Aberdeen City Council are working with the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (CELCIS) and Coram Voice on ‘Bright Spots’, a programme which aims to provide an opportunity for children and young people to share their experiences of care and how they feel about their lives.
Through the Bright Spots Programme, we distribute a survey called ‘Your Life, Your Care’ to our children and young people aged 4-18 who are in care. The ‘Your Life, Your Care’ survey asks children and young people questions about their social worker, carers, friends, things they get to do and their happiness. We will use all the survey answers to improve our support and services, and children’s and young people’s experience of care. The ‘Your Life, Your Care’ survey has already been successfully delivered to over 60 other local authorities in England and Wales, who have identified important changes they can adopt following the results of the survey.
We want to improve children’s experiences of care and are excited to work with CELCIS and Coram Voice on the survey. However, we are not involved in analysing the results of the survey and will not know which child has ticked what answer as all findings will be anonymised before they are passed to Aberdeen City Council
What will be involved?
The child(ren) in your care (aged between 4 and 18) will have the opportunity to complete the survey using a computer, tablet, smartphone or other device with Internet access, or on paper;
A trusted adult, usually a designated teacher, learning support worker, supervising social worker, children’s practitioner or other professional will talk to your child about the survey and, where needed, will support them to complete it (for example, the survey for the 4-7 age group will always be completed with a trusted adult);
The survey will take about 10-15 minutes to complete;
The survey is anonymous – we will not know which child has ticked which answers and the survey will not ask them for their name;
The survey is not mandatory – the child(ren) in your care will not have to complete the survey if they do not want to.
What will you do with any information shared in the survey?
Completed surveys will be held by Coram Voice and CELCIS, and stored securely;
The answers from all participating children and young people will be used to produce a report. Your child’s name will not be used in the report;
The report will help us to improve the experiences of children and young people in care and ensure they are supported throughout their care journey;
A children’s version of the report will be made available to all children and young people in care whether they completed the survey or not.
For more information on what happens with the collected answers, please check the Privacy Statement for the Bright Spots survey.
The survey will be administered in schools or other settings as necessary to reach all groups of children and young people in care. Children and young people will be asked to complete the online survey in a private space, using a computer, tablet, smartphone with access to the internet, or on paper.
Although we are not asking carers to support their children to complete the survey – we would like you to encourage the child(ren) in your care to complete the survey to share their views about their experiences of being in care. The information gathered will help to improve the work we do to support our children and young people in care.
Further information
You can find out more about the survey online at: www.coramvoice.org.uk/brightspots.
Further information on the Scottish pilot of Bright Spots can be found on the CELCIS website here: https://www.celcis.org/our-work/research/bright-spots-programme-second-phase.
Or speak to your Social Worker.