Who Cares? Scotland publishes Lifelong Rights paper on Belonging and Connection
- Area of Work: Children and Young People, Policy and Research
- Type: News Item
- Published: 10th December 2024
Who Cares? Scotland publishes their third Lifelong Rights Issue Paper on Belonging and Connections.
Who do you call family? Where do you feel most at home? Who can you always rely on, no matter what?
That personal sphere of love, belonging and connection is essential to everyone’s human dignity.
Who Cares? Scotland has supported Care Experienced people for the past 45 years, with 27 of those as an independent advocacy provider. Each year, their advocacy workers support over 1,600 people with more than 6,000 individual advocacy issues across all 32 local authorities in Scotland.
Who Cares? Scotland launched the Lifelong Rights Campaign in October 2023 with a commitment to record and evidence what they hear from Care Experienced people. It reinforces the limited national data available, which shows that Care Experienced people currently do not have the same life outcomes as their non-Care Experienced peers.
This paper on Belonging and Connections is the third in a series that are linked to the top issues that Care Experienced people, aged 16 and over, raise with us through independent advocacy.
Key findings include:
- 75% of surveyed Care Experienced adults reported experiencing loneliness.
- Almost half felt their care experiences negatively impacted their lifelong relationships.
- Respondents were most dissatisfied with relationships with parents, extended family, and professionals.
Within the paper, there are also several solutions Who Cares? Scotland recommends to address these issues.
- Services providing spaces for connection, befriending, peer support, talking therapy and pet therapy, should be made available and accessible to Care Experienced people of all ages.
- Aftercare support to include opportunities to gain independent living skills such as cooking, cleaning and money management.
- Expedite the development of relationships-based trauma training to support adoptive parents, kinship and foster carers.
- A statutory right to lifelong advocacy in the Promise Bill.
Read the full Issue Paper here.
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