Care leavers’ transitions to independence

The other advice, especially for the caring body or organisation: please understand us. When we say things, try to be in our shoes and think about it. Because they don’t really understand what we talk about. When we say that we are depressed, they will say, “Just go outside and play football,” and stuff. No. If that stress would go out with football, me, I’m playing football my whole life. Starting from back home, or let’s say, even after I came to this country, I’m playing football the whole year. Nothing. I played football, maybe I forget that time when I play football. After I play it, it comes back again. At least, what I want to say is, please understand what we’re talking about. Try to be in our shoes to understand what we’re talking about. When we say that we are sick, we are depressed, we are unhappy. When we say that these things are unfair, try to understand us. Don’t say that. Do you know what they say? They say, “Just be grateful you have a roof over your head,” and stuff. I know that. I don’t want you even to remind me about that and I’m already grateful about it, but there are some things inside that I cannot explain.   
 
I don’t know how to say it. I can’t explain the things that I need inside me, but I need that thing. I don’t know how to say it. ’cause if I knew what my problem is, I would have solved it. ’cause there’s a saying that says, ‘if you know what your problem is, you already solved 50 percent of it.’ So, if we knew what our problem is, why we are stressing? We wouldn’t even come and ask you for that thing. So, when you ask something, try to be in our shoes. Think about it, at least. I know you can’t think, you can’t imagine because you haven’t been in that situation, but at least, instead of saying, “You have this, you have that,” at least, even though you don’t understand, at least try to comfort us, like: “Everything’s gonna be fine,” and stuff, you know? At least, when we hear those things, it’s going to calm us, in my view. ’cause I’m here experiencing the same things as the others, so...  

I’d say... maybe that like just because someone is a care kid doesn’t mean that they’re like awful and delinquent. You know, everyone is gonna have their ups and downs, everyone’s not gonna be perfectly behaved all of the time, and I think it’s important to understand that we all go through it and not to be so hard on care kids for that. And I think there’s such a stigmatisation around delinquency and care kids, I don’t know, maybe that’s just personal opinion.  

I’d say with foster carers, like exactly the same, but also just treat the care child like they’re your own kid. I think that is something like... if you were to do it to... like to your own children, then do it over the care kid. I know that there’s situations where that can be quite difficult through, like barriers, and whatnot, which is completely understandable, but I think the most important thing for a care child is they want to feel loved, I mean this is... you know, everyone knows this, they want to feel loved and wanted, but also they want to feel normal.  
  
Yeah.  

Again, everyone knows this is not common, I mean this is not new news, but just do what you can to make them feel as normal as you can, ’cause no one wants to feel like an outsider, especially as a teenager growing up, no one wants to feel different, that’s what I’d say. 

I was mentioning my experience in supported accommodation, I’d say, I was quite highly independent. And actually, the way that my support worker said it was like, ‘Oh, you are quite high functioning independent so you won’t really need my support.’ It’s like, well, actually I will, just in different ways and you really should consider that. Sort of considering language you use and the phrases you use, are they appropriate? Are they sensitive, insensitive? It, maybe quite completely, like, you don’t mean to do it. There is no ill-will. It’s like to think about my support worker, the safeguarding staff and all sort of things. I wouldn’t ever say they were malicious in the way they treat you. They are just unaware. And it’s like you could have all this safeguard training and you can sort of go to your conferences, or whatever. But you will never really understand unless you’ve lived through what it’s like to be us. So, the best thing you can do is listen and have that experience and try your best to go and look at how you could help that student. Like for me, if they are interested in going to a highly competitive university like [university], maybe you can’t help with their personal statement support, but you can look at resources you can give them or, you know, you could speak to your own colleagues and say, oh this student has gone through this experience,what can I recommend to them? It might take five or ten extra minutes out of your day, but really, just try and make the effort, because what we are going through is sort of horrible, we’re really alone sometimes and that extra five or ten minutes can make all the difference. So, yeah.  

And we do still need help. And we’re not saying we don’t need help, but we need you to know, and we need to know that you’re gonna be there regardless of what we say, or what we do, or how we might feel. And that you choose us, and that you want to help us, because we’ve never had that direct support from anyone, and this is your kind of chance that once someone turns 18, this is the last chance they have to have that support from someone before they’re left in the world by themself.  
  
And I know myself, I’ve tested those boundaries, and I pushed those people away, and they left, but I wish someone had thought, ‘oh, why is she pushing us away? Maybe it’s because she’s never had anyone to support her or to trust her. We need to prove to her that she can trust us.’ Because trust goes both ways. And if I can’t trust you, I’m never gonna let myself trust you, and you’re never gonna trust me, and you’re never gonna let me do things that I wanna do.  

And I think that people have a real misconception of what it’s like to leave care, and until they meet the kids and the people that go through it, they’re still gonna have that misconception. And it’s like talk to the people that you’re looking after, actually be involved, like actually communicate. Like, if you’re running late, tell them that you’re running late, don’t just show up half an hour late, you know?   
  
Like, even if you’re worried about what not telling someone might do, like or what telling... Like, I don’t know, say there’s a meeting and there’s been bad news and you’re like: ‘oh, we can wait two weeks to tell them because they don’t... we... we don’t wanna upset them,’ that just highlights the fact, for me, that I can’t trust you because you’re not being honest with me. So it’s like no matter how hard a conversation would be, you should still have the conversation with them, basically.  
  
And, like... and the fact that each and every one of us needs help, we just don’t know how to ask for it.

Okay, well, sounds good. Anything for like foster carers or kinship carers or anything like that?  
  
I think again individual experience, like, especially for me. I remember I was not an angel when I first arrived at my foster carers. I told them every lie under the sun. I lied. I remember a funny story when I said I had packed lunches and not free school meals. So, I arrived at school on the first day. The teacher came out and went, oh, [Name] you are on packed lunches now. My face turned so bright. I was like, oh no, I’ve been caught out. But it’s like, it’s really really hard to trust this random person.   
  
You’re basically picked up out of your environment and plummeted into this random sort of person’s house or this foster home, or whatever. You are now around these people and it’s like to really, my foster carers were brilliant with it, but they really took their time to help me break down those walls and trust them. I think it’s really important to spend the time and sort of, when you can’t connect with your foster child, don’t give up. It’s like, eventually you will get there. It can be a long process. There’s a lot of complex trauma involved in what they’ve been through and sort of the abuse, whether it’s emotional, physical, whatever that they’ve endured in their home environment with their parents that you now have to sort of help them unravel, so they can experience normal childhood. So, really, just give them your time of day. Listening to them. Considering like I said what they personally need is really important. So, yeah.  

I mean, it’s what you sign up to do [laughs] so.   
  
Yeah.  
  
You are not just giving them a home. You are giving them that stable environment and that second chance. I think if I’d never had that sort of foster care intervention where I had, even though it’s just three years, I had that experience of a normal stability and childhood home, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t be who I am. I wouldn’t be at [university]. I would be on a completely different trajectory, and it probably wouldn’t be a positive one. So, yeah.

I still remember the things, bad social workers and good social workers did now, and I’m [in my twenties], and some of these things happened when I was [a young child,] and I can still hear their voices and what they said, and the way they made me feel… And I think they all, social workers especially, because I think again I’ve had conversations with social workers constantly, ’cause I’m an advocate for the care leaver thing. Some of them have had very lovely lives and... you know, and stuff has gone on in everyone’s lives, and we’re not trying to do this, but not many people have had lived experience growing up in care, or having social services knock on your door, or having family members taken away, and stuff, and never seeing people again, and trauma. Some people will never have experienced that, and I think it’s so important for social workers to have that real-life sort of awareness.  
  
Absolutely.  
 
Because you get some of it in uni, but you don’t get enough of it, like you just read case reviews, but they’re not people, you need to hear it from the people who got through it, which is what I’ve been trying to do, because I’m not like: ‘oh, du-du-du-du,’ I just think it’s important so they understand that everything that we do has an impact. Because it’s impacted me, and it’s impacting all these people I’ve spoken to. So yeah, that would be the only thing I’d add.

So I would say for the good ones, again, keep doing what you’re doing. As far as the bad ones, I’d say, you know, there’s... every foster carer should be treating the foster child like their own child – that’s the way it should be – that’s the way it has to be ’cause it’s just not gonna work out otherwise. Look after those kids, even if they’re not your own, ’cause of the... they’re gonna need that emotional support and you just need to be there for them when they’re gonna need it. I’d say listen to the foster child again, you know, maybe come up with some sort of agreement if, you know, fall out, whatever the disagreement’s about. Just be open and honest as well is a big one, it’s a very big one. Even if it hurts, the foster child’s gonna appreciate it more for you being honest with them, yeah, yeah.

I think adult social care need to be more involved with the leaving care teams. They need to see what is going on in that system, because so often they... as much as children’s social care have no knowledge of adult social care, the same goes for them: adult social care do not understand just how broken children’s social care is, so they don’t understand the level of trauma that kids in care are coming into adult social care with, and why they may struggle more to adjust to things like supported living placements, when they’ve maybe been through trauma in supported living placements in care.  
 
Yeah 

So there needs to be more awareness for them understanding what the challenges for young people coming out of leaving care even are. But I think they also need to understand that because the system is so broken, that what is written about young people in care isn’t necessarily true, and what the professionals are saying about young people in care, is not inherently true. I think too often, social workers will trust what other social workers have said and then dismiss what the young person says if it doesn’t agree with what Leaving Care have said.

So, maybe, there could be like support systems in place to give them an advantage with like applying for apprenticeships or even kind of… I don’t know if it’s in place now, but I think there should be more… I think there should almost be like somebody who facilitates some relationship between employers and social workers, or something. I know the universities have a lot in place to support that transition. But, maybe if somebody wants to go directly into employment, like for example, engineering, or to do a career apprenticeship, maybe they can be put in contact with the employer, like have an interview rather than having to go through the erratic, you know, bureaucracy of applications. Especially because I think it’s really important to help people to overcome perceived barriers.   

As a care leaver you might think that going to uni or getting a job, like, that’s not for you. You might just think that’s just what everybody else does. There can be support to really combat those perceived barriers. So I think they are really, yeah… they can be really powerful, your mind is powerful, like for you kind of thinking that you can’t do something then you probably won’t end up doing that. If somebody can empower you to do what you want to do. I think that’s the best thing to empower people to do what they want to do, and, just to make sure that the support is tailored to what people actually want from life, and not just like a standard kind of one size fits all approach.  

One thing I learned about life generally, is that life doesn’t stop for you. It doesn’t matter what you are going through, life continues. I think sometimes even just being able to slow down for somebody. So, say if they can, they can almost like transition to an in between space where they can go somewhere and not feel the pressure of needing to get a job or going to uni, but they have time to really reflect. They have the safe space to reflect on what they want to do in life and to recover emotionally. Like, that could look like a house… like a shared accommodation where they get a year’s worth of funding to be able to think about what they want, and without feeling the pressure of like going intothe real world, like just that kind of supported living to help emotionally transition. I think that is in place, actually. It is probably a thing.

Probably I would just say that I just hope that the care system one day changes to benefit everyone fairly, because the current system isn’t doing that. Like, the fact that everyone receives a different level of service, isn’t benefiting people at all. Like, of course for a small minority of people, their care journey is OK – they have little to no issues – but for most people, it’s a traumatic experience and things need to change; things need to change.