Who are the Care Ambassadors? 

Buckinghamshire’s Care Ambassadors are young people and young adults who share their experiences of being cared for by Buckinghamshire Council to make things better for care-experienced children, young people and young adults.

Introductions and welcomes

• We welcomed Hamish
• We played a beach ball icebreaker and name game.
  In this game we throw a beachball to each other which has questions written on the coloured sections. When we catch the ball, we read out the question it lands on and share our name and our answer.
• We did emoji drawings to reflect how we were feeling.
• Update from Care Ambassadors JJ, JH, BPK and OR about the social worker training day.

Let’s Talk about the Corporate Parenting Panel

We spilt into 2 groups and discussed some questions.

1. What is a corporate parent?

2. Why do we have a Corporate Parenting Panel?

3. What is a Take-Over?

Hamish in the Hot Seat

We sat on the tables surrounding Hamish and asked him questions.

• Greatest passion?
  “My daughters”
• How long have you been mentoring?
  “A year, I really enjoy supporting young people, I like hearing their wisdom.”
• What are you here to support us with today?
  “Communications, business, and to get your voices heard and across in a way that makes change.”

Hamish clarified that he himself not a Corporate Parenting Panel member; he is a friend of Alison’s.
(Alison is our Service Director for Children’s Social Care – she came to our meeting in January.)

Hamish said that it is his role to help the Care Ambassadors share their messages in a clear way and help them get their best voices in the meeting. He will help us come up with a plan and coach us on how to deliver it.

Preparing for the Corporate Parenting Panel Take-Over: Choosing Themes

We spoke through some themes that the Care Ambassadors suggested for the Take-Over; it was then over to the young people to vote for two themes by putting tokens into voting boxes around the room.

Independent Living and Education received the most votes.

We then spent some time brainstorming these topics on big pieces of paper.

Who is coming to the Take-Over?

• Krissie and Angel explained that there would be senior leaders / professionals at the Take-Over; the Corporate Parenting Panel members. These are councillors and Council officers such as Heads of Service.
  We discussed how many senior leaders / professionals we would like at the Take-Over.
  The Care Ambassadors agreed no more than 10, so that the number of young people matches the number of professionals.
• Angel, Krissie and Sam will attend as supporting adults, in addition to the 10 professionals.
• The professionals in the room will be linked to the topics being discussed – for example someone from the Virtual School to reflect the Education topic.
• We agreed to host “short and sweet” introductions, and have bios prepped ahead of time along with name tags and a short sentence or fact about one another.
• Hamish suggested that we all have roles on the day, like a Chair, Wellbeing Lead, Secretary, someone in charge of questions.
  The Care Ambassadors are happy to each have a role.

Let’s Get Planning – Top Tips from Hamish

• Use your roles to frame the day – one young person will handle the introductions, then pass on to another young person to introduce the section on Independent Living, who will pass on to another person to lead the next talking section, and so on.
• Invite questions – Questions will help the conversation flow.
• Passion & energy – You can use props and hand gestures to bring the conversation to life.
• Make notes / summarise the meeting.
• Use different communication techniques – e.g. oral (speaking), visual (pictures), writing things down.

Break

After all that planning, we had a break with pasta dinner.

In our breaks, young people relax, eat and talk.
“It’s our time for sharing memories, laughing and having fun.” – Care Ambassador JH

Any Other Business and Time to Finish Up

At the end of the meeting, Krissie and Angel confirmed the next steps on the Corporate Parenting Panel Take-Over and we said goodbye.

Next Steps

Feedback

“They are very professional but above all patient and kind!” – Hamish