Adoption England Youth Voice and Influence Conference: Learning from adopted young people’s experience

Hannah Clay – Operations Manager, Adoption Support at Adopt South West, attended the Adoption England Youth Voice and Influence Conference and shares her learning:

At the end of October, I travelled to Leeds to be a part of the first ever Adoption England Youth Voice and Influence Conference. It was a fantastic opportunity to explore the work and journeys of several regional and voluntary adoption agencies being led by the voice of the children and young people we seek to serve. Most importantly, the conference was not just for professionals, but young people with experience of being adopted and was led and guided by what they had wanted to focus on. With the young people delivering several presentations and workshops.

It was a pleasure to spend time sat with these young people who had worked extremely hard to share their experience and help us to understand what is most important for them, for us to continue to build and support alongside them.

There are several issues that young people raised during the conference match up with the experiences of young people we work with within Adopt South West’s Adoption Support team. As the new Operations Manager for Adoption Support, alongside my colleagues, these accounts give us a clear continued focus and confirm some of the work we want to achieve over the coming year and onwards.

• Young people tell us that the most important focus for support is a sense of identity and understanding their life story.

We are continuing to promote Therapeutic Life Story Work and access to this. In October we held our annual conference, and the focus was Therapeutic Life Story Work with Richard Rose hosting this. We are in the process of investing in further Therapeutic Life Story Work training in house, which will increase our ability to offer Therapeutic Life Story Work to young people.

• Adopted young people’s experience of education are often difficult. Young people (and their families) often share that although in theory schools are supportive, in the day to day many of the staff do not understand adoption, or struggle to respond to the need to adapt the learning or allow space and time for young people to process. Young people at the conference shared that they are often asked about their adoption and birth family history by staff as well as pupils and feel that they must share ‘their story’ and educate others which marginalises and ‘others’ them.

Further work is needed in a joined-up way to provide further support and challenge to schools in understanding adoption and supporting adopted children. This is something that I am keen to explore, both in seeking to work with education services, education psychology, schools and local support groups. But most importantly, with young people.

• Young People tell us that support to build and maintain relationships is important.

We are currently having a ‘whole service’ review within Adoption Support, and we are making plans to strengthen our Maintaining Relationships service. This includes a review of all support groups supported by Adopt South West. Promotion of direct time with birth family, regular reviews of contact arrangements and introducing and promoting with Local Authorities the safer and meaningful contact risk assessment model to support decision-making.

We are still keen to offer opportunities for adopted young people to come together, and for the opportunity to be consistent across the five local authorities. Unfortunately, groups linked to this have not taken off in the way we had hoped, and we must reflect that we are not yet ‘hitting the nail on the head’. We really want to hear from young people about what they would want and how this could work for them. We are continuing to find ways to reach out to young people to gain their voice and I would welcome any contact from your young people about this.

In the long term our aim is to be influenced and guided more by the children and young people we work with and for them to have a clear voice within our community and work. There is a long journey ahead to achieve this, but we are committed to it.

We really want to hear from adopted young people about what they want to see and what is important to them. We would want for young people to be actively involved in the service and development projects we have. If your young person would like to speak to us or get involved, please contact us using adoptsouthwestsupport@devon.gov.uk. We will then arrange the best way that suits your young person to chat to them further.