will be available to be purchased at a later date, contact us to register your interest. We can facilitate training for carers and workers on preparing young people and using the materials. All the training is co facilitated with young people.

What Makes the Difference piloted approaches to improving education, training and employment outcomes in a number of local authorities. Case studies of pilots of work placement, individual tuition and additional support to young people not in education, employment or training are on the products pages, as is reports on the work of the Life’s Too Short partnership with Connexions west Yorkshire. We can support you to develop projects to improve education, training and employment outcomes and are running a national employability scheme from April 2009.

As part of our national role we are already actively supporting work in most regional forums and are looking to ensure we provide support to all forums nationally to maximise networking opportunities, share good practice and provide up to date knowledge on policy and practice development.

The Benchmarking Forum now represents over 50 local authorities. The Forum supports a practice development programme to improve service delivery, provides a learning network and a strong national voice/role for members in developing policy and practice. It works on a national and European level – sharing learning and good practice. The Forum also develops useful practice tools and guidance. For more information contact us.

This one year project aims to identify and promote policy and practice to improve the availability, quality and choice of accommodation for young people. In association with Shelter the project will produce a resource guide to help identify the steps to providing suitable accommodation at each stage of a young persons journey to adult life. Read more about the accommodation project and look at the free resources available.

WMTD was very successful in providing funded opportunities for partnership working across organisations to develop and share practice that improves outcomes. NCAS will continue that work on both a national and European level. We are currently running an EU funded project working in five EU countries to develop innovation in employment for young people leaving care.

In its policy work NCAS seeks to improve the transitions to independence of young people from local authority care by influencing the legislative and policy context. We support government by providing expert advice and ensuring they have accurate information on which to base policy decisions. We also work with members of parliament and government departments to amend and improve legislation relating to care leavers. To fulfil our policy role we rely on our partnerships with government regional offices, partner organisations and our links with local authorities across the country. In this way we ensure that we continue to reflect real practice issues into positive policy development.

What we do