Minutes:
A summary of the presentation:
· Care leavers – diverse group of people with 535 young people over 18
· 70% from BME backgrounds, some born outside of the UK and unaccompanied asylum seekers
Southwark’s local offer
· Good secure housing
· Support needs – relationship difficulties
· Support with education
Mental health and emotional wellbeing:
· Adolescence could be a challenging period of life for most young people and care leavers
· Core challenges lead to increased risk for looked after children
· Southwark care leavers – access to mental health support
· 10% care leavers and those in care have anxiety and depression
· 17% out of 45 are likely to receive some sort of support
· Need to reduce social care gap
· 16 to 25 year olds looked after children classified in the system as a care leaver
· Over 18 year olds would be assigned a special advisor
Services:
· In house clinical services – supports social workers and those with mental health needs
Sue Goode spoke about the long term NHS plan.
· Care link offer
· NHS Mental health needs
· Focus of NHS services and systems for 16 to 25 year olds
· Reform of current models for 18 to 25 year olds across the board
· Provision for 16 to 25 year olds- e.g. SLAM services
· Outreach service (STEP) – name of service for the first stage of psychosis for young people
· Specialist CAMHS
· Support system for young people with intense emotions
At this point of the meeting, the young people accompanied by Leval Haughton-James, interim children’s rights officer (Southwark), talked about case studies that were presented by Alex and Jenny.
Topics of discussion were young people diagnosed with attention ADHD – autism and what support was in place for them and how could they engage with a young person who had these issues.
Andrew Fowler commended the young people who shared their experiences and presented their own ideas/solutions on the case studies. Alasdair Smith supported this and said it was important to get a full insight of these services from a young person’s perspective.