Co-producing the conceptual foundations and the format of the 'Preparing a Just and Sustainable Future - Acting today on the Grand Challenges of Leaving Care' global conference

This project serves the young people who exit public care at 18 (‘care leavers’, ‘care-experienced people’). Poverty and less/no access to opportunities (ICLC, 2020) places them amongst the social groups most vulnerable to, and least protected against climate change and pollution.

In fifty years of research in this field there have been many advances in knowledge, policy, and practice. However, these have been achieved mostly in the global North, and as research often highlights, they do not reach most individual lives (Strahl et al, 2021; ICLC, 2020 a;b; Mann-Fedder and Goyett, 2019; Cameron, Hauari and Arisi, 2018; Bond, 2018; Frimpong-Manso, 2018; Mendes and Snow, 2016).

By and large, care leaving systems are poorly constructed, with underlying under-examined vulnerability factors which create systemic subsidence or foundational weakness. It is increasingly becoming evident that weak infrastructure will likely become overwhelmed under new pressures created by climate change (WHO, 2023).

The overall project aims to:

• Raise consciousness about this across invested disciplines (academic, state and NGO practice, administrative, lived experience, societal).
• Identify common vulnerability factors (Ahmed, 2024), or root causes, which underpin systemic deficits, and which result in recurrent access barriers, support shortages, unfair outcomes, and poor transition experiences for many care leavers worldwide. We call these the Grand Challenges of Leaving Care (GCLCs):
• The qualitative study ‘Mapping the Grand Challenges of Leaving Care’ (GCLC) focuses on identifying them.
• For the GCLCs to be relevant across Global North and South, analysis is based on an international survey, and a scoping review of literature from over 40% of the world’s countries, in seven world regions (in English, Spanish, Arabic).
• Develop an innovative transdisciplinary, action-focused conference – to prepare today, and then continuously strengthen, the care leaving infrastructure towards just and sustainable futures for care leavers, and systemic resilience to the impacts of climate change:
• The conference will be framed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Environmental Justice, and will include a hackathon where multiple stakeholders design local action on the GCLCs, and commit to activate it post-conference.

However, to realise its ambitions and impact, the project’s outputs need authenticity, knowledge equity, accessibility, and credibility. Whilst care-experienced advocates and researchers have already been engaged in multiple formats, the project is now developing two permanent Lived-Experience Advisory Panels (LEAP) to co-develop, via shared decision making and influence (Smith et al., 2022), the main project outputs: the GCLCs, and the conference concept, format and accessibility.

The LEAP groups will have diversity of background and expertise (including of neurodivergent needs) and will engage in extrospection (Purtell, Bollinger and Scott, 2023), critically reviewing and guiding the work of the project for relevance, impact, accessibility, and centrality of their contributions.

The LEAP participation is enabled with Sustainable Futures Research Innovation and Impact funding (£4k).

LEAP participation will be supported by: Udayan Care, Changing the Way We Care (CWWC), Association for Care Leavers Networks in Africa (ACNA), Better Care Network (BCN), Doncel, and INTRAC LATAM.