For this first school break of 2023, the Participation Team organised lots of new and exciting activities and events.
We’ve started the week with an African Music Workshop, where our children learnt how to make their own instrument and decorate it. They also got to play some traditional African drums and participate in lots of games.
Monday also saw the first OCYPC Extra meeting of the year in Canterbury. OCYPC Extra is a meeting for young people who cannot attend the main OCYPC and Super Council meetings in Maidstone. At the meeting, young people discussed what it is like to change social worker and how this process can be made the best possible experience for them. Some members of the Young Life Foundation team also joined the meeting, introduced themselves and YLF to the young people and asked for feedback about their leaflets and website.
We also held our Children Who Care Council, for the sons and daughters of foster carers. Members provide feedback to the Performance Management Team about the look and design of the Annual Fostering Review forms.
On Valentine’s Day, we celebrated by making bath bombs, decoupage boxes, cards, cake jars and teddies at our Valentine’s Gift Making Workshop. All the attendees had lots of goodies to take home and share by the end of the day!
Wednesday was such a great day, filled with lots of important messages from young people for Kent’s Corporate Parents. Young People representing our three Children in Care Councils joined the Corporate Parenting Panel to discuss the importance of fostering and share their experiences of being in care with their corporate parents. We also premiered our film, ‘Never Stop Listening’, created in collaboration with some of the Young People attending the event about what being in care in Kent is really like and what can help to make it the most positive experience possible.
On the following day, at our Dinosaur and Reptile Activity Day, some very brave young people had the chance to hold real life reptiles and insects as well as join in with an interactive giant dinosaur workshop from the Travelling Natural History Museum.
We closed the week with our Adoptables meeting, as well as our main Super Council and OCYPC meetings in Maidstone. At OCYPC and Super Council, we again met with Young Lives Foundation staff to look at their leaflets and flyers and discussed young people’s experiences of changing social worker. Young people told us how important it is to have a good transition from one social worker to another with a proper goodbye and introduction to the new worker. We also played some group games and ended the meeting with some yummy pizza lunch!
The Adoptables members talked about their post 16 options, how they felt they were supported in school and who they could go to for information. We also made some well-being rainbows to support Children’s Mental Health Week.
