For the majority of young people, their 18th birthday is a massive celebration where there may be a party with gifts, a cake and kind words from parents or extended family.
Care-experienced children, however, have to contend with the Care Cliff when they reach that milestone as it is the date at which the support offered to them, such as their foster placement, educational bursaries, personal and professional support, ends abruptly.
On my 18th birthday, I celebrated with my foster parents in my nurturing and safe placement, as they had agreed to let me stay with their family until the day came to drive me to university – a privilege many young people do not get to enjoy.
Family Action‘s head of insight and influencing, Stacey Warren, said: “The distress, harm or neglect experienced by care-experienced young people will likely find expression.
“But what form that will take is difficult to say, whether poor mental health, offending behaviour, substance use or dependence, risk-taking behaviour or dysfunction in relationships.”
These manifestations can be attributed in part to the lack of understanding the public has as to the challenges care leavers face when navigating into adult life, and the reduced resources and funding available to support with the transition.
The average age for leaving home currently stands at 23.
For care leavers, they head off on their own at 18 with immense educational and economic barriers, and often complex mental health needs.
The Friendship Works Mentoring Service at Family Action points to the fact that often care-experienced young people are not able to perform at their optimal standard during GCSEs and A-Levels as a result of housing instability and uncertainty about the future.
This, in turn, means care leavers are more likely than their peers to not be in education, employment and training.
During my own GCSEs and the first year of A-Levels, I was frequently homeless, and had to rely on the support of close friends and sofa-surfing to keep my attendance high at school.
The threshold for a foster placement was high and many children needed one.
The organisation Home for Good reported care leavers make up about 25% of the homeless population in the UK, and around 52% of care leavers face conviction under the criminal justice system by the age of 24, as opposed to only 13% of their peers who have not been in care.
This means that a care leaver is more likely to go to prison than to university, as only 6% of care leavers enter into higher education – not because of a lower ability, but instead a lack of scholarships and resources to make the hurdle.
When I arrived at Oxford University for freshers’ week, I was terrified.
Moving to yet another empty room and seeing all my belongings in boxes brought back difficult memories, and while my housemates were struggling with anxiety, most knew that they could call their parents or go home if needed.
According to data sourced by the National Youth Advocacy Service, around 39,000 children enter into the care system every year, and there are approximately 155,000 children in care across the UK at present.
Foster placements are becoming increasingly few and far between as the need for children to be taken into local authority care increases year on year, resulting in some children having to move out of their borough in search of a safer place to live.
The UK’s number-one charity for care-experienced people, Become, launched the #GoneTooFar campaign in April 2023 in order to raise awareness about the displacement of young people across the country, and the adverse impacts a long-distance move can have on vulnerable children.
Become’s policy and public affairs manager Matt Blow said: “Our new report on the numbers of children that moved home or school during critical school years, sometimes even during exams, reveals the high levels of instability within the children’s social care system.
“This is happening due to a lack of suitable homes in the right places.
“Such disruption not only impacts educational outcomes but also ends vital relationships with teachers, friends, and even siblings and damages mental health and wellbeing.”
New research by Become found 34% of children in care in Years 10-13 at school had to move home, while 30% of A-Level students had to move or leave care during the critical exam season.
Young Become campaigner Charlotte Levy said: “I had six moves during my A-Level year, four placement moves and two going into respite because my foster carer went on holiday.
“I was moving, not achieving.”
Become is calling for the government to take swift action to ensure safe and appropriate homes can be secured for children in care, and asks that a proper safety net of support can be put in place for care leavers so care-experienced young people have the best chance at succeeding in education.
Become CEO Katharine Sacks-Jones said: “For children in care, school is often their lifeline and can be the one constant in their life.
“When they’re uprooted mid-way through studying for their GCSEs and A-Levels or actually during exam periods, years of hard work vanish overnight.”
All 153 tier-one local authorities in England were sent a Freedom of Information request by Become about the movement of care-experienced children for the school year 2023/24, and 124 (81%) responded.
While the statistics do matter when calling for change in policy and practices, there are real people behind the numbers.
London-based care leaver Jacob, 23, said: “For me, one of the hardest parts about having been in care is that it’s so dramatised.
“People ask me all the time if it’s really like what they see on television.
“I’m not a TV show character, I’m a real person.”
There is an urgent need to enact major reform for children’s services across the country to give care leavers better life chances, lest the care system leave them behind.
Feature image: Kian Kingsley
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