My care Journey should not be the exception.
In 1995, the chances of a child being taken into care going on to study for a PhD at one of Scotland’s ancient universities would have been pretty slim. The opportunities that I have had as a result of a unique set of circumstances during my own journey through the care system, far outweigh those that would have been otherwise open to a one-month old baby taken into care in Fife.
But my experience is regrettably an exception to the rule.
Scotland now has the opportunity to make the life chances that I had the reality for every care experienced young person through its “root and branch” review of the system, which I am honoured to have been invited to sit on.
If you are a young person growing up in care today (a Looked After Child), you are more likely to see a jail cell than a university lecture theatre. This scandalous statistic has been one of the prompts for the review into how our care system works for the young people who come into contact with it. While there have been numerous changes to the care system, many of the underlying principles come from the Kilbrandon Report of 1971 — the report which established our Children’s Hearings system. These principles detail that the young person’s welfare should be paramount, they should be involved in the decisions which relate to them, and that holistic measures are the best way to increase future life chances. It would be hard to deny that these principles are genuinely what drive everyone who serves our care system but it would be hard to argue that our system delivers for everyone in its care.
That doesn’t mean to say that the whole system should be written off. Processes like the Children’s Panel are often rightly heralded as an example of international best practice. Yet, Looked After Children are handed the worst life chances at birth. And the irony of this is that they are young people for whom the state has corporate parental responsibility.
This review must act as a turning point for the care experienced community. It has the opportunity to revolutionise the entire system. Thanks to the tireless work of those who are care experienced, including Who Cares? Scotland, there is now the opportunity for the community itself to shape the change that is so needed. It is imperative that its findings are listened to and implemented at every level of government.
Establishing where the problems lie is essential. Thanks to the Children’s Panel, I was moved into foster care, and subsequently to enter kinship care with my auntie and uncle in Aberdeen. The panel did this because it was the best opportunity for me to grow up in a safe, secure and loving environment. Twenty-three years later, I still have this relationship. The house of my auntie and uncle remains where I call home, and they and their children who raised me remain my close family. Thanks to them and the decision of the panel, I’ve have had social, economic, and educational opportunities which far outweigh those open to my brothers who did not go to ‘The Panel’, and indeed most Looked After Children.
For example, in 2012 more than two-thirds of looked after children experienced at least three placement moves. This year, fewer than half of looked after children left school with at least one National 5. This is half the rate of the national average. Twenty percent more young people go into work, education or training upon leaving secondary education than their Looked After peers, and only around five percent go to university. Behind these statistics are young people with as much potential as anyone.
Two years ago, I joined the Children’s Panel to give something back. It is an experience which confirms to me that our care system needs reform. I’ve sat on some difficult cases, but one stands out as particularly frustrating. It was a case involving a young woman who was approaching her 16th birthday. She was due to leave school with no qualifications and no future plan; outcomes that were no fault of her own. What jarred is that she had been Looked After for nine years. Nine years of intervention from the care system and no material change in her opportunities.
None of these outcomes are inevitable. For a Looked After Child, life opportunities should not come about by chance; young people under the responsibility of the state should not need an auntie and uncle like mine just to succeed at school. Equality of opportunity for young people in care should be a right guaranteed to them by their parent: all of us.
Nearly fifty years on from Kilbrandon, new radical policies to once more transform the life chances of Looked After young people are well overdue. Scotland can, must and will do better for young people in care. This review plans to make Scotland’s system the Best in the World. Anything short of that will fail another generation of young people who we all have a responsibility to look after.
