The Verbatim Formula: Creative Practice for Young People in Twenty-first Century UK Care

Various indicators show that looked-after children need better support from care and education providers. National Audit Office statistics from 2014 show that 20% of young homeless people, 24% of the adult prison population, and 70% of sex workers have been in care. In 2013, only 6% of care leavers were in Higher Education compared to 30% of that age demographic nationally. In 2015, 33% of looked-after children had been 'placed' more than once in a year in a children's home or with a foster family, and 10% had three placements or more. Such instability exacerbates looked-after children's well-documented vulnerability to mental health problems and jeopardises the stability needed for their educational and life success. In spite of the statutory requirement of the 1989 Children's Act to hear children's voices, an over emphasis on procedures and paperwork blocks effective communication and hinders the trusting relationships that children need to project a positive future.

THE VERBATIM FORMULA (TVF) will explore the potential of applied arts practice to provide vital interventions, providing life-changing support for young people, as well as opportunities for adults and institutions to make time, to listen, and to reflect on current practices. At a time when the care system is failing badly, and when universities are likely to have more responsibility for ensuring diverse participation following the White Paper for Higher Education (2016), TVF will give opportunities for adult professionals in both sectors to work together and to make changes that respond to young people's needs. Using Verbatim Theatre practices to support the articulation and confidence of young people's voices, the project positions children as creative evaluators of the services that are responsible for their care and wellbeing.

Based at QMUL and People's Palace Projects (PPP), a core operational team has been formed from QMUL's Departments of Drama, Business and Management, and Admissions and Widening Participation. Further collaborators include young adults from the Greater London Authority's Peer Outreach Team, and young adult care leavers from across London. Together, this team has facilitated a series of workshops that have supported 40 looked after children (14-18 years) in the South East and across the UK. Building on this experience, core activities in TVF will include a series of creative residential workshops facilitated in partnership with four universities in London to offer practical support to young people in articulating and planning their careers and education. In addition, a Young Researcher (YR) will develop a Portable Testimony Service (PTS) with the support and mentorship of Battersea Arts Centre (BAC). At QMUL, the PTS will be used to perform recorded, anonymised testimonies from looked-after children, care leavers, and adult care professionals, at an event to launch the university's new contextualised admissions policy. The PTS will share the audio testimonies further, providing a performative tool that creates space for dialogue and discussion around supporting looked-after children better. The YR and project's young partners will help to build an Alumni Network that will become a capable community of young people and adults who support each other in their journeys through care and beyond.

Through a series of events to be held with BAC including a Festival of Creative Evaluative Practice, the project will support the development of and reflection on innovatory artistic and participatory practice as a means of evaluation and provision of services in loval governments and the third sector. A website and E-book for practitioners will disseminate the research, as well as a series of academic articles, papers, presentations and performances at major academic and professional conferences. Work with Parliament's Youth Select Committee will explore the utility of particpatory verbatim practice to wider policy contexts.

Young People and their Carers
Young people in/leaving care themselves will be the primary beneficiaries of this research through the impact it will have on their confidence, visibility, self-awareness and improvements in their dialogue with adults. The project will benefit participants through participatory evaluation activities that will improve their ability to articulate their needs, desires and future plans clearly, as well as exposing them to educational and employment pathways according to their interests. Carers will benefit from the support the project will give them to help children plan for their futures, as well as from the opportunities it will provide to see and hear the children they care for in fresh and positive ways.

Care and Education Service Providers
Royal Society of Arts research emphasises the advantages to local authorities and other service providers in working with arts projects to tackle seemingly intransigent social challenges (RSA, 2013). TVF will support foster carers, social workers and corporate parents (eg. local authorities, residential home managers) by offering practical, informed support in planning for teenagers' futures, and also by supporting the statutory duty to listen to children's voices. In Higher Education (HE) the PTS will make an embodied impact on staff and their practices in Admissions, Finance, and Advice and Counselling, providing a cost efficient and highly effective way of raising and tackling the issues that affect the recruitment, retention and engagement of looked after young people. The jointly run workshops will also benefit University partners in reaching out to wider excluded cohorts. All universities will be able to benefit from an on-line Overnight Residency Guide for Widening Participation.

Practitioners and Arts Organisations
Practitioners and theatre companies will benefit from the project's findings on the potential for applied arts methods to be used to make an impact on participants' wellbeing, and on the use of participatory evaluation practice to provide training and reflection on professional practice in care and education contexts. Taking its lead from the AHRC's Cultural Value Project, the project will intervene in the hierarchy of evidence that privileges quantitative techniques in evaluative practice, putting child-centred creative approaches at the ideological and pedagogical centre. The proposed 'Scratch Tank' at BAC will enable practitioners to share applied arts projects and ideas widely with local authorities and other service providers. The project's website, the e-book for practitioners, and the proposed Festival and Manual of Creative Evaluative Practice will provide opportunities for knowledge exchange between practitioners and arts organisations, and for critical reflection on innovative applied projects and practices.

Third Sector, Government and Policy
Having facilitated the GLA Care Week Conference for the last three years, and as a founding members of the Care Consortium which meets quarterly at City Hall to share good practice and advocate for change, INCHLEY and BAKER will continue to facilitate and contribute to meetings and events to which they are regularly invited, bringing performative modes of delivery and contributions from verbatim workshop participants. The 2017 Care Week Conference will be in partnership with the Fostering Network, and will incorporate verbatim material on children's experiences of their social work files, and of the treatment of child migrants. These activities disseminate research to professionals and policy makers performatively, making the profound impact that the Office of the Children's Commissioner has confirmed is needed to supplement written evidence. The team's embodied dissemination techniques will also be used to amplify the voices of young people with the Youth Select Committee in disseminating its upcoming Report on Race and Religious Hatred (2016).