Core Assets Children’s Services have been commissioned by Birmingham City Council to deliver the Birmingham and Solihull Youth Promise Plus programme, which provides intensive support and mentoring to young people aged 16-29 who may be in care or care leavers, to help them secure successful and sustained progression into education, employment and training. 100% of the young people accessing this service agreed that it was beneficial to them overall, with 76 successfully entering EET to date. As part of our wider ‘offer’, we employed two young people who were initially accessing this service as Project Support Apprenticeship roles. One of these apprentices, Michael Stephens, tells us of his recent meeting with the Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority:

“Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, visited our offices at Branston Court for a meeting with Core Assets Children’s Services (CACS). We started this meeting with introductions of our roles within Core Assets and Andy shared information about his job as Mayor, what that involves, and how he intends to deliver the best possible outcomes for the residents and businesses of the West Midlands.

Andrew Freeman, Head of Ambition for All for CACS, provided an overview of how our Birmingham and Solihull Youth Promise Plus (BYPP) service supports children, young people and families to support them into work and help them to remain in employment long term. We also discussed our involvement with the national Care Leavers Covenant.

Imani Clough-Thompson, CACS Senior Intervention Worker, informed Andy of our involvement in supporting known NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), including care leavers, into sustainable EET outcomes by offering different opportunities and showed Andy a promotional video for BYPP (featuring our very own Imani), which included a real life success story

I then shared with Andy how my life has improved since working with Core Assets Children’s Services due to all the support I have received both as a young person being supported under BYPP and now as an employee, and how I am progressing with my apprenticeship by completing various exams and coursework.

It was a really interesting meeting and it was a pleasure to meet Andy.”

(Picture from left to right: Andy Street, Michael Stephens, Andrew Freeman, Imani Clough-Thompson)