ARU Final Report

10 Care leavers’ experiences of support during the Covid-19 pandemic 1.4 Recommendations Based on these and further findings in the report, our recommendations to improve support for care leavers both during the pandemic and beyond are: 1. To provide clear and up-to-date information on the range of supports available across all corporate parent services responsible for supporting care leavers, and proactively share this with all care leavers. 2. To ensure that all care leavers are provided with the same opportunities and level of practical and emotional support within their local authority, that responds to their particular needs and circumstances. 3. To provide additional support to care leavers with children, including providing them with keyworker status to allow their children to attend nursery or school if needed during lockdowns. 4. To make the provision of basic technology, including internet connection, a laptop, and a mobile phone, mandatory to enable care leavers to stay connected and engage with education, employment, and services. 5. To facilitate connection for care leavers with others, for example by helping them to establish support bubbles, innovative use of technology, and face-to-face interaction where appropriate, especially for care leavers living on their own or recently independent. 6. To proactively reach out to care leavers and make sure they consistently have someone in Leaving Care Services, independent to their case/care, to talk to about their experiences and the support that they need. 7. To promote participatoryapproaches in research with care leavers to ensure their priorities and experiences are better reflected in research findings and inform action. 8. To invite those in corporate parent services and central government that are responsible for supporting care leavers to make a promise setting out the action they intend to take to improve the support for care leavers during the pandemic and beyond. Please take the time to consider your role insupportingcare leaversduring thepandemicandbeyond, andmake a promise based on the research findings and recommendations. This promise must be time bound and actionable to make sure that care leavers’ recommendations are put into action. To share your promise with care leavers please go to: https:// angliaruskin.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/ make-your-promi se- to-care- leavers This linkwill remain open until Friday 11th June 2021.