A National Voice

ANV News Archives Jun 07

Young People from Care – ANV Needs You!
Five £50 Prizes to be Won!

A National Voice exists to listen to the voices of young people in Care, so between now and January 9th we will be surveying young people to gather their thoughts on the Government’s long-awaited ‘Care Matters’ Green Paper.

We have written a survey for young people who are in or from Care and are under the age of 25. There are several ways you can take part in the survey:

1. on-line: you can fill in the survey at:
   www.anvpoll.net
2. download: you can download a version to print out and return to the Freepost address below
   • Here is a Word version ( doc 154kb)
   • Here is a PDF Version ( pdf 97kb)
3. email: we can email you a printable version which you can return to the Freepost address below.
   Contact us and let us know where to send them/it.

The address to send paper surveys is:

• FREEPOST
• A National Voice
• C/o Voice
• Unit 1, Pride Court
• 80-82 White Lion Street
• London
• N1 9PF

There are five £50 prizes to be won so please forward this information to anyone you think will be able to get young people to help us with this and get their views and opinions heard.

All entrants' names will be put into a hat and the first five names from the hat will get a voucher for £50 each. Vouchers will be for a High Street shop of your choice.

Don't Forget! Closing date is 5pm 9th January 2007

You can read about the ‘Care Matters’ Green Paper here »

Read/download ANV's position paper on the Green Paper »

Debenhams/ANV Christmas Present Scheme

We are launching a scheme to buy extra Christmas presents for children in Care.

Staff at Debenhams’ Manchester store will be buying gifts for children in Care instead of buying for each other.

These presents will then be donated to Salford City Council who have kindly offered to distribute them to local looked-after children.

This has sparked similar interest in London where More magazine, Target Entertainment, Minotaur and Ladbrokes will be buying presents for the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames and our friends at the Fostering Network.

Friends and family of ANV have also been inspired by the scheme and have donated gifts to us.

We’d like to take this opportunity to say a huge Thank You to everyone who has generously offered their time and money to make this happen. We will ensure that all gifts get to looked-after children across England.

If this is something that you would like to be involved with next year, please get in touch with us.

ANV Worker is Pride Of Britain!

Congratulations to Sam Block who is a young person worker for ANV.

She received a prestigious Pride Of Britain award from Rod Stewart in November.

It was a star-studded event attended by David and Victoria Beckham, Jude Law, Girls Aloud, Take That and many more.

Sam also visited Clarence House to meet with Prince Charles.

Read the Mirror news story »

LILAC

The LILAC kitemark scheme, inspected and awarded by young people from Care, is progressing well.

We have held two residential weekends for young people and the findings from the pilots will be published in May 07.

For more information about LILAC, please email lucy.smith@fostering.net

Yorkshire and Humber event planned for Spring 07

ANV have received some funding from Government Office Yorkshire and Humber to employ a part time worker until Spring 07.

Their role will be to develop a regional group of young people to hold an event in Yorkshire in early April 07 for other young people and professionals. We hope this will become an ongoing regional forum for ANV.

The project is in partnership with GOYH and NLCAS

Tate Refuse

Our campaign to stop the practice of moving looked-after children’s possessions from one placement to another in bin bags is continuing to gain momentum.

Over 90 local authorities have now signed our charter, leaving just 60 to go!

For more information about the ‘THIS IS NOT A SUITCASE’ campaign, please go to http://www.thisisnotasuitcase.org.uk/

To draw attention to the campaign we staged another ‘Refuse Collection’ fashion show at the Tate Britain as part of the Futures event.

The show, held on the 23rd October, featured 20 Care-experienced young people and two MTV presenters modelling outfits made out of bin bags by professional designers. The show was also featured on MTV.

To view photos from this show, please go to http://www.futuresuk.org/gallery/fashion/index.asp

The Liberal Democrat party have also fully signed up to the campaign. You can view their Press Release at www.libdems.org.uk

REVERB

ANV have now built a network of 150 micro-websites to be written and edited by young people. The network is called Reverb and will have local news, local documents (Care Plan, Pathway Plan) and local links for each LA.

We are very keen to hear from CRB checked workers and young people who want to apply for a Reverb site. For more information 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