Young people leaving state care are being recruited as co-researchers to help fix the patchwork of services meant to support them. Care leavers in the UK face worse outcomes than their peers in education, employment, and mental health, yet the innovations intended to help them—corporate parenting initiatives, NICE guidelines—often spread unevenly or fail because they are adopted too rigidly or without real evidence. This study will map what innovations already exist across three English regions, identify what helps or hinders their implementation, and evaluate how they affect young people’s lives. If successful, the research could transform how local councils, health services, and voluntary agencies adopt and adapt new practices, replacing well-intentioned but hollow policies with approaches that actually improve stability, identity, and mental health for the most vulnerable care leavers. Six young people will serve as paid researchers, and findings will be fed directly into services through communities of practice, online training tools, and cross-professional events—ensuring the evidence reaches the people who make decisions.
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Young people leaving care often experience complex social & emotional needs alongside reduced life outcomes compared with their non-care peers. Faced with these challenges & barriers, young people leaving care deserve a system in which both policy & practice supports them. Initiatives such as Corporate Parenting & NICE recommendations are continually being rolled-out. However, these may not produce improved outcomes for young people. The purpose of this research is to investigate & build an evidence base for innovation in services & processes designed to improve outcomes for care leavers. We then support the translation of study findings into professional & organisational practice. Innovation is dynamic & beyond simply a good idea at the local-level, needs to spread & be adopted more widely. This is challenging because spread of innovation is influenced by social & professional networks, groups & practices, alongside broader context. Sometimes, innovations can be hollow, taken up as an act of faith because they're seen as desirable or easy to implement yet make minimal difference. Meanwhile, promising innovations sometimes fail because they're employed too rigidly & not adapted to the context. Leadership can be a key factor for innovation success along with engagement of different professional groups & service users. In this study we (1) explore what innovations are already in place for young people leaving care (2) identify what helps or hinders how those innovations are put into practice. We then (3) find ways about how the wider spread of innovation across care systems can be better supported so innovation makes a difference to young people. Following which, we (4) evaluate outcomes of innovation across leaving care processes in four ways: how it spreads; how it is adapted; how it affects young people leaving care; implementation costs. Finally, (5) we ask what adaptations are necessary for an innovation to spread & the effect of this on outcomes. To answer these questions, we bring together literature & empirical methods across different fields such as organisation science & health research. Our overall research strategy is informed by comparative case study design & qualitative interviews with care professionals & care leavers. Examples are taken from 3 areas: West Midlands, Newcastle & Tyneside & Bedfordshire. Complex young people that are most vulnerable to identity, attachment & mental health issues are central to our study. 6 young people leaving care will participate in our research team as researchers. Our study will follow a collaborative model & engage with stakeholders supporting young people leaving care at local & national-levels; e.g. encompassing Care Leaver's Association, Local Councils & nationwide agencies involved in health, social care, education & justice. The study team includes researchers drawn from Warwick, Newcastle & Bedfordshire Universities enabling insights & impact throughout England, alongside a partnership with Monash University (Australia), facilitating international comparison. Co- production will be central to the study. This will happen in number of ways. First, by establishing 'Communities of Practice' where researchers, care professionals & care leavers collectively engage with the study & disseminate knowledge directly into services. Second, a Strategic Advisory Board comprised of representative stakeholders from public service & voluntary agencies including young people leaving care, & an End User Group of young people leaving care. Further engagement will happen through cross-professional events for health & social care practitioners with an interest in young people leaving care. Finally, we will disseminate findings via a dedicated study website offering online training tools, quarterly blogs & Study Bites (short briefings), combined with social media activity that outreaches to public services, voluntary sector & service users.
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