Continuing Care – Your experiences

Are you aged 16- 21? Do you live in residential, foster, or kinship care or did you used to? We’re interested in your views, experiences, or ideas about your right to ‘staying put’ in Continuing Care

What this is all about 

In 2014, the Scottish Parliament passed a law meaning that if you are/were ‘looked after away from home’ – in residential care such as a children’s home or residential school, lived with foster carers, or ‘kinship carers’ such as other family members on or after your 16th birthday then you are eligible and entitled to stay there with the same carers up until your 21st birthday and receive the same support if you want to. Under this law, this is called Continuing Care. The idea is that you should be encouraged to stay, made to feel welcome to stay, advised of your rights to stay, or, if you wish to move, advised of what options there are for you to choose from.

We’re looking to understand how this is working and what ‘Continuing Care’ feels like for young people.

If you live in, or who have left, residential, foster, or kinship care, we are very interested in making sure you can share this with us. We're curious about your views, experiences or ideas about what is or was important to you. With this information, we can help organisations such as local authorities to improve how they talk to young people about Continuing Care and the support they provide. We are not asking anyone to share any specific details of their own experiences of care.

I’m interested, what do I need to know?

In order to help you decide if you would like to take part, we have set out here what you might want to think about first. Perhaps you’d like to discuss this with other people while you think about it, and you can also contact us for more information if something is unclear, without agreeing to take part.

Anyone who does want to take part can also change their mind and withdraw the information they have shared with us before we close the information collection stage.

All information shared with us will then be anonymized so that no one can be identified from the information they have given us.

Taking part in this research will not affect any services that you receive, in any way.

If you have any questions about this research project, you can contact Brandi Lee at brandilee.loughdennell@strath.ac.uk

How can I share my views, ideas, and opinions on this?

You can share your views, opinions, ideas, and—if you are comfortable doing so—experiences with us in a number of different ways.

You can send your thoughts in writing as a statement, poem, story, letter, or diary entry; or visually through photographs, art, or videos; or a sound recording such as a voice memo.

All we ask is that anything you share with us is yours to share, written or created by you (for example, a photograph is one you took and doesn’t include anyone or anything you don’t have permission to share) and that you share this will us directly not publicly though social media.

Your contribution can be emailed to us at celcis.research@strath.ac.uk or sent to us a text or a file in WhatsApp to 07967 339 359

You have until midnight on Sunday 20 June to send us your information.

What will happen to the information shared?

Other people are interested in knowing what children and young people think about Continuing Care. So, we will be bringing together all the information shared with us in these ways with information we’ll also be getting from workshops with young people and speaking directly to professionals responsible for supporting Continuing Care.

We will write some reports about what children and young people say is important to them, but we won’t name anyone. Nothing recorded in the report will be connected by name to anyone taking part in this part of the project. Names will be replaced with pseudonyms, (made up names), so that no-one reading the report can know who sent us that information.

From all this information we will see what themes are being shared particularly around things that work well and things that are difficult. We will then write a report which will be read by the Scottish Government and other organisations who have a role in providing Continuing Care. A shorter summary of the research will also be made available to anyone taking part should they like one of these and pass on their details to us to send this to them via email.

The results of the project will be made available in reports and publications on this website.

CELCIS is part of the University of Strathclyde. This research was granted ethical approval by the University of Strathclyde Ethics Committee. This means it has been checked for how we will be doing this research and the rights of anyone taking part. You can read more about how the University uses your information and your rights under Data Protection Regulations here: Privacy Notice for Research Participants. This also means that anyone who has concerns when they take part can also contact an independent person: Secretary to the University Ethics Committee, Research & Knowledge Exchange Services, University of Strathclyde, 50 George Street Glasgow, G1 1QE: telephone: 0141 548 3707; email: ethics@strath.ac.uk

Support

If you are aged 16 or over and have already ‘left care’ and moved into other accommodation then you will be eligible for aftercare support, potentially up to age 26. If you are unsure of your current status and rights to Continuing Care or aftercare support you should talk to your carers, social worker or throughcare worker in your local authority area in the first instance and they should help explain all your options.

Who Cares? Scotland provides support and advice and legal advice is available from Clan Childlaw and the Scottish Child Law Centre:

WhoCares? Scotland:

• Tel: 0141 226 4441
• email: hello@whocaresscotland.org

Clan Childlaw:

• Tel: 08081290522
• Text: 07527566682
• email: info@clanchildlaw.org

Scottish Child Law Centre 

Call Free on 

• 0800 328 8970 (from a landline) 
• 0300 330 1421 (from a mobile)
• email: Advice@SCLC.org.uk