Join us in celebrating National Care Day 2023
As we celebrate National Care Day 2023, we want to recognise the achievements of our amazing care-experienced community.
We’re extremely proud of all our care-experienced children and young people, for their creativity, resilience and determination to make their voices heard on issues that affect their lives.
It goes without saying that every single child and young person, whether currently in care or a care leaver, is a valued member of the East Ayrshire community, and deserves every opportunity to create the future they want – whatever it might be.
We’re committed to being a strong voice for our care-experienced community, and will continue to support, encourage and empower our children and young people in every way we can.
Read on for stories from our Children and Young People’s services to find out what we’ve been doing to achieve this.
Working together to support the health of children and young people
Within our Health and Wellbeing Corporate Parenting project we maintain close communication with staff who work alongside care-experienced children and young people. This includes professionals from health, social care, education and third sector organisations.
Our ambition is that children and young people in East Ayrshire are supported to live at home wherever possible; however, if this is not achievable, we will ensure that they have access to quality services that promote their health and wellbeing.
We initially focused on oral health, ensuring our children and young people had access to good quality dental and oral health services. Our priority is now to ensure they receive early support to develop language and communication skills, if and when this is required.
We will be working alongside foster families to ensure every interaction professionals have is an opportunity to support our children and young people.
Our School Nursing workforce will work alongside our new HEART communities, so relationships can flourish with their colleagues and the people within our communities.
Our school nurses will also promote therapeutic relationships within our children’s houses to support any child with unmet needs.
Committing to the principles of intensive family support
The Family Support and Young People’s Service is undertaking an exercise with stakeholders to build on established good practice and identify gaps in delivering a service more aligned to the Promise.
We pride ourselves on building good relationships and walking alongside our children, families and young people, and sticking by them to have hope and aspirations for the future.
Key to achieving this is embedding the ten principles of intensive family support, meaning we must ensure that our support…
- Is community-based
- Is responsive and timely
- Works with family assets
- Provides empowerment and agency
- Is flexible
- Is holistic and relational
- Is therapeutic
- Is non-stigmatising
- Is patient and persistent
- Is underpinned by children’s rights
We are celebrating National Care Day by committing to listening to our children, families, young people and partner agencies, and constantly adjusting our service to be more flexible and responsive.
Joining in the fun with Who Cares Scotland
Our Intensive Support Team are supporting care-experienced children and young people to attend the Who Cares Scotland Care Day celebrations on Saturday 18 February.
Their 2023 theme is ‘Challenging Stigma’, which aims to raise awareness of the stigma associated with the care system and to stand with our care-experienced community as we work towards changing attitudes.
Find more information on the Who Cares Scotland website!
Kilmarnock viaduct rainbow lighting
Finally, we’re giving Kilmarnock a splash of colour!
Today the viaduct will be lit up in rainbow colours to mark Care Day 2023.
We want to take this moment to reassure all children and young people in East Ayrshire that we will continue our work to make sure you can grow up safe, loved and respected.
