National Care Leavers Week is a campaign founded by the Become charity, an organisation dedicated to championing the rights and needs of care experienced young people. NCLW 2024 ran from Monday 28 October – Sunday 3 November.
Why does #NCLW exist?
National Care Leavers’ Week exists for the public, professionals, carers, decision-makers and the media to come together, celebrate care leavers and raise awareness of the issues in the care system.
Almost 200 care-experienced people voted for the theme for 2024, which was:
All of Us, We are One.
“I picked “All of Us, We are One” as when I am with other care leavers I really do feel the most understood. I really do feel like we are one.” (Care-experienced individual)
The theme highlights the value of creating connections and at asphaleia, we have prioritised opportunities for connection in our supported accommodation during NCLW.
celebrating togetherness
Two of our supported accommodation properties arranged a bowling outing together for the young people to enjoy.
There were lots of smiles and a good sense of fun as they competed for the top score!
Staff in one of our properties led a house meeting where young people were given the opportunity to share their experiences of living in care.
It's wonderful for us to hear the young people describing their care experience so positively. We know this isn't always the case, and not every young person in our services would describe being in care in this way. It's a huge challenge to grow up in care and we welcome both positive and negative viewpoints from our young people so that we can develop and learn to enable care experienced young people to thrive, both whilst in care and then as independent adults.
care leavers a protected characteristic in west sussex
We want to take this opportunity to highlight that just over a year ago, West Sussex councillors approved a motion that care experience should be a protected characteristic and that there should be more protection for young people as they move on from being in care.
asphaleia are delighted that this has occurred and hope to see more support for care leavers unfold as a result. West Sussex have a local offer for care leavers, which you can find here on their website.