Coram secures grant from The Queen’s Trust to give young adopted people the opportunity to speak out and shape future services

Children’s charity Coram is delighted to have secured a grant of £300,000 from The Queen’s Trust to create a peer network of adopted young people, giving them a platform to express their views about the adoption process and their experiences as adopted children in school and in post-adoption support.

The programme builds upon the work by young people in Coram’s established participation groups for children and also young people adopted through Coram. It uses their own working title of “The Adoptables”, and their passion to address the issues so many of them have overcome - in school, in decisions about contact and in support to them and their adopted parents. Over the three years of the programme’s duration, it will be open to young people from any agency. Together, The Adoptables will produce new tools to help professionals to improve the way the adoption process works in the future. It will also enable young people themselves to act as ambassadors for adoption and for the views and needs of adopted children.

Dr Carol Homden CBE, Chief Executive of Coram, said: “This exciting project addresses our concern that, as the system seeks to ensure the adoption process responds to future children’s needs, the views of adopted children and young people themselves are central. We hope that this project will help the professional services achieve their ambition of providing the very best support for adopted children in the future through taking into account the voice and views of adopted young people themselves.”

Nicola Brentnall of The Queen’s Trust said: "We are pleased to be working with Coram, which is one of the leading experts in adoption policy and services, and a pioneer in many areas including youth participation. The Queen's Trust exists to help young people help others. This project will help young people come together to work on a project of great significance to them – with a view that the tools they produce will ultimately help other children and young people in the future.”

-Ends-

Notes to editors

1.Young people who are interested in finding out more about The Adoptables can contact Liz.Harrington@coram.org.uk

2.About Coram

Coram is a children’s charity has been helping vulnerable children for 275 years, and today helps over 1 million children and young people every year.

Coram does this by offering practical help and emotional support to children, young people, and their families.

Coram does this is a number of ways including finding adoptive families for children in need of loving, permanent homes, helping traumatised children express their pain through art and music, providing supported housing to young care-leavers and homeless people, and helping young people access their legal rights.

Coram is celebrating 275 years of creating better chances for children in 2014.

For further information please visit www.coram.org.uk

3.About The Queen’s Trust

The Queen’s Trust was established in 1977 to support causes that help young people help others. Since then the Trust has awarded over £80m to programmes that give young people the chance to do this, in ways that benefit society in the long term.

For further information about The Queen's Trust, please visit www.queenstrust.org.uk or contact Nicola Brentnall via 0207 024 4165

Kate Summerside
Interim Group Head of Communications

dd: 020 7520 0346

mob: 07824 312418