Terry Galloway

UPDATE: Councils that have passed the motion to Treat Care Experience as if it were a Protected Characteristic.

This is Brilliant @SarahReform

Thank you to @WalesPolitics for having me on this morning to talk about something close to my heart, supporting care leavers and what it really means for the state to be a corporate parent. Listen here👇

As Lord Justice Baker said last night: “Giving birth is one of the most profound and important experiences a person can go through.” Now imagine that on the very same day, the Local Authority takes you to court to remove your child. Sometimes there are clear and necessary reasons why a same-day application happens. Under current legislation, an unborn child is not a legal entity and has no legal rights until birth, meaning that where urgent removal is considered necessary, proceedings can only begin once the child is born. But variations in practice across the country, particularly in the North East, suggest something is going wrong. I believe a significant contributory factor behind many same-day applications may be a lack of planning caused by insufficient mother and baby placements in the areas where they are needed most. Alongside this, there are growing concerns that some Care Experienced parents are being drawn into social care processes simply because of their childhood experiences, rather than evidence of actual parenting risk. If we are serious about reducing removals, then we need to understand: • What types of placements and support are actually required for mothers, fathers, and babies • What best practice looks like • Where provision is missing across the country • How earlier intervention and proper planning can prevent crisis action at birth Both of my siblings lost their children to the care system. My own journey has been about creating systemic change. I run a not-for-profit supported accommodation provider specifically for Care Leavers, and I have always wanted to build something that helps mothers and fathers keep their children safely, with the right support around them. Because with the right support, families can thrive. Removing a child from their parents should always be the last resort. So this is a call to action. Researchers. Social workers. Midwives. Health visitors. Family judges. Local authorities. Providers. Care Experienced parents. Academics. Policymakers. Charities. Please get in touch if you can help me better understand: • what is needed • what good practice already exists • where the gaps are • and how we can collectively reverse this trend As I said last night, if we build the right model, the sector will respond. @CoramFamilyLaw Research by Karen Boradhurst OBE

Family.... This is genuis

Mayday Mayday. My new website launches today. It is Tell Me Something About Family. tellmesomething.family The website is a world map and for every message a pin prick of light appears. Zoom in on the light to see the messages around the world. To contribute a message click on "Take Part". There is no data collection. The site is pure. It is my art work. You can upload photographs too if you like. It will be live for 31 days from today. It is the month of my birthday. Opening this site for this month is my birthday present and so is every one of your entries. tellmesomething.family .

We are off...

Really proud that @SwindonCounvil are leading on this vital work. Huge thanks to @TerryGalloway for raising the issue and leading the work.

Trigger warning. This is about Care Leavers dying. I've been stationary for two hours on a train in Retford. Someone's been discovered on the tracks due to mental ill health. Police and ambulance services are attending to the person. While here I received this news item from my friend Terry Galloway. It's about the high death rate of young care leavers. A care leaver is seventy percent more likely to take their own life. Two care leavers die each week. Nick Martin is in the news item. He is the journalist who made a sky doc about "Nonita" a care leaver who took her own life via train tracks. Terry Galloway is brilliant. . My train is still stuck in the station. I am tired.

"Care leavers are dying absolutely every day, and we're not basically sitting up and taking notice" Care leaver campaigner Terry Galloway says that he welcomes the review into deaths among those leaving the system, but calls for immediate action trib.al/1yQ4fAQ

Can you guess which councils are voting here to Treat Care Experience as if it were a Protected Characteristic? These are the first 11..... We are now at 131 across England, Scotland and Wales.

What a day in Sunny Scotland, hosted by Falkirk Council Champs, where young people from across Scotland came together to talk about change in the care system. We have a number of champs boards who are going away to campaign for Protected Characteristics in their councils. thank you so much for having me with you today

Just arrived in Falkirk, to meet up with the young people Champs boards from across Scotland tomorrow... to talk about all things Protected Characteristics.... we are building some good momentum up here... @Gemmazzburgh

We started delivery of our accredited Life Skills Courses for care leavers in Nottingham today.... I'm beyond proud.... so many happy faces..

Today I am highlighting my brother James Galloway. Who is one of the fallen Care Experienced People who died before their time and never got the chance to grow old.

“we will continue to pay the price both in human lives and public finances” unless the failure starts being treated as a whole-system responsibility. ‘When a single placement for one child reaches £1.1 million in a year, it shows just how broken and unsustainable the current system has become’ nottinghampost.com/news/nottingha…

AI could model the cost of inequality in government policy. I'm developing a concept for a system that helps governments run Equality Impact Assessments while modelling long term public costs across housing, welfare, health and justice. It compares two trajectories: do nothing vs early intervention, showing where preventative policy reduces public spending. @xai @elonmusk

UPDATE: Hugely successful workshops in Manchester and Birmingham on 'Treating Care Experience as a Protected Characteristic' We have been able to gather an enormous amount of feedback on local authority progress in treating care experience as a protected characteristic, including the areas that are most tricky, ideas and examples about how this could be embedded across services and some of the ways that the impact can be measured. We will be gathering the feedback into an output summary in the coming weeks. This project is about creating a toolkit for councils that have passed the motion. Thank you to everyone that took part. 38 Local Authorities were involved in this Policy Lab from across England, Wales and Scotland as part of the @CoopInnovation and led by @SwindonCouncil, myself, @WiganCouncil . @cardiffcouncil , @ManCityCounci, @plymouthcc and Anthony Collins Solicitos

@lemnsissay I'd hazard a guess when there is major tournaments when there is alcohol, when chilrden return to school following holidays. But really interesting question.

This is an open request to anyone working in social work or in university social work departments. Which month or months do you receive the most demand for children to be admitted into the care system? And one more question. Which is the most demanding month in terms of workload?