#CareCouncil

I compressed the usual Saturday activity into the morning as I was joining Neil Hunter, Jennifer Orren and Linda Walker from SCRA at the weekend gathering of the Care Council.

This is a group of young people with a range of ages who have exoerience of being in care and who have come together from across the country, supported by WhoCares?Scotland, to improve the way our care system works.

We joined then just before lunch when they were finishing their discussions on the messages they wished to send to Scotland's corporate parents. Neil and I as individual post holders as well as, separately, our organisations are corporate parents so the conclusions of the session were of considerable interest. The main focus was on health documentation for young people in care and the Care Council was setting out what they felt the documentation should contain and how it might be presented. Discussions with the NHS will follow.


After lunch, the session was on how to achieve better hearings for young people: before, during and after the hearings. (We are having a national discussion on this but getting the views and priorities of this group of young people was very worthwhile.

What was meant to be a 2 hour session became a 4 hour one as we talked through what examples of an excellent experience might be. A lot of fun was had with some creative suggestions for the future. We did have some challenges trying to incorporate the Harry Potter aficionado who wanted correspondence delivered by owl.! And there were some powerful examples of where the experience of the current system left a lot to be desired: which just reinforces the need for improvement.

A mock up of what the experience should look like was played out - with each of us assuming roles. (I became a children's reporter!).

Many of the ideas were great. Some of them could be constrained by law and practice. Today was not about focussing on the difficulties but on what we should be aiming for. Future discussions might then target what needs to change, rather than on how we can fit what we want into existing custom and practice.

So a much later end to the day than anticipated but well worthwhile. We left them to their evening meal and activities and their final session tomorrow morning.

In parallel with all of this there was an election campaign going on for representatives of the Care Council to the Scottish Youth Parliament. As we gathered for the group photograph - and I checked that everyone had consented to photographs being taken and used more widely - one of the candidates -Ryan - was hoisted on shoulders, hence the blip.

For fairness the other candidate is Helen whom I did not get to photograph. Whoever is elected will bring lots of experience to the debate. So good luck to them all.