In the #MessagestoSocialWorkers project, we worked with a group of young people in care who attend a project run by the Roots Foundation Wales and the South West Wales Reaching Wider Partnership – Swansea University to create this film. It represents the key messages that young people want to share with social workers.
The group meets regularly and offers care-experienced young people the opportunity to meet for social events, educational opportunities, and a range of activities. In January and February 2019 we worked with the group to make our first collaborative film: #FromYoungPeopleForYoungPeople – Find Your Tribe.
In the summer of 2019, we met up again to think about what other messages were important as well as who should hear them. We brainstormed ideas and decided on the main messages and got to work on scripting and creating visual elements for the film. We used storyboards to try and put together the group’s ideas then experimented with drawing, stickers, and fuzzy felts.
The original images – created by young people based on their experiences and made by the group, were used as the basis for the film animation, bringing to life the messages the young people wanted to share, along with help of Like an Egg Productions. The film represents their ideas about how they would like to work with social workers in the future. These are their #messagestosocialworkers.
Dawn Mannay – School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University @dawnmannay
Rachael Vaughan – CASCADE: Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre, Cardiff University @VaughanRach
Helen Davies – South West Wales Reaching Wider Partnership – Swansea University @ReachingWiderSU
Emma Jones – Roots Foundation Wales @RootsWales
