Meet Chloe - one of our Experts by Experience. Find out more about how Experts by Experience are influencing decision-making at Juno, what has been the most valuable part of the experience for Chloe and her hopes for the future of residential care.
Tell us who you are and what you do
I’m Chloe and I work for Juno as an Expert by Experience.
My work for Juno involves offering lots of ideas and suggestions and ways we can make Juno even more of an organisation that really looks out for young people, looks to meet all of their needs, and looks out for the employees. I support the staff to think carefully about how they really support and encourage the young people living in our homes to grow. I also do some really hands-on work, like interviewing potential staff, making sure we build teams of people who have emotional intelligence and the right values.
What are Experts by Experience?
We’re people who have had some experience of being in the care system, and all of us want to have something good come from our not-so-great experiences. I think that’s quite incredible because it’s not always an easy thing to do, but the team at Juno are very supportive and help you along in doing that.
What kinds of things have you worked on as part of this role?
Recently, I worked on styling and decorating Juno Wallasey, the second Juno home. That was really lovely, and I enjoyed working on it a lot – it’s someone’s home you’re helping to refurbish, give it a safe feeling and making it beautiful. That’s a beautiful thing to be able to give someone in a really difficult time of their life. I’ll never meet the young people living there but knowing that I helped make that house feel like a home is a great feeling.
I have also attended a few Board meetings. It’s an incredible opportunity and such a strange feeling because it’s all these senior people and little old me, it’s just crazy. But I can see how my work is making a difference; in the last meeting I attended, we were talking about the new home and a lot of the people there were talking about the practical side of things that will help children leaving our care have the best chances in their adult life. Me and my colleague Sherrie talked to the Board about how important it is that we help children we care for recognise healthy relationships – and unhealthy ones – because long term, this has massive impact on your life. Even if your initial transition out of care goes really well, there are bound to be bumps along the way, and you need to spot quickly who is trying to help you, or not. Relationships are everything. This changed the course of the discussion and our focus for the year: I am really proud of that.
Describe a typical Experts by Experience session
No two sessions have ever been the same! We’ll mostly say we have XYZ to go through today, we’ll get it done and we have an emotion check-in at the start and at the end. Sometimes we’ll have a session that’s really about supporting one another, helping each other out. There’s such a beautiful community feeling to it, it’s really lovely.
We’ll also have opportunities to do quite unusual things, like attending and speaking at the Stronger Things conference in London. It was such a weird feeling. It felt like everyone is so important, they have such big voices, and then there we were, on stage, and I had a voice too. Everyone was so quiet and did such an amazing job of making everyone else feel heard, it was so valuable and so supportive. Afterwards, people I never met before were telling us what a great job we did and giving us hugs; it’s such an amazing thing that Juno had this opportunity to be able to spread our message.
What sorts of things are you excited to work on in the future?
I’m excited to work on decorating Juno New Brighton, the third home, and also attending more Board meetings. There is talk of an apprenticeship scheme being developed at Juno which would be amazing to work on as well.
It’s just so exciting to work in a team where everyone genuinely cares with their hearts. A lot of politicians say they will do ABC and they never actually do ABC, and Juno actually stops to say what should we do, and then do it. It’s wonderful.
Could you share something you’ve found valuable in this experience?
I never used to think that anything good could come from my experiences. And now that I’m here it’s been like a constant reminder that there has been good. I learnt so many lessons, and I’ve realised I can grow from these not-so-good experiences and learnt how to grow. Juno has been so supportive with that. It’s also been so challenging in a really embracing way. I think the approach has been to acknowledge that the experiences we had weren’t so great but also to focus on how we can now inspire other people with the lessons from our experiences. It feels like a circle of people holding hands, wanting to dance to the same song.
What are your hopes for the future of children’s residential care?
I hope that there are more “Junos” across the UK and the world. Based on my experience, I think it’s easy for people who are in charge of Social Services to approach looking after children with a checkbox list – say we solved all the needs like a roof over their heads and food – but forget that children’s emotional needs have to be met as well. So, my biggest hope is that these needs are met.
We’re living in a time when people are learning so much about trauma and the vast impact of trauma on people. Being taken away from your birth parents, no matter what age you are, is incredibly traumatic and I think a lot of people don’t realise how devastating those effects are. So my hope is that more people accept that and help those affected so that care-experienced people can recover and live brilliant lives.
Σχόλια