Care leavers’ transitions to independence

Yeah, I’m a big advocate for care leavers and that’s coming into the filming and, you know, doing all this stuff, like I wanna advocate for foster kids ’cause it’s... they’re just not listened to, you know, at least in my experience. So, like the work that I’m doing now is  really important to us, that’s why I’m doing it, you know, so people don’t have to deal with what I had to go through at least.

So, you’re hoping the film that you’re making at the moment, that will be also part of getting those views heard?

Yeah. I think that it’s gonna be an opportunity to obviously  get the opinions and voices out there, but also get some awareness, ’cause I don’t think people outside the system know what we have to deal with, you know? That whatever position you’re in within the care system, so I’m just trying to get my voice heard and listened to.

We’ve got care leaver and protected characteristic in [local authority], and that’s through like having to speak to councillors and getting it through scrutiny meetings and so I’ve been doing a lot of that.

Well, I think a lot of it is... is like I didn’t really know what was going on, and then I’ve got friends who are younger and I’ve also lived with people that are... well, they were younger, obviously they’re now starting to come through the leaving care side, and it’s like I don’t... I’d want them to know, because I wanted to know. Like it’s taken for me to be 20... 23, 24, to find stuff out that you should really have been finding out at 18.

So, it’s just the fairness of it.

So, you’re kind of more involved so that the younger ones can kind of benefit from knowing earlier what their—?

Yeah, well I... I know that the stuff that we’re doing now is not going to affect me, like I’m [age] this year, so it’s not going to affect me. But like  with my friends and with people that I’ve lived with, they should still get what I’ve in the end had to find out about, but if they find out about it earlier, then they can get it from earlier.

We had a business meeting last night with councillors, and we’ve made a lot of local changes for the [local authority] care leavers. So, we did a scrutiny meeting with the councillors; we managed to get care leavers as a protected characteristic treated as such in [local authority]. We’ve  been doing a lot of speeches to make changes for the care leavers, we’ve just done one in front of 350 people, [local authority] families, social workers and everything, about languages: the use of language within care and how it made us feel.

We’re trying to currently set up training ran by care leavers for PAs which are the leaving care team workers for care leavers, so we’re going to be training them. We’re hoping to try and get the care leaver bus passes raised from 21 to 25. We’re doing loads for care leavers in the local authority and alongside the leaving care team.

It’s given us the opportunity to show other care leavers that their voices will be heard and they can make a difference and things don’t need to stay the change... to stay the same forever – it can get better – but it’s only going to do that by us standing up and saying, “This isn’t right and this needs to change,” and that’s what we’re doing, but it’s because of our local authority giving us these opportunities that we’re able to do that.

Yeah, no, mostly like what we kinda did is we all just kinda banded together as one voice. So, because I knew young people that were still living there... ’cause when I got moved to a new semi-independent placement and it wasn’t far from that place, so a girl that I had grown up with, before foster care, had come into care and had been placed at [name of placement], so we were talking and she was telling me all the same stuff was happening. And I’m very much the kind of person where I couldn’t move on from what had happened, knowing it was still happening to other people.

Yeah.

So, with her help, I found out who was still living there and spoke to other young people that I knew that were living there that had been placed there. ’cause the young people that were there when I was there, I didn’t get on with, but as new people got moved in, some of them I knew. So, we all kinda came together and were all experiencing the same stuff at that place, or had experienced it, so we all started filing reports to social services, and eventually a lot of other professionals started to back us up, like the drugs and alcohol worker that had visited the placement backed up our reports based on what she’d seen when she’d been there, and other young people told me that their leaving care workers were also backing up. So, I think eventually it just got to the point where so many of us had linked up with each other and had found that we were all having the same experiences that they couldn’t silence all of us, so they had to take action.

I’ve got involved with a lot of policy issue activism work, especially with care experience, with estranged students. So last summer I actually hosted the UK’s first ever open day for care experience with estranged students and since then, [university] did what [university] do and they stole my idea and they’re now doing one. But it’s really great. I’m actually doing that again. I am helping the outreach department host that in multiple different colleges. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of the Class Act campaign that was student union campaign helping state educated working class students. And they have an officer for care experience and estranged students. So, I did a lot of work with them, putting information out there and providing representation for students.

Yes, so I am actually on the trustee, sorry, the sounding board for a charity called, [Name]. They are a charity for care experience and estranged students. They like provide a little network for all of us to sort of meet and support other students. And it’s nice having that recognition like we set up a little chat when we could all sort of, ‘oh hey, my university hasn’t helped me secure accommodation’ or ‘hey, I need help with access, help accessing my care files’ or really sort of give each other that day-to-day support which is really nice. But again, it’s another example of student led proactivity in supporting each other. 

Yeah. I just think when you… as a society we need to be much more compassionate in how we treat people generally and I think that’s important, just like compassion and just being nice to people. Like yeah… just try and understand where a behaviour stems from, rather than punishing the behaviour. I’m recently reading this book on… relates to the essay I am doing on transformative justice, and honestly like I can really resonate with this. It’s such an interesting concept. I think a lot of this applies to the justice system because obviously that’s so many care leavers that end up on the receiving end of the justice system. So, I think a lot of these problems require radical system… systematic change. I’d like to be in the position to be able to make that change and I’m not unfortunately.

Maybe by then you will be? One day, you will be part of that with others, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so I just think we need to be definitely empowering people, care leavers to do what they want to do and listen to them, and if they… and also empower them to influence policy and to make a change. ‘Cos they are above all the people who know best, right? So, I think that would also be a good idea giving them a route into like government policy. [Laughs]. I dunno if that's a crazy idea, but it's like giving them more of a voice. So, I suppose this is the whole point of these interviews that to do that, yeah.