Reminder: Your Care, Your Life BrightSpots Survey

This October and November, Norfolk County Council is working with CoramVoice to run the 'Your Life, Your Care' BrightSpots survey. We want to find out what our care-experienced young people think about our service and about their wellbeing.

We believe it's essential to continually improve things for children in care, and feedback helps us to make positive change. We last ran this survey for children aged 4 and over in 2022.

It's important we hear from as many children as possible. And we're aiming high: we want to get at least 600 responses.

We want to know what we're getting right, and how we can do what we do better. We also need to know where we can improve. The responses children and young people give us will help us make changes to our plans.

Any changes and improvements will be double checked past children and young people in our participation groups, then published in The Scoop so we can keep everyone up to date with what we're doing.

Ideas and feedback from children in our care help us to provide events and activities that young people want.  Previously, when young people said they wanted clearer information about mental health and wellbeing services, we held a workshop at County Hall where young people could meet up, access information about local services and sleep care. Young people asked if they could produce a Podcast and be more creative together. One creative workshop we ran was inspired by the book, Free Loaves on Fridays where care experienced people shared stories, poems and reflections.

What we're asking you to do

We have just over 1000 children in care aged 4 and over, and we need your help to run the survey please. You will know the children in care who attend your school.

We have four different links to four different surveys, depending on the age of the child. The survey is live now.

The survey is anonymous and should be completed confidentially. Some children and young people will be able to fill in the survey by themselves. Some children will need the help of a trusted adult.

Each completed survey comes with the chance for the child or young person to enter a prize draw to win Bewilderwood tickets, or a £100 Chantry Place shopping voucher.

The four age groups are:

•  4-7 (infant school children) - survey link
• 8-11 (junior school children) - survey link
• 11-18 (high school students) - survey link
• 18 -25 care leavers - survey link

Trusted adults should read the survey(s) in advance and be ready to help the child complete it.  You might have to read the questions or explain them, and for younger children, you'll need to fill in the demographic questions too.

Trusted Adults can watch a YouTube video to give you more information online here.

Some children might find a few of the questions difficult. Where there are responses which might need further investigation, such as comments about being bullied or disliking where they live, you may have to say you'd like to talk to a team manger about what they've said so we can try to make things better.

Thank you for your help and for making this survey a success so we can do better for the children in our care.

Who can be a trusted adult for the purposes of this survey

• IROs
• Participation workers
• Supervising social workers
• NEET/EET worker
• Safeguarding Officer
• Designated teachers
• Teaching assistants
• SENCO / Pastoral support worker
• Support worker (residential care)
• Key worker
• Advocate
• Independent visitor

Who cannot be a trusted adult for the purposes of this survey

• Child's own social worker / PA
• Child's foster carer
• Child's key worker (residential care)