ARU Final Report

Full Report – March 2021 19 4. Findings and discussion Our findings from both the questionnaire and focus groups are presented across four major themes, which represent the priority areas identified by the research team: • Practical challenges and support including finances, accommodation, travel, education and looking after children. • Mental health and wellbeing including formal support as well as activities that care leavers did to help themselves. • Connection and loneliness including online access, support bubbles and having someone to talk to. • Support from services including the vital role of personal advisors/social workers and involvement and participation teams. As much as possible, we have used quotes from the questionnaire respondents and research team focus groups to share the experiences of care leavers in their own words. Quotes are identified as from the questionnaire with “Q” and from the focus groups with “FG” followed by the participant’s gender and age. Where there was no data on these demographics, this is indicated with “ND”. Although 94 respondents completed the questionnaire, some did not answer all of the questions; however, there were no fewer than 92 respondents to any given question. The findings are discussed in relation to recent literature from a range of reports looking at the experiences of young people, bothwith andwithout experience of care, during the pandemic. We have used subheadings throughout our presentation of the themes but in some cases themes overlap. 4.1 Practical challenges and support This theme covers finances, travel, accommodation, education and looking after children during the pandemic. 4.1.1 Impact on finances In terms of finances, some care leavers felt they were financially stable and did not need any help with their rent or travel, especially if they were able to continue working throughout the pandemic and/ or continued to receive the benefits and support they already had in place. In the focus groups, one care leaver commented that they had been better off as they were saving money on travel and not going out. However, this was not the case for the majority. The questionnaire asked care leavers how worried they were about their finances before the pandemic compared with during the pandemic. The number of respondents worrying about their finances doubled from 22.6% who were fairly or very worried beforehand, to 46.2% who were fairly or very worried during the pandemic (see Graphs 2 and 3).