Distorted Reality – Dream the new beginning.

So I’ve been looking at the ‘leaving care’ system in the UK.  This is the service that deals with young people who have been brought up in the care system.

The idea is that, a young person will leave the care system in the UK when they are 16.  In the past, there have been serious problems with children and young people’s services in the UK finishing at 16, while adult’s social care kicks in at 18 or 19.  This leaves a very awkward couple of years where people argue over who takes care of a young person’s needs (this causes particular problems if a young person has disabilities, but that’s another story).

In the nineties, it was recognised that there is a serious problem when a young person is looked after through the care system, but is then theoretically on their own from 16.  They could be told ‘you’re an adult now, that’s all you get from us’ and effectively left own their own to get on with their lives.  This would obviously be totally immoral, but add to this the fact that young people who have grown up in care are immensely disadvantaged  anyway:

• 11% of children in care gained 5 good GCSEs in 2005, compared to 56% of all children
• 29%  of care leavers are not in education, training or employment at age 19, compared to 10% of all young people
• Young women age 15 to 17 who have been in care are 3 times more likely to become teenage mothers than others of their age
• Research suggests that around 27% of adult prisoners have spent time in care

These stats are from the Leaving Care site, but a stat never tells a story.  Every child who enters the care system is experiencing extreme stress in their most important personal relationships.  They are all at a point of crisis – that is, ‘crisis’ in the technical sense of a life changing event.  They are going through this crisis in the care of people who are paid to do the job and are unlikely to be the person they would like to be with.  This time in care will affect their story dramatically.

So it was decided that the local authorities should – as the ‘corporate parent’ of young people in care – act as parent until a young person is older and more established.  This should theoretically mimic ‘normal’ parenting – slowly releasing their children into the world.

Okay, so there’s the idea.  If you really fancy it, there are more details on the Leaving Care site, the Children’s Society also do immensely interesting work in this field.

The thing is, there’s still a drop-off that happens when a young person ends up leaving care.  I think a major issue for kids in this situation can be where to live and how to go about getting a home – there’s no ‘fall back’ of the parental home.  Centrepoint, are a charity that works with homeless young people and they say that 17% of the young people they work with have experienced time in care (remember that only 0.5% of all the young people in the UK have been in care, so 17% is hugely disproportionate).

When I worked in a children’s home, a young man started living there who had been in the care system since he was a toddler.  He was about 16 and his behaviour was very difficult to handle in such an institutional setting.  He was, however, a lovely guy who enjoyed cooking and chatting.  He had never been allowed to maintain an education because of the constant emotional and physical turmoil of moving around the care system.  He had recently gained his first GNVQ while in secure accommodation.

Eventually, it was clear the the young man couldn’t stay in the children’s home anymore and, since he was sixteen, he was given temporary accommodation in a nearby city, an allowance and a social worker.  This accommodation was in a hotel that was full of other young people also looking for homes.  Drugs were freely available and acceptable in this new setting, violence was commonplace.  I was profoundly sad for this guy who had never learned to look after himself in the truest sense of the word.  I still think of him, years later.  I worry that he is another of those adult prisoners or homeless young people.

Another young person was a woman who was brought into the home to remove her from an abusive situation.  She had also been in and out of care all her life.  This young woman was immensely intelligent, but had never gained any qualifications.  She was on her way to gaining a GNVQ, but it felt like a race – would she achieve her qualification first, or would she be arrested and taken into custody when the police caught up with her?

Eventually though, she revealed that she was several months pregnant.  The home couldn’t look after her while she was sixteen and pregnant, but neither could anyone else for the moment.  She was placed in the same hotel as the young man.  Again, I wonder where she, and her child, are now.

That hotel holds so many valuable stories that need to be heard.  Unfortunately, these individuals leaving care are also (as well as all the other condemning stats) amongst the least likely to be able to tell their own stories.  Where is their voice?

I also worked with other guy in that hotel.  He was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the country claiming to be 16, although he looked a lot older.  He came from a war zone and had painful, disabling injuries.  He didn’t speak a word of English.  He was accommodated by the local authority in this hotel, with a violent, aggressive drugs culture, unable to even communicate with the people on reception.

This guy was a real person in a terrible situation, but he also works as an allegory to describe young people leaving care.  These young people arrive in the system with far more life experience than their years would suggest, they arrive damaged by the wars they’ve experienced and step into something that is often just as damaging (but in a very different way).  These are people with a voice that is not heard or understood.  They are then expected to flourish in the wider world.

The UK Government is looking into ways of improving the situation for young people leaving care.  Unfortunately, they are also looking to cut spending – this will effect the poorest first, as always.

I think I should point out that not all young people who go through the care system leave to such terrible circumstances.  I know several care leavers who are doing amazingly well.  But I have to say that this seems due to a mixture of good fortune and great strength of character, rather than anything else.

Neither are these problems all due to the workers in the social care system.  The system is full of dedicated workers who are passionate about improving the situations of young people, but who are slowly burnt out by a crippling system and bad press.

The bad press really bothers me, because all those column inches that deal with the intricacies of the failings of social care in such a holier than thou way never make reference to what care is really like.  They never look at the developmental problems that result from abuse and how those problems can be dealt with in a situation where your ‘parents’ look after you on a shift pattern.  They never try to understand the anti-social behaviour that results from this combination of familial abuse and loneliness in a disaffecting system.  And they never try to understand the people who are sent off to grow and prosper in the wide world after going through this mangle of a life.

I’m sorry this is long and seems like a rant.  I just feel so pissed off about this!

Where are the people who speak up for those who have no voice?