Education, training, and employment support
Good parents want to help their children achieve the right qualifications, training and skills to succeed in life. As your corporate parent, we want to make sure you have this solid foundation as well, so you are able to find the right career and job.
- We will ask you how you are doing and be ready to celebrate your achievements with you.
- We will provide you with a Higher Education (HE) bursary of at least £2,000 if you go to university, payable during your first year of study based on your attendance. This is usually payable over the academic year.
- We will provide somewhere for you to stay during university holidays (or funding for this if you would prefer to make your own arrangements) if you are in higher education or in residential further education.
- meeting your transport costs when travelling to training or college, apprenticeships or job interviews
- buying tools, equipment, essential clothing, and books
- advice for going to university, such as helping you apply for tuition fees and maintenance loans
- claiming benefits and support to avoid you getting undue sanctions
- annual celebration event to share the positive education and training experiences of care leavers
- volunteering opportunities for care leavers.
If you get an apprenticeship or traineeship, we will ensure you are able to get there through funding your travel.
Opportunities can include administration, care work, leisure services and highway maintenance. If you are interested to know more about this, then please contact your PA who will provide support and information.
To increase capacity to support young people in care and care leavers as they transition into post-16 destinations, the Virtual School, together with Hampshire Futures and the Leaving Care team have launched the Hampshire Virtual College.
In creating a Virtual College, we aim to extend our Virtual School model so that young people in care and care leavers (post-16) also benefit from the same approach of tracking and intervention, to ensure access to high quality and sustainable education, employment or training.
A key priority for the Virtual College is to develop a shared dataset to more effectively track young people through their chosen post-16 destination and beyond and to:
- Ensure each young person receives consistent, high quality support (including bespoke careers guidance and personal development) to achieve their goals
- Identify, secure and maintain a post-16 destination through one to one intervention where needed and appropriate
- Intervene early where a young person is at risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training)
- Increase the number of CLA and care leavers who progress to traineeships, apprenticeships, sustainable employment or training and university
- Increase the collective ambition and aspiration around this cohort of young people, challenging low expectations and underachievement, enabling each young person to enjoy their learning, achieve their ambitions and more.
The work of the Virtual College in Hampshire is already contributing to a better shared understanding of barriers to participation and engagement in education, employment and training. The clear identification of individual situations and issues then offers the opportunity to explore, plan and review in order to remove or develop strategies to overcome these barriers.
A quarterly update is provided to the Hampshire Virtual College Board around the progress being made, the issues arising and the actions in place to address these.
Hampshire Futures
They are working in partnership with the University of Winchester to raise the aspirations of young people looked after and care leavers and enter into higher and degree-level apprenticeships.
We have also listed various other educational providers and the packages of support that they provide to care leavers. View our related links on our IW Local Offer for care leavers page.