FAQs

The ‘Your Life, Your Care’ survey is part of our emerging children and young people’s participation strategy. Participation is aligned to the Oxfordshire Way and our partnership vision to “work together to help children, young people, and families to thrive” and specifically: ‘ask not assume, what is happening in your life and what would help’ and ‘act by seeking to understand your lived experiences and work with you’. 

The survey will deliver valuable insight to inform strategic business planning (identifying a minimum of two outcome focussed KPIs) and drive children and young people centred service improvement, providing a springboard for future coproduction activities (you said, we are doing together). 

There are three versions of the survey, targeted by age: 4-7yrs, 8-11yrs and 11-17yrs for those we care for; apparent from those who are in the adoption process. The survey forms are designed to be straightforward and should only take children and young people around 10 -15 minutes to fill in. 

This work is being led by Annelies Henshall, Principal Social Worker, supported by a small project team including engagement and communications specialists and data and insight specialists in communications, strategy and insight. At a senior level it is sponsored by Jean Kelly, Deputy Director for Children’s Social Care.

The questions in the Your Life, Your Survey are based on the Bright Spots Well-Being Indicators, a set of measures co-produced with 170 children in care and care leavers about what makes their lives good. 

They focus on facets of wellbeing: happy yesterday, satisfied with life as a whole, things they are doing are worthwhile, positive about the future and life is getting better. The themes covered are rights, recovery, resilience and relationships. 

Bright Spots give a minimum response rate of 30% to ensure that the data collected can be analysed effectively. If the minimum target is not met, there is a risk that individual children and young people could be identified by the information they provide, the findings might not be representative and overall comparative analysis may not be possible.

It’s both and responses are managed exclusively by Bright Spots. The eSurvey is hosted by Bright Spots using SmartSurvey software that can be used on phones, tablet devices or laptops/pcs. Bright Spots also provide the survey in pdf format for the council to print and distribute. This can be scanned and sent back to brightspots@oxfordshire.gov.uk or via a Freepost envelope. 

Yes, the ‘Your Life, Your Care’ survey forms are anonymous and fully confidential so that children and young people we care for can fully express their views without risk of negative consequences. The survey process is fully GDPR compliant. In this instance, Bright Spots is the data controller and will provide us with anonymised raw data, excluding any personal details and identifying information given in free text responses. Aside from counts, the county council will not provide Bright Spots with any information regarding the children we care for. 

The Your Life, Your Care’ survey process is based on a ‘trusted adult’ model.  A trusted adult in this context is a professional known to the child or young person who presents the survey to them, tells them what it’s about and gives them the support they need to complete the survey either online or in paper format. The trusted adult cannot be a child’s own social worker or foster carer.

While the content of the completed survey is anonymous, we do need to know who has completed it so that we can encourage participation. We will use monitoring systems developed by other local authorities to centrally capture who has responded and where we may have gaps. We will also have a prize draw to encourage CYP to take part.  

Bright Spots will create a bespoke report, comparing our findings to the national average (children in care and care leavers in other authorities) as well as to findings from similar surveys in the general population. The report will highlight areas of good practice where children and young people are flourishing – as well as indicating areas of improvement where further work may be needed. The Bright Spots report will be reproduced in different formats and shared widely.

We will also invite the Bright Spots team to present key findings to professionals to encourage service-wide discussion and exploration of the findings and to children and young people.

The survey findings and corresponding action plan will be shared with children’s services leadership team, DQiPP (driving quality in practice and performance), Children in Care Council, Corporate Parenting Panel, informal cabinet and people’s overview and scrutiny committee. Ongoing monitoring of the action plan will be embedded into the directorates performance management processes including the corporate parenting dashboard and DQiPP (driving quality in practice and performance) monthly meetings. It is envisaged that many actions will require coproduction and we will engage the coproduction advisory group on this.