CLASS Cymru

Care Leavers Activities and Student Support

about CLASS CYMRU

Welcome to the CLASS Cymru website!

CLASS Cymru (Care Leaver Activities and Student Support in Wales) began as a network of professionals across Wales who work with care leavers and other care-experienced and estranged young people in their educational journeys towards higher education, meeting to share best practice and improve support. Between 2020 and 2022, researchers from CASCADE (the Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre at Cardiff University) worked with young people and practitioners across Wales to find out what support was available for care-experienced students in Wales, and where support was lacking. As a result, we found that whilst support was often available for care-experienced students in Wales, it wasn’t always well signposted or specific to care-experienced young people’s situations.

The CLASS Cymru website is designed to plug this gap: providing clear, concise advice and signposting to relevant sources of support and information. Covering the whole timeline from considering a university degree through to what to do when you graduate, this bilingual resource provides care-experienced people and those who support them with a one-stop-shop for finding the key information necessary to simplify this process.

Illustration by Frank Duffy

Who is CLASS Cymru for?

The information on this site is designed for:

Care-experienced people in Wales

Care-experienced people in Wales of any age who are thinking about applying for university, or are at university already.

You are ‘care-experienced’ if:

  • You have spent any time in local authority care as a child. This could be with foster parents or in a residential children’s home;
  • You have spent time in kinship care as a child, for example living with older siblings or grandparents.

Estranged students

Some advice is also relevant to estranged students, who do not have care experience but have no meaningful contact with their family as adults.

Professionals

Professionals who work with or support care-experienced people. This includes social workers and personal advisors, school and university staff with responsibility for care-experienced students, and foster carers.

With thanks

This website has been made possible by the following:

  • Research funding from both Health and Care Research Wales and Cardiff University
  • The support and input of care-experienced young people and practitioners across Wales
  • Support and feedback from Voices from Care Cymru, The Fostering Network, the CLASS Cymru network and the Rees Foundation
  • Graphic design by Frank Duffy and web design by Gwyn Fisher
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