Take Over Day!

The YLF Participation Team, alongside our MCYPC members, hosted such a thought provoking Reverse Take Over Day for Medway Council last week to help them understand the fears that care leavers face.

The scene for our first ever Reverse Take Over Day was an 18th Birthday party. The event was designed to help educate Medway Corporate on the real life potential challenges care leavers face. There were workshops for the Corporate Parents on Finance, Accommodation, Setting Up Home and Seeking Employment, which were challenging, eye opening and valuable.

At the end of the session our MCYPC members made sure they received feedback and a pledge from every Corporate Parent who attended, even just a small one, to help care leavers in some way after hearing of their real life challenges throughout the day.  Some great pledges around topics like mentoring care leavers, championing council tax exemption, providing additional support when moving into new accommodation and reviewing and improving Medway’s Care Leaver Offer!

Our MCYPC will monitor these pledges closely over the next few months and look forward to running more of these days. In the future, they hope to be able to get Corporate Parents to spend a day with a care leaver, living life like they do.

A really worthwhile event and we want to say a huge thank you to everyone that helped make it the success that it was, as well as all the Corporate Parents for attending and taking part. A special thank you also goes to our young people who supported the day and added some real life experience to the challenges.

Please see our video of the day: