Creating an evidence-informed toolkit to support care leavers’ engagement with multi-agency services
Last updated: 19 June 2025
What is the project?
This project used the experience of care leavers and practitioners to produce a toolkit to support care leavers’ engagement with multi-agency services.
The aims of the toolkit are to:
- support practice that responds to the diverse needs of young people, while being responsive to their changing needs
- enhance professional skills in working with young people to remove barriers to engagement.
The toolkit offers guidance, tools and recommendations to support people who work with care leavers.
It’s a resource that can be referred to and includes checklists which can support good practice.
The toolkit is informed by evidence from research carried out by Bangor University, which included interviews with practitioners and care leavers.
As part of the study, a podcast was produced which featured the voices and experiences of care leavers, practitioners and academics.
Why was it carried out?
The vulnerable adults services team at Conwy social services approached Bangor University as they wanted to understand and learn more about the barriers and enablers to accessing support for young adults who are care leavers.
They wanted to understand why some young people engage with services while others often don’t. They were really interested in developing this project in partnership with other local authority areas across Wales, and also with young adults who access support.
They wanted to know more about their living experiences of accessing and engaging with services.
The initial findings showed that:
- care leavers feel unprepared when transitioning to living independently
- engaging with support services can help smooth this transition
- not everyone engages with this support
- many care leavers and multi-agency practitioners wanted to know what the barriers and enablers to engagement were.
Where and when did the work take place?
The research project and toolkit development took place throughout the two-year Health and Care Research Wales funded study, from September 2022 until August 2024.
This involved regular meetings with project advisory groups, including practitioners and care leavers.
The researchers spoke with 21 care-experienced young people through interviews lasting up to an hour. They held focus groups and interviews with multi-agency practitioners, talking with a total of 30 people from housing, education, social services and personal advisors.
Who was involved?
The work was carried out by researchers at Bangor University.
Study collaborators and participants were from four local authorities:
- Conwy
- Gwynedd
- Ynys Môn
- Torfaen.
What have they learned from the work?
.
The main barriers to engagement identified were:
- not feeling supported or listened to
- meetings being too formal
- poor previous experiences preventing trust from developing
- being unaware of services and feeling self-reliant.
The main enablers identified were:
- having a good support worker and flexible and tailored support
- recognising the need to give the worker a chance and accept support
- communication between and within services being key to providing holistic support.
The outcomes from engagement were identified as:
- improved confidence
- voice, choice and control
- reduced social isolation
- improved mental health (for example, reduced anxiety)
- more job satisfaction for practitioners after seeing young adults they worked with experience greater independence and well-being.
The evidence-informed toolkit and the associated training have been well received by practitioners. Many have been keen to share the toolkit with their team and wider organisations to spread good practice.
Some new insights have been identified. Care-experienced young people were keen to be involved in the research and recognised their participation as a ‘social responsibility’. Through the interviews and podcasts, many urged that care leavers give their support workers a chance and engage with any services and support that was available to them.
Practitioners reflected on how hearing positive stories from care leavers was valuable for them, as they were better able to see the difference that their role as a practitioner made to young people.
One said: “The toolkit gives a perspective of the care leaver’s voice and what’s important to them. Hopefully it will instil the importance of communication and trust. I think a lot of agencies will benefit from this.”
One of the care leavers who was part of the project advisory group added: “I think this is important, because not many people understand care kids or leavers. In this, we get to explain what it’s actually like. We never wanted to be put in this position, but we’re trying our best and it lets other care kids or leavers know there’s plenty of support out there.”
Get in touch
To find out more about this project, please contact Dr Ceryl Davies or Dr Louise Prendergast at Bangor University.
Find out more
Contact name:
Dr Ceryl Davies