Our Impact
2018-19
Our mission is to help children in care and young care leavers to believe in themselves and to heal, grow and unleash their potential. We work alongside them to make the care system the best it can be.
Become has always been committed to making sure young people with experience of care are at the heart of our decision making. It's thanks to your invaluable expertise through experience that we can focus our efforts from planning, to programmes, to policy changes. Last year, we held 10 advisory group meetings comprising 11 different care-experienced young people who support us as expert advisers. Care-experience young people also formed our recruitment panels, strategy and a range of our activities.
Our free advice service helps young people and professionals navigate the care system and ensure that children in care and young care leavers are getting the support they are entitled to. Last year, we helped with rights and entitlements, housing, placements, education funding, mental health, wellbeing, relationships and more.
300 young people got involved in our award-winning programme, Passport to Parliament. Children in care across the country learned to devise campaigns on the issues that mattered most to them and become powerful agents for change. We also worked with young people to co-design the next phase of Passport to Parliament. Passport to Parliament was awarded the inaugural Your UK Parliament Community Campaigner by Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow MP.
Our website Propel is unique: it sets out exactly what support and provision almost every university in the UK provides for care leavers. Last year over 15,000 people visited the site and 95% of universities participated in Propel. Together, we're helping more care leavers go into higher education and make informed decisions about what and where to study.
We provided 68 one-to-one coaching sessions for care-experienced young people aged 16-25 in and around London. In addition, we delivered 13 group coaching sessions to improve wellbeing and help young people find the tools within to achieve their goals. Watch the video below to hear from Rachel how Coaching at Become helped her achieve her goals.
Become has acted as secretariat for the all-party parliamentary group for looked-after children and care leavers since it started in 1998. Last year, we enabled 120 care-experienced young people to share their views and experiences with MPs and members of the House of Lords as well as 205 care professionals and foster carers.
Last year, we worked with Voices from Care in Wales to conduct research about teachers' experiences of teaching children in care. We published our findings in 'Teachers Who Care'. We testified to the APPG for Financial Education for Young People on how important it was to provide the right support for care leavers , many of whom have to live independently from a young age. We too responded to government consultations, spoke at conferences and seminars and brought groups of young people together with policy-makers to discuss specific policy initiatives. We sat on advisory groups for academic research projects and for other charities, including the Howard League's project to reduce the criminalisation of children in residential care.
Over 200 professionals benefited from our suite of training sessions, designed to spread knowledge and insights and develop skills so that life chances for young people from care can be improved.
A small national charity, we do not receive any funding from government. That's what makes every gift you make so precious. It's because of the generosity of our supporters that children in care and young care leavers can receive support and have their voices heard. Thank you.