In order to mark this year's Care Experienced Week, we've invited Catherine McCormack, Edinburgh College's Student Experience Manager and Corporate Parent Lead, to share her reflections on how Edinburgh College is supporting our care experienced students.
Hello everyone,
I hope you are well and are you are enjoying being a student at Edinburgh College!
My name is Catherine McCormack, and I am one of the Student Experience Managers here at Edinburgh College. I am also the Corporate Parent Lead for the College, meaning I lead on the work we do to support our Care Experienced Students.
Thanks to EC Students’ Association for inviting me to write this blog to tell you about the work I do supporting our Care Experienced Students.
So, a wee bit about me, I have worked in Further Education since 1999 and when I returned to work after having my son Oliver in 2009, I worked on a project called Transitions for Young People Leaving Care (TLC). I was a keyworker supporting CE students in college, building links with external partners such as ‘Who Cares? Scotland’ and local authorities and also raising awareness in the college with all staff on our role as a Corporate Parent.
Since then I have continued to develop the work alongside many colleagues and have had had the privilege of working with many amazing students along the way!
I feel proud that Edinburgh College is recognised as having a robust support network for CE students. We strive to have a ‘door is always open’ policy, guaranteeing places on courses (for those that meet the minimum entry requirements) and acknowledging that for some, it may not be the right time to study. For those students who might have to leave their course early we make sure students know they can return to college at any point in the future.
I don’t do the job alone though, and each of our campuses has a CE contact that is available to support you, they are Shona Alexander at Sighthill, Sharon Pearson at Midlothian, Mireya Ferrer at Milton Road and Katarzyna Wasilewska at Granton.
Supporting students is obviously the most important part of my role but another big part of it is to raise awareness and understanding of what it means to be care experienced across the college with all staff. One of the ways we do this is by regularly taking part in social media campaigns including National Care Day and Care Experienced Week, as this allows us to amplify the voices of students and share case studies celebrating their success. So, this leads nicely to Care Experienced Week this year which runs from 19th – 26th October and what we are doing here at Edinburgh College to mark the week.
Look out for posts on our social media channels, including a video from me outlining the support available here at college and how to access it. We are also running two drop-in events later on in October and November in partnership with HUB for Success, this will be a chance to come along and meet other CE students, college and HUB for Success staff, take part in some Wellbeing Activities (if you want) and grab some freebies and pizza!
I hope to see you at one of our drop-in events and if you see me in the corridor please stop and say hello 😊