ARU Final Report

44 Care leavers’ experiences of support during the Covid-19 pandemic “I think I just need to know more about what u can and can’t do.” (Q: Female, 18) This spanned all four of our themes. For example, care leaverswere not always aware of the practical support available, such as how they could access food banks or where to go for mental health support: “Me and my partner managed well considering, however what would have been helpful would be to have been given information about a food bank aswe had thought about this but did not knowhow to access one.” (Q: Female, 20) “More support with mental health and for people that don’t understand what’s going on for it to be explained as I got really confused about everything and support there for people when things do go wrong.” (Q: Female, 25) Care leavers, particularly those with young children, also wanted more information and ideas about what they could do to keep themselves busy and well within the restrictions. One young person also talked about information on how they could do something productive with their time towards entering the world of work, which also aligns with the Care Leavers Charter principle ‘To believe in you’ and encourage and support care leavers to pursue their goals: “Me personally I probably would have liked more stuff to do. Because I’m not working. At some point I’d like to start looking into work or an apprenticeship or even college, but there really wasn’t much... Shops were closed, leisure centres were closed so what I like doing I couldn’t do.” (FG: Male, 22) In terms of support with mental health and wellbeing, staying connected, and more generally, care leavers needed to know what is available and how to access it, and effective communication was emphasised: “Knowing what services are out there and where to go.” (Q: Male, 21) “An easy form of communication! If the communication is hard then they’ll be less likely to reach out for help if needed.” (Q: Female, 22) “I did not reach out because I did not knowwho to reach out to so it would have been helpful to know.” (Q: Female, 23) These findings and suggestions from care leavers’ experiences and perspectives generate the need for the following recommendation: 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. 5.2 To support you The next principle directly relevant to supporting care leavers during the pandemic is explicitly around support: “As well as information, advice, practical and financial help we will provide emotional support. We will make sure you do not have to fight for support you are entitled to and we will fight for you if other agencies let you down… We will make it our responsibility to understand your needs. If we can’t meet those needs wewill try and helpyou find a service that can.” The pandemic has affected everyone in different ways and in our research care leavers told us about