MA student at the EU Parliament for European Care Leavers Project

Carrie Harrop – a current postgraduate taught student on our MA Childhood, Youth and Social Policy degree – was recently at the EU Parliament as part of her role with the European Care Leavers Network Project.

This event in Brussels brought together representatives from 7 countries via the project, which has made a series of recommendations on “empowering care leavers in Europe”, originally drafted by 178 care leavers.

The event was the final conference of the two-year ‘LeaveCare-LiveLife’ Erasmus+ project led from Italy with partners in the UK, Romania, Ireland and Croatia. The project has also generated the first virtual museum of care leavers of all ages, bringing together experiences and memories of young people across Europe.

Carrie studies at Loughborough University part-time alongside her employment as a Young People’s Project Co-Ordinator for national charity The Care Leavers Association. She is also a Director for the International Foster Care Organisation and a trustee of the Institute of Recovery from Childhood Trauma.

Speaking about the event, Carrie said “This Erasmus plus project - “Leave care, Live well” has been an amazing piece of participation work. Not only has the voice of the young care leavers been central to the design and outputs, but been central to creating many of the amazing outputs. Through youth friendly participation techniques this project has enabled the “experts by experience” to be part of creating real meaningful change.” 

The MA Childhood, Youth and Society Policy degree is an multi-disciplinary taught Masters programme in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University and is available for full or part-time study.