Last night’s Channel 4 documentary, Kicked Out Kids, followed three young people, Demornia, Jemma and Connor as they left the care system to move toward independent living.
The first question raised by many, has been why Channel 4 decided to broadcast this programme at 11pm. The issues facing young people in care and in particularly during their transition from care is very much in need of attention, from the broader public and from government, so the time-slot was very disappointing.
The twitter discussion following last night’s documentary, centred around the government’s recent introduction in law of the ‘Staying Put’ scheme, supporting young people to stay in foster care until 21. It is well noted that the average age for a young person in England to leave home is rising and has been since the recession, and many young people leave home, only to return at a later date (when money dries up, job opportunities don’t work out etc), termed the ‘boomerang generation.’ These opportunities aren’t afforded to care leavers; once they’re out they are out. In addition, the changes in Staying Put regulations do not apply to the group that many would consider our most vulnerable care leavers, those found in residential children’s homes and many are campaigning for the government to change this.
There are many reasons that young people are still leaving care way before 21. One aspect relates to the implementation of the Staying Put policy – a lack of training in local authorities , not enough funding behind it, not enough foster carers available if the ones currently being used, work with young people even longer.
I have also found there is sometimes a misperception by foster carers that young people don’t need them beyond 17 or 18. Over the last few years I’ve heard quite a few foster carers say that they feel other young people need them more now and I think this is a really important area of training that is needed, to help foster carers see how invaluable their support is well beyond the age of 18. Of course, there’s many foster carers that see their young people as part of their family by the time they’re 18 and many who play a vital role in supporting their young people’s transitions from care in a gradual way, staying part of their lives into their future.
There is also the psychological element; many young people want to leave care before they are 21 or even 18. AS I’ve written about before, at the point of leaving care, many young people have an idealised notion of what their own flat will be like and are excited about this move. At this point I believe there is an opportunity for care-experienced mentors to be used, who can help young people think through this decision from the point of view of someone who has been through it themselves. This also highlights the need for care leavers to have higher levels of emotional support after they’ve left care, when the first few months have passed, and the idealised notion has given way to the emotional difficulties of loneliness and isolation. Research suggests that loneliness is the second biggest difficult care leavers face (the first being to find suitable accommodation.)
The Centre for Social Justice published their report last month ‘ Finding their Feet: equipping care leavers to reach their potential.’ In this report, I found a particularly interesting model used in the USA – the Family Finding and Engagement Model. For those who work in the industry, this model is similar to Family Group conferences – often used to support an extended family to come together to explore whether there is a way to look after the child, to prevent them having to be taken into foster care. The USA model uses ‘Family Finders’ to work with the young care leavers to identify up to 40 adults who may be able to play a significant role in their life. These could be family friends, neighbours, youth workers, people they have lost touch with. The Family Finder will seek to engage these people they consider reliable and authentic andhelp to identify and pull together a support network for the young person to provide ‘emotional permanency’. I think this is a really interesting model; partly because the support network would ideally be sustainable, rather than being made up entirely of transient professionals who change jobs and are essentially being paid to support the young people and also because it’s led by the young person who will often have lots of these people in their life, who have never before been mentioned or explored by their social workers.
During my dissertation research exploring emotional support networks for care leavers, I worked to map out these support networks with young people and discuss who they had in their life for different scenarios they might come across – practical things eg help with cooking or budgeting, and more emotional issues. Most of them had tiny support networks and said they had never explored this with their social worker or personal adviser.
If we want to act as corporate parents and provide the same level of care as any reasonable parent would to their child, we cannot neglect the emotional support that these young care leavers need. We must consider transitions as gradual processes and we must explore sustainable support networks to help tackle the loneliness and isolation these young people have to experience which in turn affect all their future outcomes. Without support, how many of us would have achieved or got close to reaching our potential?
