Surrey County Council (SCC) is supporting the Care Leavers Covenant through creating meaningful opportunities for care leavers in five key areas, and supporting them to access those opportunities: independent living; education, employment and training; safety and security; mental and physical health; and finance. Social Value plays a key role in enabling us to share the responsibility of supporting our care leavers with our business partners and the wider community.
In November 2022, Pick Everard donated 20 Motorola mobile phones to Surrey Children's Services via the Social Value Market Place. In December 2022, during a special Christmas event, the phones were used as a prize draw for young people to share their ideas on the review of Surrey corporate parenting priorities 2023 to 2025, and to understand the impact of the free gym membership scheme launched in June 2022 (Universal Leisure Offer).
Young people were very keen to enter the prize draw, hard-to-reach young people who do not frequently share their views were highly motivated by this competition and we were able to listen to a broad range of views from young people with varied care experience. One young person living out of county participated, along with children with disabilities, unaccompanied asylum seeking young people and teenagers living in children's homes and foster care.
We positively engaged with over 20 young people and care leavers, of these four lucky winners were randomly selected to receive a phone. The remaining Pick Everard Motorola Headsets will be given to those care leavers involved in the launch and monitoring of Surrey County Council Care Leavers Covenant 2023 to 2024 ambitions.