Building Safe, Impactful Roles for Care‑Experienced Young People: A Reflection from Churchill Fellow Clare Holdsworth (UK)

Ahead of her visit to Melbourne, Clare shares insights from her work in Sheffield and the questions guiding her research into best‑practice voice and influence roles. To register your interest in attending this sector gathering with Clare, head over to our events page

I am continually pinching myself expecting to wake up any moment and can’t quite believe I will be gathering with you all in a few weeks’ time. Thank you so much for hosting and bringing us all together to share learning. I am immensely grateful for the time you are all putting into this session.

I thought it would be useful to tell you a bit more about myself and my Churchill Fellowship before we meet. My background is in Advocacy and running Advocacy voice groups for children and young people with care experience in Sheffield for the past 18 years. Over this period, we increasingly connected with Creative Practitioners to produce a body of work to share the voices of children and young people in the city (such as poetry books, murals and music events.) I saw young people volunteering and engaging in these groups over many years and developing a range of skills including training and interviewing staff, yet many of these young people would not mange to gain or sustain employment.

I designed a new team in 2022 with 5 roles ringfenced for care experienced young people that gave each of them maximum chance of remaining in the role to build up their skills and move onto permanent full-time work. The posts were:

• Flexible hours they could build up over time
• Had a Mentor attached
• Had an employment support worker in the last 9 months
• Had the opportunity to do a Youth Work Qualification in the final year
• Had the chance to build up a whole range of skills in the council over time

The first cohort were with us for 3 years. We operated the team as a commissionable service to do research, training and policy writing. We had over 35 commissions over the first 3 years and generated all project costs. The team were front and centre to The Community Parenting Strategy in co-producing it based on wider voice and then scrutinising and holding leaders to account.

However, I would also say the team raised as many questions as it answered! I am excited to learn from other organisations on my Churchill Fellowship and am recruiting a new cohort on my return and would like to draw up a best practice model from my fellowship looking at:

1. How can the roles be designed and delivered in a way that balances support and skills development? It is vital that workers are supported in a way to give them maximum chance succeeding in the roles, yet also able to develop workplace behaviours that reflect expectations of wider employers and workplaces. Paid Voice and Influence roles are unique in terms of the power dynamics they create in an organisation; by their very nature the posts are created to challenge the corporate parent- which is the local authority, yet V&I workers are paid members of staff in entry level roles.
2. How can Voice and Influence Workers establish constructive working relationships with Senior Leaders and Council Staff to challenge them to make changes on behalf of their wider care experienced community? Another area that’s closely linked to this is around how to work in a trauma informed way. The care experienced voice and influence workers spoke of times in monthly supervisions where past trauma was triggered by areas of work, especially times when they were championing for service improvement. We tried to plan work carefully with the workers to ensure they were not leading on areas that were upsetting for them. At times this was difficult for the workers and the staff team around them supporting them in their roles.
3. How can we employ care experienced young people in a way that promotes psychological safety for the young people in voice and influence roles and those supporting and working alongside them?

I am looking forward to hearing from you all around your work and journeys to date navigating similar challenges.