Siblings Together Poetry Summer School for Care Leavers

Grant amount: £7,000
Award year: 2018/19
Awarded to: Siblings Together

Siblings Together provide a range of recreational, creative and educational activities for children separated by care. They also support young people leaving care.

Young people leaving care can face a range of issues, including extreme isolation and separation, depression, self harm and suicide, and feeling detached from family and community with no sense of belonging. Our funding supported Siblings Together to pilot a creative retreat for a group of 20 care leavers, which took place at a farm in Wales.

This project aimed to support the group’s emotional and mental health, by creating a safe space to explore their creativity. Care leavers were supported by skilled facilitators to discover and develop their own creative voice, to reflect safely upon their difficult early lives as well as to gain the initiative, inspiration and strength to move forward into new horizons and more positive futures. The workshops helped the young people to create new narratives for themselves for the future, using creativity to see themselves positively, no longer as victims but as survivors who can transcend adversity.

“All participants expressed their wish to attend another retreat in future, they had gained a great deal from meeting together in a safe space with others and expressed how the retreat had offered them the time to reflect on their lives, learning new skills and creating new networks.”

“The initial retreat was astoundingly positive with excellent feedback, people are to this day maintaining contact with one another from this experience.” Following the success of this initial pilot project, Siblings Together received further funding from the Ashley Family Foundation to continue their programme of creative retreats for care leavers. Find out more about the work.