Launching our new care-experienced youth voice programme across Greater Manchester

This month, we’re excited to launch a new three-year programme which places the voices of care-experienced young people at its heart. Thanks to funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, this work will focus on making sure young people’s lived experience genuinely shapes decisions about accommodation, transition support and the wider system change across Greater Manchester’s care system.

A vital part of the programme will be working closely with the GMCA’s Regional Care Cooperative (RCC). Together, we’ll coordinate and strengthen youth participation within the RCC by embedding young people’s voices in decision-making processes, ensuring they contribute directly to the design of new services as they’re developed.

In the initial phase, we’ll be mapping existing youth participation opportunities across Greater Manchester, exploring what’s working well, where there are overlaps or gaps, and what young people believe could be done differently. This will help us build a clearer picture of how youth voice operates across the system and make the case for a more connected, joined-up approach.

Another vital element will be creative workshops for young people, helping them share their lived experience through arts, media and technology. We’ll also support care-experienced young people to train as creative facilitators, so they can lead workshops with their peers and carry out peer research grounded in lived experience. These creative approaches offer inclusive, trauma-informed ways for young people to express themselves and drive change beyond traditional consultation methods.

We’ll also be developing the Care Repository, a youth-led, co-produced archive that captures lived experience across Greater Manchester. The repository will aim to identify patterns, highlight what’s working and what isn’t, and offer young people’s solutions to decision-makers to help improve the care system. The three-year programme will give us time to create and sustain the Care Repository so that it becomes a lasting legacy supporting learning, accountability and reform beyond the life of the funding.

Our programme coordinator, Anna Walters, says “I’m really excited to be leading on this amazing piece of work. It feels like the various creative youth voice projects we have worked on with care-experienced young people in the past few years such as Hear my Voice and Shaping Care have led us to this project, where we can continue to implement our learning on how to engage CEYP in meaningful participation that actually has a chance to make a difference.”