A National Voice

ANV News Archives Dec 06

'This is NOT a Suitcase' Campaign Featuring
The 'Refuse Collection' Bin Bag Fashion Show

The 'This Is Not A Suitcase' Campaign goes from strength to strength and over 90 of 150 Local Authorities have signed the our 'no bin bag charter' as well as lots of other organisations. We hope to make bin bags for young peoples possessions history by the end of this year.

We are very proud that our 'This Is Not A Suitcase' Campaign received a Wavemakers award this week presented to our young people by the former Prime Minister Rt Hon John Major.

The last 'Refuse Collection' Fashion Show featured many Care Leavers, CEO's of Children's Charities, Celebs, a Corporate Parent and 2 Directors of Children's Services modelling bin bags at Tate Britain!! The show was featured in OK magazine and the Guardian. There is a DVD of the show available.

Find out about who has signed our No Bin Bag Charter and have a look at the beautiful photos from the show by visiting www.thisisnotasuitcase.org.uk.

The campaign will stage another fashion show at Tate Britain as part of the futures event on Oct 23th - get in touch for more info.

'No Place Like Home'
Housing for Care Leavers Report

A National Voice recently conducted a survey of almost 600 Care Leavers, housing workers and Leaving Care Workers to find their opinions on housing provisions offered to Care Leavers and how they feel the situation could be improved.

If you would like to receive a copy of the full 38 page report, please send a donation of £10 to us, and we will get a report sent to you straight away.

Please make your cheque payable to ‘A National Voice’ and post it to our Manchester address.

You can also call or email us to order your copy.

Young People to be Involved in Inspecting Services and Awarding a National Kitemark

We are very pleased to have gained some funding from SCIE and CSCI to launch our LILAC pilot project (LILAC: leading improvements for looked after children).

This project will be run in partnership with the funders as well as NLCAS, WMTD and Fostering Network and will mean a group of young people from care will get together to set some minimum inspection standards in order to carry out 3 pilot inspections of services to young people.

Please get in touch to find out more about LILAC.

ANV Launch 150 Micro Sites

We have launched 150 free micro websites around England. We are looking for CRB checked workers to assist young people to edit and publish local news/info/contacts to each site

If you are interested please contact us

Call to User Groups to Join Us

As part of our membership strategy we are keen to hear from existing user groups around England. If you are part of an existing group for people in or leaving care please get in touch.

Also we have produced a guide on how to set up a user group and are happy to help young people to do this, please get in touch with simon.n@anationalvoice.org

'Can We Have Some More?'

ANV have launched our campaign about education for children and young people in and leaving care. This campaign is based around a survey of top 3 issues carried out last year by ANV. Getting an Education was the top issue from a list of 20+ chosen by over 100 young people.

This latest ANV campaign aims to raise awareness about the barriers to getting a good education and to influence policy makers and Corporate Parents. We want to highlight the gap in achievement between children from care and their non-care peers. Currently only about 2% of Care Leavers go to University compared with approx 50% of other young people. 59% of Looked After children are not entered for a single GCSE and only 9% attain five A to C grades compared with 54% of the wider population.

We want to build on the report by the Social Exclusion Unit 'A Better Education for Children in Care' (Office of The Deputy Prime Minister 2003). It was clear from our research that Education and Learning is very important to children and young people from Care and one of the main barriers is stability of placement; too many moves can create a lack of continuity and children's education will often suffer. We want to see a direct entitlement for children and young people to access one to one tuition to catch up with any education they have missed out on.

Download a copy of the 'Please Sir!... Report' Initial Findings
( pdf 88KB)

Brothers And Sisters Survey and Competition
Win £50 High Street Vouchers!

We surveyed over 100 young people in care and asked them to choose the top three issues facing them, from a list of twenty. Education was the main issue and that has been the impetus behind our 'Please Sir, Can I Have Some More?' education survey and report.

The second most important issue was contact with brothers and sisters. As a result, we have written an online survey dealing with birth and foster brothers and sisters. The survey is open to young people in or from care, under the age of 25.

We hope to find out if young people have enough access to their birth and foster brothers or sisters, if they would like to see them more and what could be done to help them.

If you are in or from care and are under the age of 25, please take five minutes to complete our survey; there's a top prize of £50 worth of high street vouchers (of your choice!), and two runners-up prizes of £25 of vouchers!

Closing Date is 31 October 2006

You can complete the poll online, here: www.anvpoll.net/

Or you can download the printable form ( pdf 101KB) and post it to us

'It's Cool To Be From Care'

A National Voice have recently launched a new campaign called 'It's Cool To Be From Care'. The campaign was requested by our directors, who are young people from care under the age of 25.

We are collecting inspiring stories from 18 year olds right through to 80 year olds. These will include contributions from celebrities, professionals and anyone else from care who can be a positive role model to young people.

We want to show young people in care that care leavers can make something of their lives and achieve success in any field they choose, even if they had a difficult time in care. By creating these positive role models, we want to inspire young people to fulfil their potential.

We have collected a few stories so far and plan to publish them on our website. We may also look for sponsorship to enable us to produce a book collecting these stories at a later date. So far we have heard from a barrister, a TV news presenter, a TV football pundit, a poet, an MBE and a solicitor from care, but we also need YOU if you have a positive and inspiring story to tell!

If you can email us 100-500 words about your own success story after your time in care, we can look into publishing these too. You can remain anonymous of course, so please let us know how you want to be represented if we use your story.

Update: We have now made a downloadable questionnaire ( pdf 145KB) which you can print and fill out using the old fashioned pen and paper type method!

ANV Become Independent Company

On 1 April 2006 ANV became a limited company as part of our move towards true independent status. Also our young peoples Management Committee became a Board of Directors.

The Board have decided to make an application to the Charities Commission soon to become a registered Charity and so increase our funding stream opportunities.