Community Agreement
Welcome to All of Us, the community for all estranged and care experienced students and recent graduates, across the UK. It’s important that everyone feels included, safe and supported in our community. The Sounding Board – a group of around 35 estranged and care-experienced students and graduates who helped steer and shape the creation of the All of Us Community – have worked together to create this document. This is what we’ve called the ‘Community Agreement’, a set of guidelines to ensure the best experience possible for anyone who engages with All of Us.
The Agreement
We have 6 rules that we ask you follow when engaging in the community, whether it is an #AllofUsLocal meetup, a Unite Foundation-run event, the community online, or social media or anything All of Us related. Please respect these, it helps keep our community safe, kind and inclusive.
All of Us Agree
We support and uplift each other to help make this space a warm and friendly community to be part of. People make community, so make it kind!
This includes not sharing people’s stories and experiences outside of the community, unless they have given you their explicit consent.
For example: being racist, ageist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, ableist, classist, sizeist, or any bigoted behaviour. This includes towards others with differing backgrounds in the community.
We share experiences of care and/or estrangement but accept that we still have different backgrounds.
Be aware that your actions do have an effect on others. If someone is upset or offended by your actions, you need to take personal responsibility for this regardless of whether the harm was intended.
Ask for help if you need it. If you have a safeguarding concern about someone else, it is always best to report it.
Do You Have a Safeguarding Concern?
All of Us is supported by Unite Foundation, a national charity that supports estranged and care experienced students with a rent-free #HomeAtUniversity. The Unite Foundation believes all individuals have a right to learn, live and develop within a safe environment and is committed to protecting children and adults-at-risk from significant harm.
The Unite Foundation’s Safeguarding Policy applies to All of Us too.
If the agreement is not respected
A space should be inclusive of every individual where possible, but, if certain individuals are making the place unsafe, they are making it less inclusive for others.
If you feel that you cannot abide by the All of Us Community Agreement, you should exclude yourself from the space. Individuals who disregard or continually behave in ways that contravene the Agreement will be challenged about their behaviour, and have to leave our online platforms, meetups or events.
With the exception of Unite Foundation staff, only care experienced and estranged people are permitted to join All of Us online and attend community meetups and events. Members must be current, or recently graduated (past 2 year maximum), HE students. School and college students are not eligible. This is so we can keep the community a safe place for people with similar experiences.
What do we mean by ‘care experienced’?
The term care-experienced refers to anyone who has been or is currently in care or from a looked-after background at any stage in their life, for any length of time, via formal or informal arrangement.
This includes, but is not limited to:
= Kinship care
= Adoption
= Looked after at home
= Residential care
= Supported accomodation
What do we mean by ‘estranged’?
Generally, estrangement means you have little or no contact with your parents (either biological or adoptive) and this is unlikely to change.
In our community, we have a more relaxed definition than funding bodies such as Student Finance, as we are aware that estrangement may be more complicated in reality and some people may be ‘low’ rather than ‘no’ contact.