Let Me Tell You About My PAC Journey!
My name is Sophie and I am a Peer Researcher with the Peer Action Collective from Warrington.
The Beginning:
I first joined PAC as I was looking for an exciting opportunity which would allow me to use my past experiences and skills that I’ve developed to help drive my fight for change within the care system. I’m most passionate about the systems involved in ‘leaving care’ due to being let down by multiple services when I needed them the most for support.
Throughout my time interviewing I think it was important that everyone participating felt respected and listened to, as I know you often don’t feel listened to and respected by the services you receive during your time whilst in care and leaving care.
When I joined PAC, I felt welcomed and respected by the team as we shared something in common, which was we had all experienced being in the care system. During the research phase, I had the opportunity to interview other care experienced young people which I enjoyed. Throughout my time interviewing I think it was important that everyone participating felt respected and listened to, as I know you often don’t feel listened to and respected by the services you receive during your time whilst in care and leaving care. It was also important to reassure them that their experiences, stories and ideas will help to contribute towards social action ideas which they can participate in too. I think this is one of the best parts of PAC.
Highlights from PAC:
A highlight moment whilst I have been at PAC has been taking ownership of my own work and then being able to share it with the rest of the team and other services through team presentations and posters. In addition, I think that my communication skills have developed, for example through writing better formal emails to services and using my creativity skills to make invitations for our events using Canva.
On a personal level, I have gained more confidence and courage in my abilities, including leading the research interviews, participating in group discussions and sharing my ideas without feeling as anxious
On a personal level, I have gained more confidence and courage in my abilities, including leading the research interviews, participating in group discussions and sharing my ideas without feeling as anxious, such as at the residential with the different PAC teams. The residential allowed me to connect with the other PAC Teams and share thoughts and ideas for our own projects without feeling too overwhelmed. Before I joined PAC, I was shy and I found meeting new people challenging especially big groups, but PAC has helped me to overcome this by attending the regular Pure Insight cafes (which aims to bring together care leavers and create a safe environment for care leavers to attend to socialise and receive support or engage in activities so that they don’t feel as lonely) and mixing with other PAC members.
A moment which I feel proud of is when I attended the Youth Endowment Funds’ conference: ‘Strengthening Practice: Supporting Children & Young People at Risk of Extra‑Familial Harm’ with my team. I delivered a presentation with another PAC Lead based on what our project is about and sharing the research findings with a range of Directors and Services. I felt proud about this because there was a big audience, so I felt nervous, and I also wanted to do my best to make sure the key messages from the presentations and passion was delivered successfully. After the presentation was finished, we received lots of praise and appreciation from different professionals which made me feel satisfied as I had spent lots of time building these skills during interviews!
What matters the most to me from the research findings:
In my opinion, based on the 8 key themes from our research impact report, the main two which stood out to me the most is:
‘Foster care feels less regulated than other forms of care and is reported as unsafe by care experienced young people’ – this theme resonated with me the most as throughout my time in foster care I often encountered situations which felt less regulated and which I should have received more support for. Foster homes are often talked about as feeling more nurturing than residential homes because they bring a family environment for those who need it the most.
Because of that, my perception was that care experienced young people would have had an advantage from being in a foster care setting because it was a family environment. However, our research participants talked more negatively about foster care than about residential. I wasn’t surprised that some people had experienced the same issue as me, but I was surprised that so many people had. I was shocked at the seriousness of some of the stories that participants told me about. It became clear that the consistency of quality of foster care is a bigger and more common issue than I had thought.
There shouldn’t be a certain age when you stop being able to access support, it should be when people are ready. When you leave care, you are very vulnerable and most care leavers don’t have a stable relationship with their family or friends, which leads to loneliness and increases the risk of bad decision making.
‘Care experienced young people face a reduction in support and increased vulnerability as they leave care’ – I was surprised at this key theme because I feel like support for care experienced young people should increase when you leave care, not decrease. There shouldn’t be a certain age when you stop being able to access support, it should be when people are ready. When you leave care, you are very vulnerable and most care leavers don’t have a stable relationship with their family or friends, which leads to loneliness and increases the risk of bad decision making. I can also relate to this as I had minimal support when I needed it the most, especially when I first moved into my own place – it felt very isolating and overwhelming. So why should support stop at such a vulnerable time?
I hope that you have enjoyed reading this and hopefully it has resonated with you in different ways which will help you so that you can potentially gather your own ideas for action moving forward in your work. Pure Insight PAC has lots of social action plans upcoming, including roundtable events with professionals and workshops for care experienced young people focusing on healthy/unhealthy relationships, which are all going to be peer led by care experienced young people.
This is only the beginning of the change we hope to create. Through on-going social action and new research, Pure Insights PAC work is continuing to grow and drive progress. Stay connected to see what’s next.
Why not check out the PAC Resources page where you can find lots of other impactful pieces of work including our Findings Report.
Written by Sophie, PAC Lead
