Helping to support care-experienced learners into HE this Care Day
Ahead of this year’s Care Day, Go Higher West Yorkshire (GHWY) and Inspiring Choices are delivering a webinar that is aimed at practitioners who work with care-experienced learners.
The theme for 2025’s Care Day, the world’s biggest celebration of children and young people with care experience, is Voices That Care. Our free webinar will demonstrate some of the ways in which we show a commitment to this group of learners and how we help them to make informed Higher Education (HE) choices.
The session, which will be held on Thursday, 13 February at 3-4.30pm, will also promote opportunities, resources and activities that are specially tailored to meet the needs of care-experienced learners.
Register for a place on Supporting Care Experienced Learners on their Higher Education Journey.
Webinar programme
We are excited to launch and demo our Care Experienced Learners Transition Pack during the session. This collaborative resource has been created specifically for care-experienced leaners who are progressing to HE. It will help to raise awareness of some of the barriers that learners from care-experienced backgrounds can face when progressing into HE, providing a roadmap to assist them on their journey.
The session will also include information about the common definition of care-experience that has been adopted across GHWY’s 13 HE members. The move means that care-experienced learners and their key influencers know with certainty at the HE application stage that they will be eligible for support from one of our members.
In addition, there will be guest speakers Penny Garner (Outreach and Partnerships Manager) and Alex Hargreaves (Outreach Coordinator) from Inspiring Choices. They will outline and reflect on their collaborative approach to working with care-experienced learners and care leavers in York and North Yorkshire, and share their new outreach opportunity for 2025, the Destinations Festival.
The session is aimed at anyone who supports care experienced learners, including but not limited to advisers, Virtual Schools staff, and designated teachers.
If you are unable to attend the webinar, you will be able to watch it at your convenience on our CPD page. It will be added to the site within a week of the live event.
Background
Care-experienced learners are a group at risk of equality of opportunity when progressing to HE. As a result of barriers to participation and success in HE – including academic concerns, financial worries, and mental health issues – these students are more likely to withdraw from their course than peers who do not have care-experience.
Our resources aimed at care-experienced students are designed to remove some of these barriers so that they can be enabled to succeed in HE. Access our free care-experienced student resources.
Care Day
Care Day, which is an annual event organised by Become charity, will be held on Friday, 21 February. You can show you care by writing ‘I Care’ on the palm of your hand and taking a selfie to share on social media along with a caption explaining how you care. Add the tag #CareDay
