The Fridge Plan

SCLU designed the Fridge Plan in response to feedback from children and young people in care in Sheffield. Within the 2018 BrightSpots Survey and within audits, lots of young people said they didn’t understand what was happening in their lives, didn’t have a good understanding of their care or social care journey and weren’t sure what was happening next. Research shows that this is linked to lower wellbeing.

SCLU decided that they wanted to tackle this and designed a new plan format so that all young people in Sheffield to have a copy of their plan in a format they understood and written in plain language with no jargon.

Between March 2021 and August 2021, the Fridge Plan was been piloted within the Leaving Care Service, Early Help and East Fieldwork. In this time over 50 Fridge Plans were completed with young people. The feedback has been really positive and workers said the Fridge Plan has:

 Helped young people see how things are moving forward

• Helped parents understand the plan, as the Fridge Plan is really simple and easy to understand.
• Helped them, as workers to focus and break down complex cases
• Helped to focus visits with young people and parents

In November 2021, the Fridge Plan was rolled our Plan across all service areas in Sheffield, including Children Looked After, Care Leaving Service and Social Care. This means that that all young people open to Early Help and Social Care can benefit from it.