Improving policy and practice to promote and protect the emotional well-being of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Young People leaving care in England

This 22 month project aims to improve policy and practice that promotes and protects the emotional well-being of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Young People (UAS) leaving care in England. A growing number of care leavers in England are UAS. They experience high rates of mental ill-health and report barriers to accessing well-being services when leaving care. In recent years, UAS have been transferred to a broader range of Local Authorities, many of which have not yet developed strategies and services to support this specific group of care leavers. Providing effective support has also become more challenging as a result of 'hostile environment' immigration policies which impact on UAS' well-being and complicate their journey through the asylum system. Policy makers and practitioners urgently need good quality, up to date evidence in order to provide improved and nationally consistent services and support. This project seeks to understand what services and support for holistic emotional well-being are currently available to UAS leaving care in England and explore how key stakeholders perceive current support and services. From this understanding, we will produce online resources for policy makers, practitioners and the public, create practice guides for professionals and identify national policy recommendations to improve services and support for UAS leaving care. The project design has four stages: Firstly, we will conduct a scoping review of publicly available information on services and provision for UAS care leavers and collect 'expert testimony' from national policy-makers and leaving care team managers. We will also conduct a literature review of current evidence on interventions for emotional well-being of UAS care leavers. Secondly, we will collect qualitative data from four Local Authority areas in England. We will conduct narrative interviews with UAS, professionals who work with UAS and UAS foster carers. Thirdly, we will use the collected data and analysis to create and evaluate online resources. Finally, we will host two deliberative workshops. The first workshop with front-line professionals and Local Authority managers will focus on co-producing a guide for practice. The second workshop will engage national policy makers and prominent third sector organisations to produce a policy brief. The project will impact national policy, via the dissemination of our co-produced policy brief and a coordinated campaign for policy changes Our project will have an impact on frontline practice via the creation and dissemination of a co-produced practice guide for all LAs in England, supported by free to access online resources. We will ensure the wide dissemination of our findings and outputs through the robust network of co-applicants and partners within the project who have successful track records of engaging relevant government departments, Local Authority policy makers, social care practitioners and wider networks professionals advocates across the Children's Social Care and Child & Adolescent Mental Health sectors. Our output and dissemination plan outlines a range of academic and non-academic outputs and engages academic and non-academic audiences in a variety of ways including co-production workshops, webinars, practitioner briefings, policy briefings and practice guides.