FCHO signs the Greater Manchester Housing Partnership Care Leavers pledge

We’ve recently joined other housing associations across Greater Manchester (GM) in signing the GM Care Leavers Covenant Pledge.

The pledge focuses on three themes:

• Offering choice to young people

Often, social housing organisations are the first landlord care leavers experience when they leave the care system, so it’s important to ensure our homes meet their needs and that care leavers have more choice around the types of homes that are provided to them

• Skills and work agenda

Through our Directions team and wider Customer First directorate, we are committed to helping our customers into training, further education and employment. We want to explore how we can further this offer for our young people and provide opportunities for care leavers to fully embed and contribute to their community

• Life skills and mentoring

There’s a network of talented people across Greater Manchester (GM) who are committed to acting as role models and mentors that will be there to help our young care leavers and compliment all the other existing services that care leavers will have access to

Emma Davison, Executive Director of Customer First at First Choice Homes Oldham said: “As well as providing good-quality, safe homes that meet the needs of our customers, we’re committed to improving our customers’ lives as a whole.

“There is no textbook social housing customer, so we need to make sure our range of services meets the needs of everybody, including care leavers who are more likely to have had a difficult start to life and would benefit from additional support from the likes of local authorities, corporate parents and organisations like us.

“Young people who are in the process of leaving the care system have often lived a much more disrupted and traumatic life than other young people. By signing the pledge, we’re committing to providing the support care leavers may need to access the same opportunities and services as other young people in Oldham who have parents or guardians to fall back on.”

Visit MyCovenant.org for more information about the Care Leavers Covenant.

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