10,000 young people in England and Wales leave state care every year. Each has a Pathway Plan, but many young people find that these are paper-based, agency-driven, tick-box exercises which do not support them to transition to adulthood successfully. Alongside, there is limited data collected around care leavers' progress and outcomes, and therefore little information on which to base service design, improvement and assessment of best practice.
Social Finance is developing a digital tool which will provide:
- An electronic pathway plan which helps plan holistically for adulthood while collecting data on young people's progress
- Joint ownership and editing in real time by young people and professionals
- Improved accountability for support for young people
- A communication route for young people to flag support needs
- Outcomes monitoring and data collection
The tool will also embed a new strengths-based outcomes framework, which we have developed with leading academics to recognise the full spectrum of needs that support young people to transition successfully to adulthood.
We are working with local authorities and young people to design the tool and embed it, using the data it produces to optimise their services, including:
- Embedding the use of data to understand and improve service provision
- Enhancing the role of professionals
- Incorporating the voice of care leavers into service development
- Codifying and spreading best practice.
In this workshop we will:
- Share the outcomes framework and the principles behind it and how it is being used
- Demo the new app and share how it is being used in practice
- Share initial findings from our work, including insights from young people, professionals and managers around service gaps, opportunities for improvement and key themes.
We will welcome input and discussion from attendees, as well as ideas about how our learnings could be taken to other international contexts.
