Coventry Council Champions 'Ask Me What Matters' Initiative for Young People in Care
New resources developed with young people aim to ensure their views shape decisions affecting their lives.
By Aisha Mahmood
••4 min read
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A young person's hand holding a pen over a document, with a blurred office background.
Coventry City Council has partnered with Coram Voice to launch the 'Ask Me What Matters' initiative, empowering children in care and care leavers by ensuring their views actively shape decisions about their lives.
A new initiative designed to ensure children in care and care leavers are consulted on matters crucial to them has been launched, with significant involvement from Coventry City Council. Developed in collaboration with young people and professionals from Children’s Services in Coventry, Dorset, St Helen’s, and Surrey, the project has produced a film and a briefing paper titled ‘Ask Me What Matters’ for local authorities.
Children in care and care leavers consistently highlight the importance of being listened to. However, the initiative stresses that being heard must translate into their views actively influencing decisions made about their lives. The ‘Ask Me What Matters’ resources provide guidance for social workers, personal advisers, managers, and wider children's services teams on integrating wellbeing questions into all interactions, from statutory visits and review meetings to pathway planning and daily conversations.
Over the past two years, the four participating local authorities collaborated with the young people they support to determine what aspects of their lives they wish to discuss and how these conversations should be conducted. This project builds upon Coram Voice's established Bright Spots programme, which has collected feedback from thousands of children in care and care leavers nationwide. The councils are embedding these questions into their case management systems, allowing individual plans to be shaped by the answers and providing a collective overview of the experiences and feelings of care-experienced young people.
The launch includes a short film illustrating the significance of these conversations and encouraging professionals to consider how children's voices impact their practice. A briefing paper details the specific questions chosen by each local authority in consultation with their young people. Further information is available at coramvoice.org.uk/amwm.
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"Children and care leavers are the experts in their own lives. Professionals bring knowledge and experience, but young people bring insight into their own hopes, relationships and ambitions. Asking and acting on what matters to them should be central to how we care for children and young people, not an add-on. We hope the Ask Me What Matters tools can help workers and services make sure this happens."
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"As a child-friendly city, Coventry knows the importance of not just giving a voice to our young people, but ensuring they are heard. We are delighted to have been involved in this vital piece of work that will benefit children and young people in care and shape services to help give them the best start in life."
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"In Coventry, we believe strongly in involving children and young people in care in our decision-making and using their knowledge and lived experiences to guide us. This has been at the heart of our work for many years now and was praised in our recent Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ evaluation of Children’s Services. Ask Me What Matters is the next step in that work – not just improving services in Coventry."
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"Adults need to talk to us about the stuff that really matters. We know some of these things can feel very real or difficult, especially when we need to talk about family or where we are living. It's not just about ticking boxes and talking about the things that you think are important. It's about talking to us about the things that make our lives better."
Coram Voice will be sharing further resources, reflection questions, and practice ideas on social media in the coming weeks. Practitioners, managers, and participation teams are encouraged to engage in the conversation using the hashtag #AskMeWhatMatters and consider the question: ‘what question helps you have the best conversations with children and young people?’
