Helen Costa Lee Pardy McLaughlin

Why VR ? The Case for A Different

Approach

3 times more

likely to be NEET

5 x more likely to be excluded

from school

25% of rough

sleepers in London

have been in care

65% of children in

Young Offenders institutes

have been in care

More likely to be a teenage

mum and have children removed into

care

Care leavers have worse

health outcomes

across a range of measures

Local Authority as Corporate Parent: The Children and Social Work Act 2017

• Defined for the first time in law the responsibility of corporate parents to ensure, as far as possible, secure, nurturing and positive experiences for looked-after children and young people, and care leavers

• act in the best interests, and promote the physical and mental health and wellbeing, of those children and young people

• encourage them to express their views, wishes and feelings, and take them into account, while promoting high aspirations and trying to secure the best outcomes for them

• make sure they have access to services

• make sure that they are safe, with stable home lives, relationships and education or work

• prepare them for adulthood and independent living

• As corporate parents, it’s every councillor’s responsibility to make sure that the council ismeeting these duties towards children in care and care leavers.

How Good A Corporate Parent Are You ? OR…

Fostering & Adoption: common areas for improvement

Acute shortage of in-house carers, costly IFA placements, unable to actively “match”

Preparation of foster carers and adopters to meet increasingly complex needs

Support to placements struggling

Prevention – working with birth parents

Sufficiently skilled permanent workforce

Focus on fixing the adults and professionals

whilst accepting the

child

Commercial Confidential7

Behaviour change is difficult and takes time … but first you need the motivation to change

How can we stay

connected with our

children when their

experience is so far

removed from our own

?

How to maintain

desired behaviours

“in the moment” ?

How do we

accelerate or

Change behaviour

?

“”You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” …Harper Lee

8

9

The Cornerstone VR Library: revealing & healing childhood trauma

Recruitment/Introduction to Adoption and Fostering Abuse and Child Development in utero

A look at trauma, abuse and neglect in the early years

Children with early life trauma and school Children with early life trauma at home

Commercial Confidential 10

In their shoes….

Virtual Reality To Help Adoptive Parents

Early Impact

Foster Carer Recruitment

87% Increase in enquiries from events

Improving Placement Stability

100% success rate in 1:1 use

Group Training

“I will be able to connect more with our son; address

the feelings not the behaviour.”

Better Decision Making

72% of Judges will think differently as a result

Improving Access to Support Services

48 hrs from referral to appointment

Behaviour Change in Teachers

“really powerful and meaningful and it re-invigorates me with

why I became a teacher”

Accelerated learning & rapid impact

6 minutes to change behaviour vs 3 yrs

“GROUNDBREAKING”

“ REVOLUTIONARY”

“TRANSFORMATIVE”

Field Experience with VR

The Vision for VR as Transformation Tool

A Vision for Service Transformation

Social Worker Recruitment using VR

The possibilities…

professional training & CPD Real life simulation

Contact

Therapy

Support

Making use of the medium:

Birth parent early interventions

CSE awareness training

To provide the benefit

of hindsight

Life story work

When empathy

and acceptance is the goal:

And Across Other Social Policy Challenges and In Combination with other Tech

Crime and antisocial behaviour

De-radicalisation

Climate change

Public health

Thank You