A brand new three-part present beginning on Channel 4 subsequent month takes a close-up have a look at youngsters and their households within the care system in Coventry – and people working to assist and help them.
Channel 4 has commissioned KIDS, a documentary sequence that includes unprecedented entry to these in care.
Programme makers labored intently with Coventry Metropolis Council’s Kids’s Companies to create an in-depth have a look at the problems going through everybody concerned and to point out the struggles and the triumphs of these in care.
With the variety of younger folks in care set to reaching a file 100 000 within the subsequent decade, and elevated strain on the system and employees, there’s by no means been a extra necessary second to inform these tales.
Till now, authorized restrictions and dangers, imply younger folks in care are not often seen or heard.
Full of drama and humour, the sequence will get up shut and private with six exceptional youngsters – and their households – in Coventry, as they enter an important 12 months of their lives and put together to depart the care system.
For the primary time, they invite an viewers into their world to disclose the unflinching actuality of how they entered care and the way these experiences are carried with them at this time.
The primary episode – to be screened on 10 Could – introduces Xorin, who, after being exploited as a younger teen, is returning dwelling to Coventry from a youngsters’s dwelling in Wales to rebuild his life with mum Kelly. In the meantime 19-year-old Annabelle is pregnant and decided to interrupt the cycle of care that meant her being faraway from her dad and mom on the age of 5.
In different episodes, viewers will meet Byron and Bayley as they negotiate dwelling on their very own for the primary time as they go away the safety and help of their carers. And we be part of 16-year-old Havana as she takes on her first tenancy and has huge questions she desires answered; she has by no means recognized her dad and now hopes to seek out him.
Additionally, after a number of placements, Kane returns to dwell close to his mum however he desires to totally perceive the the reason why he was eliminated as a younger baby and asks his social employee for entry to his case information.
John Gregg, Director of Kids’s Companies at Coventry Metropolis Council, mentioned: “There’s by no means been a extra necessary time to listen to from younger folks – and their households – within the care of Coventry’s Kids’s Companies. Too usually, they’re talked about, however not talked to. That’s one of many causes that we agreed to work with Expectation and director, Paddy Wivell, on the sequence.
“We needed these folks to have a voice and for the work of our employees to be seen because it actually is: difficult however extremely rewarding. The sequence captures that fully and we’re extremely happy with it and of the younger individuals who’ve taken half.”
From BAFTA-winning director, Paddy Wivell (Jail) and Government Producer, Colin Barr (Homicide 24/7, Superkids: Breaking Away from Care) this sequence makes use of extraordinary entry to Coventry Kids’s Service to take the viewer deep into the center of the care system.
Listening to from foster carers, social staff, service managers and youngsters’s dwelling employees, Children lays naked the high-stakes choice making in attempting to guard younger folks, and meets the dad and mom who’ve had their youngsters forcibly eliminated.
Paddy Wivell mentioned: “On this sequence the younger persons are rightly entrance and centre. With the state performing as their company dad or mum many really feel they’re handled in another way to their friends. Guidelines and restrictions designed to guard additionally forestall them from having a public voice, making them invisible at a time after they must be heard.”
Colin Barr, Government Producer mentioned, “Too usually we have a look at younger folks in care as if they’re victims, or that they need to be pitied in some say, which is simply not how they dwell their lives. There may be an power and spirit to them which is only a pleasure to witness and Paddy is the proper director to seize that in an uncompromising however uplifting approach.”
Shaminder Nahal, Head of Specialist Factual mentioned: “Exploring the lives of younger folks within the care system has been a key preoccupation since Coventry first gave us entry for the movie “Superkids: Breaking Away from Care”. Now Paddy Wivell and the good group at Expectation have introduced characteristically considerate and genuine filmmaking to a world that’s not often seen, and important to grasp.
“This very particular sequence brings specialist factual perception to its examination of the care system now, however at its coronary heart are the tales of the wonderful younger individuals who open our eyes in a brand new, transferring and joyful approach, as we glance into their lives.”
The sequence comes simply months after Ofsted rated the town’s Kids’s Companies as ‘good’, and runs on Wednesdays from 10-24 Could.