The AfterCare Project

The Aftercare Project seeks to improve the guidance and support provided to young people leaving residential and foster care, to improve their chances of progressing from school to college and university.

The first stage of the project centred on a successful conference held in November 2006, which brought together colleagues from across the region's local authorities, colleges and universities to raise awareness of the problems facing care leavers, the difficulties our institutions face in helping care leavers and the problems we create inadvertently through our ways of working. A full report of the conference is available in the documents section.

A new planning group is being put together to prepare the next stage of the project, which will begin to tackle some of the issues raised at the conference, especially ways the different sectors and organisations can begin to work more constructively together to provide better, more coherent support to young people and also how we can improve the guidance available to care leavers and those supporting them.

If you would like more information, would like to participate in the project or would like to join the planning group, please contact Jonathan Staal at j.staal@abertay.ac.uk

More information on the needs of care leavers progressing to higher education is available from:

• The Frank Buttle Trust - www.buttletrust.org
• The Who Cares? Trust - www.thewhocarestrust.org.uk
• The Aftercare Forum - www.scottishthroughcare.org.uk