An Allyship of Lived and Professional Experience Leaders
Offering training, consultancy, and leadership programmes for children’s social care
Who We Are:
We empower young people to leave services in a better place than when they entered, by equipping professionals with the necessary tools and support to make it happen.
What We Do:
Through our lived experience and professional training, inspirational keynotes, and expert consultancy, we equip you with the tools and knowledge you need to make a difference in young peoples lives. We provide tailored solutions and support to help you improve outcomes for children in care, care leavers and those with a social worker.
Contact Us
Our Services:
Training:
Our training goes beyond trauma-informed theory and research; it is enriched by lived experience and strengthened by practical knowledge.
Each session enhances your understanding of the lived experiences of children in care, care leavers, and those with a social worker, providing you with the skills and confidence needed to deliver effective support.
Keynotes:
We blend real-life experiences with professional insights to deliver inspiring keynotes that challenge perspectives and equip you with practical tools to transform your daily practices when working with young people.
Consultancy:
Our leaders bring specialist expertise and personal insights to design services to transform children’s social care. Combining stories with strategies we have led and worked with some of the UK’s leading transformation programmes – don’t take our word for it, our case studies speak for themselves.
Leadership Programme:
The Care Leaders Fellowship is a leadership programme open to lived and professional experience leaders aspiring to develop ideas, projects, or businesses with the goal of enhancing the lives of young people in social care.
Our training and keynotes
Endings: Providing children a healthy understanding of the inevitability of endings.
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
This session looks at the impact of endings, focussing on the psychological and practical challenges that arise. Although we talk about the negative impact this can have, the aim of this session is to give you tools to communicate with young people, helping them develop coping mechanisms and foster positive mindsets towards them.
Read MoreTeenage Mental Health: The challenges for care experienced people.
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
The session delves into the lived experiences of teenagers in and leaving care, dissecting how their unique challenges intersect with mental health diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Guided by real-world scenarios and enriched by evidence, this session provides a foundational understanding of mental health concerning care-experienced individuals.
Read MoreLeaving Care: Supporting young people to transition out of care and into meaningful independence.
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
This session aims to provide an overview of the wide-ranging challenges and opportunities of leaving care. We begin by understanding the systemic challenges that may make this transition especially difficult, navigating housing options, understanding benefits, gaining employment, and how they can often cancel, contradict or counteract each other.
Read MoreMessages in Behaviour: What Children Are Really Telling Us
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
Participants will gain insights into how behaviours are formed and reinforced, and how young people develop their understanding of right and wrong. By examining the underlying factors and influences - such as parenting, peers and teachers, participants will be equipped with a more comprehensive understanding of children's behaviours, allowing for more effective support and intervention.
Read MoreEntering Care: The Real Reasons Children Enter Care
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
This session offers participants a real-life journey into the care system, providing valuable insights into the experiences and challenges faced by young people entering care -grounding the learning in lived experiences.
Read MoreThe Impact of Recording and Communication
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
This session that explores how unconscious bias influences the recording and communication practices within social work.
Read MoreTrauma & Transitions
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
The session explores primary school to secondary school transitions, entering and leaving the care system, and different age transitions for young people.
Read MoreAdverse Childhood Experiences and Parenting Styles
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
Throughout this session, participants will explore various adverse childhood experiences and their effects on children and young people.
Read MoreTwo timetables – The demand of school & social care
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
This session helps you support children in care in school more effectively.
Read MoreLiving a careless life – An inspirational story about living in care.
- Face to Face
- Keynote
- Virtual
The keynote is focused on the power of relationships, highlighting what individuals can do to have a huge impact on the lives of children in the care system.
Read MoreLived experience leadership – The impact of experience on service delivery and design
- Face to Face
- Keynote
- Virtual
What does it mean to have lived experience? When we think about negative experiences we naturally think they are inhibitors of progression...
Read MoreLeading care – Redefining the narrative of leaving care
- Face to Face
- Keynote
- Virtual
This keynote focuses on the system of leaving care, analysing the approaches to supporting children to effectively become independent.
Read MoreChildren’s Social Care – The people and services
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
This session is all about the people and services within children’s social care so you know who young people are being supported by.
Read MoreChildren in Need – Born to love and be loved
- Face to Face
- On-demand
- Virtual
This session helps practitioners understand the issues for young people before they come into care and how this impacts them
Read More
Richard Nash
Director of children’s services, Buckinghamshire
I’ve seen the language change verbally and in recording, and I’ve only heard positive things from this training.
Victoria Banks
Virtual school headteacher, Middlesbrough
I highly recommend The Care Leaders to support key stakeholders in understanding the journey through care by those who know it best, care experienced young people. The training they provide is engaging, and thought-provoking and offers professionals a reliable and comprehensive tool kit to enhance their daily practice. Their online platform is easy to access and offers much more than a pre-recorded e-learning course.
Leslea Marwick
Education advisor, East Sussex Virtual School
Attendees reported that they really learnt a lot. It gave them a good understanding of the situation of children who come into the care system, and how best to support them. The key messages were clear with ‘calls to action which we have been able to take away and use to inform our practice. The lived experience informing this course and the storytelling skills of the presenter made the course particularly powerful.
Anonymous
Fostering team manager
Certain phraseology has stuck in my head – ‘being emotionally overwhelmed’, ‘Children come into care not because of what they’ve done but because of what’s been done to them’, The session regarding rethinking responses to what children say was also incredibly powerful and is something I will definitely be looking at with my team.
Anonymous
School teacher
This training has exceeded my expectations. It was the sensitivity of the delivery that made it special…truly making us see the experience through the eyes of the young people in care.
I now have a better understanding of the care system, and how it affects students. This has led me to be able to better support ‘Looked After Children’.
Anonymous
Social worker
Brilliant. Really engaging. I felt that way in which you combined personal stories with the data / legal definition side of things was really well pitched. I felt so much more invested in this training than A LOT of other training I have attended.
What we’ve been up to
The Protected Characteristic Campaign for Care Experience: Are the recommendations suggesting we break Human Rights Laws?
I decided after my two initial blogs to pause and reflect before releasing any more blogs, this was for two reasons. Firstly, I experienced uncomfortable behaviour online directed towards me. I was shut down and blocked by one of the campaigners, and accused of being discriminatory by another. In my view, these are two serious […]
Read More
‘They’ve just made care experienced a protected characteristic, what do I do now?’
‘They’ve just passed the motion to make care experienced a protected characteristic, and now it’s my job to put it into practice’. I’ve had several calls that start with a different version of this phrase. Good, caring and passionate professionals who have been given the task to put into action what is currently being campaigned […]
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Care Experienced as a Protected Characteristic: A view from the other side.
Like many people I have sat on my hands, watched the ‘protected characteristics’ campaign and remained silent with my concern. I worry about the angst it could create for those whose personal testimonies drive this campaign if I challenge it. I fear persecution if I oppose a movement driven to end discrimination. I worry about […]
Read More
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