National Care Experienced Month – at the FIYA awards

November has been National Care Experienced Month, which is an opportunity to raise awareness, celebrate young people's resilience, and continue our commitment to ensuring our young people feel valued, understood, and empowered.

This year’s theme, “Rising as Me: Overcoming challenges, transforming, and finding your identity,” shines a light on the determination, strength and pride that care experienced young people demonstrate every day.

To mark National Care Experienced Month in Sandwell our Forum for Independent Young Adults (FIYA) unveiled a new video at the Annual FIYA Awards at Tipton Sports Academy, in November.

The FIYA awards were a great success with speeches from the Mayor of Sandwell, Cllr Steve Melia, Cllr Jalal Uddin, Cabinet Member for Children and Families and Emma Taylor, Chief Executive of Sandwell Children’s Trust.  Also in attendance were Trust Board members Linda Sanders and Cllr Chipiliro Kalebe-Nyamongo, as well as colleagues from Sandwell Children’s Trust, Sandwell Council and Barnardo’s who have all worked with our young people.

But the stars of the show were our young people, who did a fantastic job of not only presenting throughout the evening, but also sharing their personal stories that were both humorous and deeply moving.  Members of the Forum talked about being 'a family, a place where we can be ourselves, and where we know we are safe' which was a significant moment that highlighted how important the Forum is in their lives.

As part of the evening, the audience were given an exclusive preview of a new video members of FIYA have made to explain what care experience means to them. Not only did Ellie, Josh and Lukas speak in the video, they also wrote, produced and directed it.

The video contains personal messages about their lived experiences along with advice to our care experience young people. Josh advised young people to “Love, live, laugh” and Ellie said, “never give up on your dreams…”

You can watch the video here https://careleavers.sandwellvoice.co.uk/video/

With awards across seven categories in which every nominee was recognised and two outstanding musical performances by Arness and Lawrence, who showcased original pieces they had written and produced, based on their lived experiences, the FYIA awards were a brilliant, funny, emotional event, from a remarkable group of young people and a fitting way to mark National Care Experienced Month in Sandwell.