It is three years since we introduced Managers' Forums, Practitioners' Gatherings and Focus Groups, and during that time they have gone from strength to strength.

The design, content and format of each was created after a six-month market research exercise with you, our members, and now having learnt so much we feel it is time to go a step further. We now have a far stronger collective voice, our young people too are more vocal and as an organisation, Staf has learnt much about "systems change" which we want to share with you.

With this in mind, we have set ourself three guiding principles:

1. To go deeper into the key issues:

Over the next two years we wish to examine more closely our interpretation of policy, what are the drivers and principles that have created that policy and ask: are we interpreting it properly?

To do this we need time and space within our different events to go deeper and create opportunities to discuss and share more.

2. To collect useful inofrmation and data about what members are doing in practice:

Through our current and newly introduced focus groups we will continue to concentrate on key issues affecting care-experienced young people. However, in order to have influence we need to collect robust data, information and stories that can be used at a local and national level to create change.

Our voice will only be as strong and compelling as the information we gather and the creativity we use to present it. To do this we need to work together, agree what information would be most useful and develop a passion for gathering it.

3. To be fully answerable to care-experienced young people:

The voice of care-experienced young people has become stronger over the last few years. However, there is a need or us to ensure that it does inform everything that we do, even if we are sometimes saying "no". Staf is committed to being proactive in ensuring that this is the case.

We have already started this process at Staf to find out more, continue to be active in our Managers' Forums, Practitioners' Gatherings and focus groups and keep up to date on our new facebook page.