Child Well-being Study

Understanding the Subjective Well-Being of Younger Children Looked After in Wales: A Qualitative Study Designed with Children in Care using Creative Methodologies Read More

Talk to Someone Now

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Innovation project

Welcome to [name of hub]! On this website, you will find links to mental health and wellbeing services that have been collated and tested by care-experienced young people, for care-experienced young people. Using the resource pages below, you will be able to find different forms of support, depending on your needs, all of which have… Read More

Pioneer Panel Discussion​

’You are a true Pioneer,’ is a compliment received by a foster carer during a recent panel discussion that took place at SPARK.  At this event, a research team from Cardiff University’s CASCADE partnered with The Fostering Network to launch the evaluation of The Fostering Wellbeing Programme. To reflect on the position of the Pioneer, eight experienced foster carers formed a panel to share their views on their pioneering roles.  Read More

Reach for the stars: Care experienced role models

As part of our CASCADE Parents group and network we have offered the opportunity for members to contribute to blogs if they would like to. These will be stories, messages, or priorities for research from their perspective. We hope this will be a regular blog feature at CASCADE and another way for us to amplify the voices of those with lived experience of children’s social care. Read More

Public Involvement Board

At CASCADE we are committed to involving people with lived experience of children and families social care in our research. This includes children & young people, parents and carers. In 2021 we took the decision to set up an Involvement Board to steer and support our work. This board sits alongside our centre management and… Read More

Weeding out a few bad apples? What do we believe registration of residential childcare workers is for?

Residential care for children ‘looked after’ by the state is often characterised as the placement of ‘last resort’, despite it being a positive and appropriate placement choice for some young people.  Across the UK, 16% of children looked after in England are living in residential settings, 10% in Scotland and 7% in Wales (Competition and Markets Authority, 2022). Historically, the children’s residential care workforce is undervalued and often seen as transient and low skilled (Department for Education, 2021), despite working with children who have often experienced significant trauma and challenges. Read More