More focus needed to improve vulnerable children's lives, Northern education chief says

Professor Shirley Congdon, the chair of Yorkshire Universities, a group representing 12 institutions in the region, said the recovery from covid-19 should be used to place long-term investment into supporting care leavers into higher education across the North of England and Yorkshire.

Professor Congdon told The Yorkshire Post: “If you think about Yorkshire we have got so many young people, and people are our greatest asset .

"We have committed to supporting levelling-up but in order to deliver the levelling-up agenda we do need to have some serious social policy reform that really recognises the importance of the work in the early years of young children’s lives and identifying those young people who need more support earlier so we can be more proactive in supporting them.”

The call to action comes as new analysis of government figures by The Yorkshire Post revealed there are more than 8,500 children in care across the region, as recorded by official data at the end of March 2019.Results showed Bradford has the highest amount of looked after children in the region with 1,159 - a figure that has risen by 32 per cent since 2015.

Leeds followed (1,288) rising by 2.5 per cent followed by Kingston-upon-Hull (796), with an increase of 20.4 per cent.

Professor Congdon, who is also the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bradford, said: “When you look at Bradford which has significant numbers of care experience young people, it's crucially important that the local authority have got enough funding to bring to bed - to make sure the support is a wrap around support that all the systems are involved in providing.

“And that there is a continuity where the local authority working alongside schools and social workers, community, volunteers etc. - all of the system- can work in a connected way for care leavers.”

Prof Congdon, added the call, made by Vicky Ford, the Children and Families Minister, in an exclusive interview with The Yorkshire Post on Saturday (7 November), for more higher education and business leaders to sign up to The Care Leaver Covenant and help create more opportunities for care leavers was in some ways “passing the buck,” when what was needed was real “policy reform”.

Prof Congdon, who is also a leading voice for universities for the Leeds City Region’s Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “There has got to be a whole pathway through that supports these young people…It can’t just be said to universities - ‘do better for care leavers’ when we know that the start of their aspirations is much younger.

“The Government must commit to understanding that young people who are care leavers or in care need support throughout their whole journey - from being at nursery to right the way through.

“There needs to be policy reform and you need the appropriate level of resourcing.

“The young people have really got to be at the centre stage of us being able to understand their needs through their eyes and have them in the middle of the design of new ways of supporting them.”

She added long-term investment was needed in Yorkshire based projects such as the Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) - developed jointly with Yorkshire Universities and NHS employers with a priority of increasing health and wellbeing.

Prof Congdon said: “The Government should be thinking about using health and social care as a big driver for economic growth - not just through health and med tech but also through changing the way we support people who are really in need of more public health interventions and this really does require quite significant look at the way we are currently delivering social policy across the country.”

Earlier developments

- Reported in the Yorkshire Post on Saturday (7 November) Vicky Ford, the Children and Families Minister, said investment is needed at “all stages” in the care journey, to improve opportunities for care leavers.

Mrs Ford said the Government needs to “lead by example” and put care leavers at the “front of the queue” after a new major report said deprivation spurred on by a decade of austerity has entrenched inequalities for care leavers.

Mrs Ford, who took up post in the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle said: “Care leavers are an extremely vulnerable group of young people who face exceptional challenges as they start out on their journey to independence, because they don’t have the same family to fall back on - that other young people do and that can be really tough.

“They are most certainly not forgotten by the Children’s Minister, and they are a group that I have been particularly focused on ever since my first weeks in this job.”

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