Society doesn’t seem to give our children and young people enough credit. They’re usually much smarter than we are, they see things we miss and have lived experiences we haven’t.

At evolve, a child-centred approach is at the core of everything we do.

Whilst we have decades of experience, each child is unique and deserves to be supported in a unique way. Each decision, where appropriate, should be made with their input.  After all, we are here to help those children and young people who need our support.

It is vital that we listen to those in our care, and those with lived experience.

From our recent survey, nearly 90% of participants agreed that more needs to be done to ensure those who grow up in care have their voices heard. (evolve Therapeutic Children’s Services, Understanding barriers to fostering survey, September 2024).

Although we regularly gather information from our children and young people, in terms of feeling, wishes and aspirations, they are reporting on a service they did not choose to join and a family they did not ask to live in.

Whilst we will continue to do our part, we do wonder whether those in our care can ever truly tell us how they feel.  As our CEO and Founder Jonathan Toomey states ‘it’s not much different to marking your own homework’ if all reviews are internal. We need to ensure external challenge and critique.

If we want our children and young people to express their feelings, to tell us how they truly feel without the fear of any unconscious bias, we need to provide professional Befrienders and Independent Visitors.

Experienced, passionate and personable people whose approach ensures children feel safe to express their feelings to and continue to have their best interest at the core.  If we are to do the best for those in our care, we need to understand what is going well, not so well and how we can continue to do the ‘good stuff’ and addressing any concerns.

We are extremely excited to share our unique partnership with the Young Lives Foundation (YLF).

YLF is an award-winning independent children’s charity in Kent who specialise in Advocacy and Youth Programmes, supporting young people to be heard, and to feel safe and supported whilst providing them with opportunities that enable them to thrive.

Along with quarterly participation events, YLF will work with evolve to deliver independent visitors to all of those in our care, across both evolve Therapeutic Fostering and evolve Therapeutic Residential Services, in Kent and South London.

evolve’s Director of Children’s Services says of our new partnership, ‘since I have been at evolve we have made the commitment to only working in partnership with services with similar values and beliefs and work in a like-minded way. This model has been led by our long-standing relationship with YLF. Lots of services or practitioners in the sector will talk about children being at the core of what they do, but YLF not only have that value for their own work, but they also then support other services to achieve the same. I am really excited about what this partnership will bring both for us and YLF but fundamentally for the children and young people we care for.’