“CREATE Your Future is an empowering, interactive, proven program that promotes change, growth and connection amongst young people.”
CREATE Your Future is a program targeted at young people who are on their journey from care to independence. It aims to equip them with the life skills and necessary to have a successful start in adult life. These workshops are run by our state teams – and have a visible and meaningful impact on the lives of the young people who partake.
In order to extend the reach of these workshops to as many young people as possible, we have developed a licensing scheme so that some of our sector partners can learn to deliver CREATE Your Future programs as part of their support offerings. This is a great outcome for young people as they can receive more support, and have even more opportunities to take part in these workshops which change lives.
Recently CREATE have put together a testimonial booklet entitled “Transitioning to Independence – Their Stories” which encapsulates the CREATE Your Future experience for some of the young people who have participated, as well as one of our sector partners Key Assets who are now a licensee.
Below is an excerpt from the booklet which displays just how big of an impact these workshops can have on the lives of young people leaving care.
“CREATE Your Future is great for young people because it teaches such a wide variety of skills. If you are in care not everyone has the knowledge you need for life and we aren’t taught common sense things. It’s good being taught general knowledge from someone other than your carer as often we don’t listen to them. It helps to hear it from someone else, and someone who sees you as just a person and as an equal. At the workshops, everyone understands what you have been through and that you might not get it first time around, and it’s ok to ask questions on something that you don’t know and there is no shame in that.
I definitely think CREATE Your Future should be made more available to young people because you don’t get always taught skills in foster care placement. CREATE Your Future gives you another chance to learn things that you aren’t taught about, and you can’t learn these things at school. It gives you the opportunity to meet other people in the same situation as you and you can form bonds with people who listen. CREATE Your Future teaches you usable life skills and it’s a lot of fun meeting other young people.
I highly recommend doing CREATE Your Future as you learn life information in a fun way with other young people with a care experience. It helps build relationships and is a supportive learning environment. My advice to other young people is just to take as much information that you can in. Be teachable, there are no stupid questions, and speak to someone aside if you want to do it privately. Don’t feel because you don’t know something you’re not smart, because the workers will understand that you haven’t been taught everything. Take it all in and you’ll learn lots of things.”
