Digital Skills Programme for Care-experienced Young People

We’re delighted that we are finally able to share some good news we’ve been sitting on for a while. The Scottish Tech Army will be joining a consortium of partners led by YMCA Scotland and including Barnardo’s Scotland, YouthLink Scotland, Renfrewshire Council and Mhor Collective to deliver a Digital Skills programme for care experienced young people. This three year project will be overseen, co-designed and co-produced by care experienced young people and will focus on the development of digital makerspaces and skills programmes designed to ensure that they have the ability to exercise their rights, build relationships and have influence - over their own lives as well as over changes they want to make in the wider world. The digital skills they acquire are intended to increase the options and opportunities available to care experienced young people in both life and work.

Funding for this is being provided by the Life Changes Trust, which was established by the National Lottery Community Fund in 2013 (then, Big Lottery Fund). It is a time-limited Trust which is winding down in March 2022 and this Digital Skills Programme is a fitting part of the legacy that will be passed on by a Trust that has delivered so much.

The programme will be based on a youth-work led approach designed to appeal to young people within their communities and to provide a pathway that will maximise the appeal of the programme and the chances of success for the young people that participate.

The STA’s part in the programme will be to help inform the technologies for the makerspaces, contribute to the development of the digital skills for life and work curricula, provide volunteering opportunities for those new skills to be used for good and, ultimately, forge pathways into work or further education.

We will be looking to engage with people in the tech sector who are themselves care experienced as they are best equipped to act as role models and inspiration for care experienced young people finding their place in the world. If you’d like to know more about this project, please get in touch.

This is a big step for the STA. For the first time we will be working directly with the people coming through this programme and we are looking forward to working with all parties and, most especially, learning from care experienced young people themselves to develop a sustainable programme befitting their needs.