A National Voice

ANV News Archives Dec 07

We are Invited to Meet Children's Minister

Johanna Ranthe (left) hands ANV's green paper response to the Minister

A National Voice were invited to meet the children's minister Beverly Hughes MP, for the launch of the government's response to the Care Matters consultation.

Our members quizzed the minister about the issues raised in the green paper.

“It was great that myself and other young people were able to meet the minister in person. It was also valuable to meet representatives from other like-minded organisations. My only complaint is that we didn't get enough time to ask all of the questions we wanted, but we were happy that the main issues were covered. ”

Johanna Ranthe
expert young person advisor to ANV's board of directors.

A National Voice have also had two representatives on the official working groups for the Care Matters green paper.

Talking Jargon

We are in the process of creating a specialised online jargon buster library which will make a useful resource for children and young people from care as well as professionals who work with them. Please send us any jargon or abbreviations you have come across with a clear explanation of what the jargon means.

Easter Eggs for Children in Care

As our Christmas present scheme was such a success, we ran a similar scheme this year involving Easter eggs. We are indebted to Debenhams and friends of A National Voice for buying as many eggs as they could. These were then picked up from us by a member of Salford's children's services department where the team very kindly distributed the eggs to children. As this was such a success, we plan to carry it out on a much larger scale next year along with a repeat of the Christmas present project.

If your organisation can buy Christmas presents or Easter eggs for children in Care, please email us and we will hopefully be able to include you in future projects.

Similarly, if you work for a local authority and are able to distribute these gifts to children and young people in Care, we would love to hear from you.

We aim to have this year's Christmas scheme underway by October 07 and next year's Easter scheme by January 08!

A Louder Voice

We have continued to gain new members. Well over 200 young people across England have now joined along with 22 local authorities and 9 organisations. We need your help to do our work effectively so, whoever you are, please join ANV today!

You can download the supporter's form

There's an online version here

or we can send them to you in the post.

Please forward this to as many people as you can. We are especially keen to gain young people from Care and Care Leavers as members. Support from local authorities is invaluable too.

Reverb: Localized Websites for Young People

ANV have built 150 micro-websites to be written and edited by young people. The network of sites is called Reverb and will have local news, local documents (Care Plan, Pathway Plan) and local links. We are very keen to hear from CRB checked workers and young people who want to apply for a free Reverb site (basic advice and training to run a micro website as part of 150 sites is provided free).

For more information please email us.

We are also really keen to gather documents from local authorities such as the Pathway Plan template, Care Plan template and any young person-friendly complaints procedures.

A National Voice's Important Work Goes On

A National Voice have successfully secured three years of funding. We are really happy with this as it means we can carry on and that we can develop and grow even more in the future. By the end of the year we will have moved from 4 to 6 staff as well as increasing our general and board membership of children and young people from Care.