Shaping our future: Empowering those who are care experienced

Tuesday, 01 April 2025

10:30am - 12pm | Online/Zoom

Develop your understanding of how to best support children and young people who are care experienced, in conversation with Declan Andrews.

This event is for anyone that would like to develop their understanding of how best to support care experienced children and young people.

Non-Members can access this event for £25, members use your discount code for your free ticket.

Ticket Prices

FREE for members
£25 non-members

Key Learning

Develop your understanding of what it is actually like to be ‘looked after’, and the challenges being care experienced may have in later life.
Explore how judgements and assumptions can affect care experienced young people.
Discuss how to meaningfully engage with care experienced young people.
Enhance your understanding of how we can all support the young people we care for to have positive futures.

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.