At their recent meeting, members of Dumfries Galloway Champions Board endorsed and signed up to the new Scottish Care Leavers Covenant.
Gavin Stevenson (Chair) and Greta Sherry (Vice Chair) signed the Covenant alongside Ewan Ross from CELCIS (Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland), one of the partners of this cross sector initiative that aims to promote better outcomes for care leavers and give corporate parents and other providers an improvement framework across a range of key themes.
The Scottish Care Leavers Covenant supports Scotland’s corporate parents, carers, practitioners, managers and decision makers in fulfilling their duties to improve the life chances of all of Scotland’s care leavers.
Care leavers often struggle on their journey into adulthood. For many the leap from care to independence is just too great, and too many continue to experience problems that lead to much poorer outcomes than the general population.
Councillor Jim Dempster, who is Chairman of the Council’s Social Work Services Committee commented;
“Dumfries and Galloway’s Champions Board is delighted to sign up to the Scottish Care Leavers Covenant. By doing so, this shows our commitment to improving the lives of our care leavers both locally and nationally. Through the work of our Champions Board as well as our Corporate Parenting partnership, we are determined to work together with our care leavers and service providers to ensure the services they receive in our region are the best they possibly can be.”
The Covenant offers an Agenda for Change, designed to support Corporate Parents specifically in the implementation of Parts 9 – 11 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) 2014 Act. It builds on the principles of Getting It Right for Every Child (GIRFEC)1 by taking a holistic, young person-centred approach and focuses on the long-term wellbeing needs of care leavers; highlighting the need for early intervention and help that is appropriate, proportionate and timely.
Dumfries and Galloway Champions Board is a partnership between looked after young people and care leavers and Senior Managers from across the Council, the NHS, Police Scotland and the Third Sector. Gavin Stevenson (Chief Executive) is chair and is supported by a member of the Listen2Us young people’s consultation group as Vice Chair.
The Board meets quarterly to discuss recommendations made through consultations with care experienced young people and turn these into actions to improve services for these young people.
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