Corporate parenting: Where the state should do ‘what any good parent would do for their own children'.
Working with Trusts
Due to the legal consideration of ‘Corporate Parenting’, each Health and Social Care Trust is expected to focus on creating employability opportunities for young people within the Trust, as well as through wider employer networks across Northern Ireland.
The five Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland have been tasked with improving the number of young people leaving care who engage in education, employment and training.
This has led to the development of Employability Services across each Health and Social Care Trust, designed to offer tangible and concrete opportunities to assist young people leaving care prepare for, and engage in, work.
Include Youth’s Employability Team leads this work with both the Western Health and Social Care Trust and Belfast Health and Social Care Trust’s 16+ team.
The employability workers create opportunities including: tours; work tasters; extended work placements; training and employment chances; then match the young people leaving care to them.
They also work to improve the culture of education, employment and training within each of the Health and Social Care Trust’s 16+ team by making sure there is a steady flow of information and signposting to those working with young people, enhancing the roles of social workers and personal advisers.
The Give and Take Scheme falls under each of the Health and Social Care Trust’s overall Employability Service and as such provides an important direct, intensive service for those considered hardest to reach.