Strathclyde Hidden Voices are holding their third annual conference in May. The online event will take place on Saturday 20 May from 10am-12.30pm. 

This year speakers include Dr Kirsty Deacon and Jennifer Ferguson. 

Dr Kirsty Deacon is currently a Research Officer with the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, working on a two-year partnership project with Families Outside exploring care- experienced children and young people’s experience of sibling imprisonment. Dr Deacon will be sharing her current and previous research with us regarding the impact of sibling imprisonment on children and young people. 

Jennifer is responsible for the national co-ordination and provision of support to existing prison visitors’ centres; project management of Scottish Ministers’ funding for visitors’ centres; and development of new prison visitors’ centres in Scotland. Before joining Families Outside, Jennifer worked within a local authority Criminal Justice setting for eleven years, and prior to this within a statutory homeless assessment team for two years. She also volunteered within her local Children’s Panel for ten years. 

Delegates will then come together in breakout rooms to explore common misconceptions, share our experiences and think about the ways we can use what we have learned to have an impact on the families and communities we work with. 

You can sign up for the event here.

As part of Kinship Care Week 2023, Kerrie, a kinship carer and family worker for a Kinship Care Team within West Lothian explains how important it is to listen to carers and reflects on her own personal kinship journey. Read her blog on the Kinship Care website.

“Devastating”, “damaging” and “broke my heart”. These are just some of the words care-experienced young people have told the Staying Connected project. 

These young people, who are currently serving a prison sentence themselves, have used these words to describe what it feels like to be separated from their brothers and sisters. 

Sometimes this has been through the fact that they are in prison, but it has also been where they were in different care placements when they were younger, or where one of them has been in secure accommodation. 

The Promise recognised the importance of sibling relationships and that they should be “respected and protected”. Recent sibling legislation also means that local authorities now have a duty to ensure that siblings are supported to stay together where appropriate, and where they are unable to stay together that they are able to keep in touch and maintain these relationships. 

The Staying Connected project is a joint project between the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) and Families Outside, and explores where siblings cannot be together, where one is care-experienced and one is placed in secure accommodation or is in prison. While this may affect a relatively small number of children and young people within the wider care-experienced community, we know almost nothing about these experiences of separation. They are a group who are often overlooked but yet this unique type of separation has the potential to be significant within their lives. 

The project team is coming towards the end of the data collection phase of the project, but researchers are still looking to speak to the following groups of people: 

• children and young people who are care-experienced and whose sibling is or has been in prison or secure accommodation 

• children and young people who are currently, or have recently been, in prison or secure accommodation and have a care-experienced sibling 

• social workers and Children’s Reporters who have worked with these children and young people 

The project team has a group of care-experienced young people working as Consultants on this project and they have created a video explaining what taking part in the research involves for children and young people. Thanks to Aimee, Chantelle, Chloe and Michael for designing the video and in particular to Chantelle for all her work on actually creating it. It looks amazing and please check it out! 

If you are interested in taking part in the research, work with groups who might be interested, or just want to know more, please get in touch with the project researcher Kirsty Deacon via Kirsty.Deacon@scra.gov.uk or call 07494 675189.

Stand Up For Siblings are excited to invite guests to a free online event hosted in partnership with Adoption UK Scotland into two thought provoking studies.

Taking place online on Thursday 9th March 2023 at 10am, the two hour event will centre around the Born into Care (Scotland) Study and the Supporting Roots Project which both set out to understand more about the circumstances in which removal of babies after birth takes place in Scotland, and the support available to parents and children.

Leading the discussion will be Dr. Helen Whincup, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Stirling, and Dr. Linda Cusworth, Research Fellow in the Centre for Child & Family Justice Research at Lancaster University.

Helen and Linda will be presenting the findings of the Born Into Care (Scotland) Study which was published in April 2022. The study looked at understanding the circumstances in which the removal of babies shortly after birth, and the work undertaken with parents to prevent separation where possible.

They will be joined by Ariane Critchley, Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Stirling, and Maggie Grant, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Child Wellbeing & Protection at the University of Stirling.

Ariane and Maggie will present their findings from the Supporting Roots. The report provides a broad picture of the needs of birth parents who have lost a child or children to ‘care’ and the support and services that are currently available in Scotland.

If you are interested in hearing more about these studies and taking part in the conversation, registration for the event is now open.

Sibling Reunited (STAR) have released a Christmas song and music video titled ‘Calling Out at Christmas’.

Written by Bruce Morrison and performed by Charlotte Henry, the song was made by STAR for every brother and sister who are missing each other over the Christmas period.

The song was created to raise awareness for the STAR charity but also to highlight the importance of siblings staying in each others lives when they enter the care system.

The music video is available to watch now on YouTube. It tells the story of Olivia who is spending her first Christmas with her new adopted family but despite having everything she has always dreamed of she feels there is something missing – her big sister who she has not seen in years.

Watch the video here.

The Chair of Stand Up For Siblings, Kate Richardson, completed the Edinburgh Kiltwalk’s Mighty Stride in September.

A big thank you for the wonderful donations which were topped up by The Hunter Foundation. Kate raised a total of £525 for STAR.

These funds will go towards funding the children’s Christmas experiences at STAR, Siblings Reunited in December.