Celebrating our brilliant Dorset Care Leavers’ university achievements

Congratulations to our Dorset Care Leavers who recently graduated from university.

A graduation celebration has been held to mark the success of nine Dorset Care Leavers who gained their degrees this summer.

The event, which had to be held online this year, was arranged to recognise their academic achievements. A dinner was held via Teams for the new graduates and short speeches were given by Theresa Leavy, Dorset Council Executive Director of People – Children and Mark Blackman, Dorset Council Corporate Director for Education and Learning.

Theresa said: “I was very privileged to attend the graduation ceremony for some of our wonderful Dorset Care Leavers. It was an honour to celebrate their achievements and their graduation from higher education. I am very proud of them, they have all achieved so much.”

Cllr Andrew Parry, Dorset Council Portfolio Holder for Children, Education and Early Help said: “We are very proud of our young Care Leavers’ achievements. We are also very proud of our Foster Carers and our teams who work hard to support them.

“Many of our Care Leavers have progressed in training, further and higher education and we will continue to support them and young people in Dorset to achieve their potential.”

This year’s graduates achieved degrees in a range of subjects from universities across the county, including Forensic IT at Bournemouth University, Social Work at Plymouth, Biomedical Science at UWE with a placement year at Virginia University in the US, History at Kent, Musical Theatre at the London College of Music, English at Birmingham, Politics at Westminster, Music Production at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford and Photography at Plymouth. Several are going on to post-graduate courses.

Children and young people in Dorset come into care for many different reasons. More Dorset Foster Carers are needed to help all our children and young people achieve their potential. If you are considering a change of direction, please find out more about fostering here.