What is LILAC?
The key purpose of LILAC is to draw upon the experiences and expertise of care–experienced young people to improve the policy and practice of local authorities in how they involve and consult with looked–after children and care leavers.
LILAC will do these by using a quality framework for involvement policy and practice which has been developed by care–experienced young people to carry out assessments of local authority and agency services.
Each authority or agency that is assessed will be provided with a report, recommendations and advice that will help the service improve their policy and practice.
Unique
It is a unique initiative in which young people with experience of the Care system have developed their own good practice standards for services and are trained to assess the performance of local providers against these LILAC standards.
The seven LILAC standards are based on the well–known 'Hear By Right' approach to participation but they have been developed to closely reflect the nature of the Care system.
Involve and Improve
It’s a way to really assess and improve the Care system for the 60,000 children and young people who are looked after by local authorities in England. It is based on the idea that care–experienced young people are experts by experience — so they are best equipped to offer training and information to the social care workforce about how to involve the children and young people who use their services.
They are also the best people to observe and assess services as not only have they been there but children and young people in care are more willing to open–up and share truths with them. It’s based entirely on what children and young people from Care say is important to them.
LILAC Roots
LILAC was initiated by A National Voice and was initially managed in partnership with the Fostering Network and the National Leaving Care Advisory Service. It was supported and funded by SCIE and CSCI who provided a grant of approximately £60,000 to develop the LILAC standards and carry out pilot assessments in two local authorities (City of York and West Sussex).
From the start LILAC was developed and delivered by care–experienced young people.
In October 2007 the Department for Children, Schools and Families gave £30,000 for further development and two more pilots were carried out (Telford LA and TACT).
Following a successful bid to the BIG Lottery Young People's Fund 2, funding of £958,633 has now been obtained for a 3 year project to develop LILAC in all nine English regions.
The team came into post in September 2009 and are starting to roll the project out across England beginning with London and the North West in early 2010.
