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.
Our May meeting
Topic
Our March topic was all about care-experienced young people creating a training programme for some new social workers to improve practice and services!
Since this session took place, four Care Ambassadors delivered a training session.
Read about the Social Worker Training Session
Who are Social Workers?
Social workers support children and young people. They are there to review the needs of families, children, and young people, and help make support plans for the future. They offer emotional and practical support.
Attendees:
• 11 Care Ambassadors: EM, JH ,JJ, BPK, ARH, MA, OR, MM, LW, WCR, DR
• 3 staff from Youth Voice Bucks: Angel, Krissie and Lucy
• Guest: Kelsey Lentes
Agenda
- Introductions and welcomes
- Let’s talk about Ofsted
- Getting to know Kelsey
- Let’s Talk about Social workers!
- Break
- Good and Bad Social worker
- Any Other Business and time to finish up
Introductions and welcomes
- We welcomed Kelsey
- We played a game of would you rather, by moving around the room.
- We did emoji drawings to reflect how we were feeling.
- We read through our Group Promises.
- DR and MA spoke about their attendance and presentation at the Corporate Parenting Panel the previous week.
Let’s Talk about Ofsted
- We did a quick recap on who Ofsted are, why the group spoke to them in February, and what was spoken about with the inspectors.
- Angel read out notes to remind the group of their views and comments.
Getting to know Kelsey
In this section of the meeting we got to know Kelsey and learn about her role as an Advanced Practice Practitioner for Buckinghamshire’s Social Work Academy.
Let’s Talk about Social workers!
Kelsey spoke with the Care Ambassadors about her vision for the training programme and what the goals are.
Kelsey explained to the young people that 14 social workers have been recruited into the service. In their first week of training the social workers were shown our Language that Cares and Planet Care videos to open the minds of the social workers and to keep them focused on children and young people.
The power within you and sharing your voice – Embrace the light & dark, it gives you power.
Within this section, we covered the importance of having your voice heard and using your personal life experiences to shape change for the future. This was to give the group confidence to share their experiences of social workers throughout their lives and to be open with sharing their views and feelings on what needs to be changed going forward.
We did an “I Am” activity where we decorated giant sticky notes with key things that make us who we are.
Let’s Talk About Social Worker experiences
We were given prompt questions to talk about our good and bad experiences of social workers so far.
What do you wish that Social Workers knew?
- OR – Not every young person is the same, we’re all different people and need an individual approach
- EM – How to make a decision and stick with it
- EM – Good communication between the young person and social worker is needed
- EM – The structure doesn’t work with the different support staff – they need to work together better. (Some young people agreed and others disagreed with this.)
What positive experiences with social workers have you had?
- MA – Education for the Social Workers
- EM – Each young person and social workers are different and have different skill sets
- EM – Say they don’t want to make me feel different
- MA – Some social workers fully understand us, but others are not rational
What negative experiences have you had with social workers?
- JH – Act like they know but they don’t understand
- BPK – Only take the ‘bad’ things about you. They spin the narrative and spin things only focusing on the bad.
- OR – The language on our assessments and profiles is bad and not appropriate
- EM – They don’t take time to get to know you
- BPK & MA – Misunderstood. Social workers should listen to both sides.
- MA – SW not joined up with other colleagues
- JH – They ‘come in like a wrecking ball’!
- LW – Up to Foster Worker to get it done, not the SW
- BPK – SW don’t work for me. They don’t get things done properly.
- JH – Efficiency and speed of SW aren’t good, compared to Angel
- MM– Misunderstand or assume what you’re saying by asking hard questions which you might not understand.
Break
In our breaks, young people relax, eat and talk.
“It’s our time for sharing memories, laughing and having fun.” – Care Ambassador JH
At the end of the break, Angel invited the Care Ambassadors to express their interest in delivering the training session. Angel then pulled names out of a hat and revealed which 4 Care Ambassadors would deliver the training the following month.
Good and Bad Social worker
After the break, we spilt into two groups:
- One group worked on a pink piece of paper writing down everything that they think would make a bad social worker or any negative experiences they have had with social workers.
- The other group worked on a green piece of paper doing the opposite: They were writing down good example or what they would want from a ideal social worker.
Any Other Business and time to finish up
- The Care Ambassadors who took part in the Ofsted feedback session in February were given a Thank You voucher each
- At the end of the meeting Angel and Kelsey confirmed the next steps and we said goodbye.