Some exciting News
Shaping our future: Empowering those who are care experienced - Webinar
Join Declan Andrews, Senior Therapeutic Residential Worker, Our Promise, as he shares his experience of being care experienced and how this shaped his professional and personal life. Declan will draw from his time in residential and foster care, his relationships with the staff at that time, and how this support enabled him to change his life. Through a presentation and facilitated conversation, Delcan will discuss his professional experiences since entering the children’s sector as a residential practitioner, and how we can best support the young people we work with.
Facilitator:
Declan Andrews is a passionate advocate for the rights of care experienced children and young people. As a young person, Declan spent time within foster placements and a residential home. Delan reflects that ‘I overcame a lot of battles with myself, mental health and the path I was travelling down which would have either inevitably ended in prison or death. However, with the right support and willpower, I was able to completely change my life, become a better person and most of all be a good father’.
Motivated by his own experiences, Declan trained as residential carer and now works with Our Promise, a small residential home that aligns with his vision and beliefs on how best to support young people in care. Declan shares his own story openly, hoping to shed light on the often unseen challenges that care experienced children and young people encounter, and how we can prevent and support them to overcome these barriers.
Declan aims to create a world where children and young people who experience care are given the support and tools they need, as well as the compassion and belief that they too can reach their full potential.
You can book your place on the webinar here:
Scottish Child Care Workers Point of View Podcast:
In this episode Joe Gibb speaks with Declan Andrews. Declan speaks about his point of view about pertinent issues such as recruitment, boundaries , physical restraint , culture & 'The Promise' plus much more .
You can access the podcast, by following this link:
Our Promise is part of the Scottish Physical Restraint Action Group
“We are committed to bringing about more effective, empathic, loving ways of holding children, young people and the adults who care for them in residential child care – in relationally rich environments, populated by adults who are properly equipped with requisite skills, knowledge and ways of being with children in the way that children need.
"We will work towards making coercive forms of holding less or even unnecessary and, when children are restrained, it is carried out relationally and with care.”
More information on the group can be found here: https://www.celcis.org/our-work/key-areas/physical-restraint-residential-child-care/scottish-physical-restraint-action-group
Our Promise is part of the RALF Project
The aim of the Reflection and Action Learning Forum (RALF) is to provide a practical and evidence-based approach that supports members of the residential child care workforce to develop the necessary habits and skills associated with genuinely reflective practice.
The RALF model was co-designed by the Scottish Physical Restraint Action Group (SPRAG) as part of the group’s overarching commitment to help bring about a change in culture with regards to physical restraint and restrictive practice across the residential child care sector in Scotland.
This update describes activity during the first year of this two year project. The Promise Partnership awarded a grant for the RALF project, which started in the spring of 2023.
The Project update report can be accessed here: https://www.celcis.org/application/files/8017/2407/7792/RALF_Project_Update_July_2024.pdf