Young People Leaving Care funding: Learning Programme

A Learning Programme runs alongside our Young People Leaving Care funding to facilitate learning between grantees, and to draw out collective insight to help improve the wider care leaver system.

How does the Learning Programme work?

We launched our focus on preparing young people to leave care in late 2016. Since then we have made 29 new grants to a range of work across the UK, most of which is still in its early or embryonic stages. Through the Learning Programme, we bring organisations we fund together to support collaboration and share learning as well as providing Funding Plus support.

In practice, this means the Learning Programme is co-designed by organisations we fund. We use insights from the Programme to engage key decision-makers in both the public and voluntary sectors.

Learning events usually take place twice a year with opportunities to network in between.

Involving young people

As part of the Learning programme, a Young People’s Network of ten young people with care experience was started in March 2020. The Network focuses on capturing the experiences of care leavers during lockdown, and identifying what support they need as lockdown ends. The Young People’s Network also runs the #CareConvos monthly twitter discussion.

Our approach to learning

We have commissioned Renaisi, working together with Janet Grauberg, a consultant with experience across central and local government and the voluntary sector, to co-design and run the Learning Programme to:

Support grant-funded organisations in reflecting on their own learning from their projects, and taking any action that arises, during the life of the project.
Enable grant-funded organisations to learn from each other, for example by sharing approaches to practice, expertise, and introductions to stakeholders.
Draw out collective learning on the three outcomes that have been identified as a priority for the funding stream.
Support the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation in learning about the value of a more focused funding stream, and bringing organisations together for a Learning Programme.