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Council agreed
the following motion:

 

This Council notes:

-     Care-experienced
people face significant barriers that impact them throughout their
lives.

-    Despite the
resilience of many care-experienced people, society too often does
not take their needs into account.

-    Care-experienced people
often face discrimination and stigma across housing, health,
education, relationships, employment and in the criminal justice
system.

-    Care-experienced people
may encounter inconsistent support in different geographical
areas.

-    The Public
Sector Equality Duty requires public bodies, such as councils, to
eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, and victimisation of
people with protected characteristics.

 

This Council believes:

-       Councillors should be champions of children and
young people in care and challenge the negative attitudes and
prejudice that exists in all aspects of society.

 

This Council therefore resolves, in
support of similar resolutions made by Cambridgeshire County
Council and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined
Authority:

-       It
recognises that care experienced people are a group who are likely
to face discrimination.

-    It recognises
that Councils have a duty to put the needs of disadvantaged people
at the heart of decision-making through co-production and
collaboration.

-    Future
decision, services and policies made and adopted by the Council
should be assessed through Equality Impact Assessments to determine
the impact of changes on people with care experience, alongside
those who formally share a protected characteristic.

-    In the
delivery of the Public Sector Equality Duty the Council includes
care experience in the publication and review of Equality
Objectives and the annual publication of information relating to
people who share a protected characteristic in services and
employment.

-    This Council
will treat care experience as if it were a Protected
Characteristic.

-    This Council
formally calls upon all other bodies to treat care experience as a
protected characteristic until such time as it may be introduced by
legislation including:

i.              working
to establish South Cambridgeshire as a District where all local
government treats our care leavers similarly.

ii.            calling
on towns and parishes as well as the Greater Cambridge Partnership
to also pass this motion to enable us all to work together to
protect and provide for our care experienced young
people.

-       To
continue proactively seeking out and listening to the voices of
care experienced people when developing new policies based on their
views.