Understanding the experiences of young people as they ‘leave care’: part two
In my first blog post, I explained some of the ways in which leaving care is a really challenging time for young people.
Here, I’d like to delve into some of the things we’ve found, through our partnership with Plymouth City Council, and our discovery into ‘Moving on’ — the transition period between being in care and living independently.
What do young people need?
In our discovery, we learnt that there are a set of things all young people need as they move into a state of independence.
They need safety:
- A safe and healthy physical environment
- Safety from others
- Safety from myself (ie. self harming, destructive behaviours and thoughts)
- Income to meet basic needs and to stay well
- Stability and feeling settled
They need social connection:
- Someone I can rely on
- Someone who cares about me
- Someone I care about
- Social belonging
- A diverse network
- Positive role models
They need opportunities for personal growth:
- Pride, self-respect and confidence
- Direction, purpose and self-identify
- Skills and knowledge
- Control, agency and motivation
- Opportunities within reach
- Ability to fail and learn
Barnardo’s Children In and Leaving Care Core Priority Programme, set out in our Corporate Strategy, invests in transforming our services in a vital area for young people moving towards adulthood.
Official data, referenced in our Impact Report, shows that overall, care leavers are still much less likely than their non-care experienced peers to be in education, employment or training, more likely to be involved in the youth justice system, experience mental health and emotional challenges, or experience homelessness and social isolation.
Every year, around 10,000 young people leave the care system, and in total, there are over 40,000 care leavers aged 17–21 in the UK.
Are young people’s needs being met?
Despite a system made up of well-intentioned policy, services and professionals, it’s clear that for lots of young people, these needs are not being met. Below are some of those ways, and the reasons why.
1. Nothing can truly prepare you for leaving care
“The booklet doesn’t prepare you, I’m not gonna know about money til I move out. I didn’t have any bills. When I moved out [my worker] tried but I told him I want to learn by myself, you’re not going to learn until you !@$* up.”
— Young person
Everyone learns in different ways, however, research suggests that when young people are about to leave care, they are not given the learning opportunities needed to truly prepare themselves for independence.
We discovered that:
- Young people are not consistently given the opportunity to make mistakes and learn before leaving care. Whilst they’re in care, assessing and managing risk is the predominant focus and so where it’s normal for adolescents to test boundaries as they explore who they are and exercise independence, there isn’t this same level of unconditional support available for young people in care when they test the limits of their caregivers.
- Young people are not consistently given the opportunity to learn through observation and modelling of others — this is particularly true if they’re not cared for in a family environment where they may get to observe caregivers paying bills, cooking, washing clothes etc.
- To take information in people need time and headspace; not something all young people have as they approach their 18th birthday. The number of young people that social workers (pre-18) and personal advisors (post-18) support are so high, they often do not get the chance to prepare young people for this ‘transition’ and leaving care can be accelerated and compressed.
- The training and tools provided are generic and not tailored to what each young person needs to learn.
- Despite all of the planning and preparation, young people are not prepared for when things go wrong; and things do go wrong.
2. Failure is not an option when safety nets are weak
“It’s a reality check, it’s a worry growing up and having responsibilities, I’ve never had to manage money properly, I can say I can manage money but never had to do it properly… I don’t have a very good safety barrier when I’m on my own do I? I don’t have anything to fall back on, I shouldn’t expect to have anything to fall back on really but I just do, like I don’t have a safety net, if I fall it’s like, that’s it, I’ve fallen.”
— Young person
Few young people leave care with a safety net to fall back on which means that making mistakes carries a heavy price.
We discovered that:
- Those providing a safety net do so unrecognised and voluntarily. We met foster carers and workers who were going above and beyond to support young people but this was often done at their own discretion.
- For some, the things keeping them afloat are highly dependent on each other therefore increasing the fragility of the safety net: if one thing fails, everything fails.
- Some young people leaving care don’t believe that support will really be there if they need it.
- When things do go wrong, it can have catastrophic effects — with little to no safety net, when young people find themselves in debt, or struggling with their mental health for example, this can trigger catastrophic consequences, for instance leading to homelessness or severe mental health episodes.
3. Denial, rumours and poor experiences mean some don’t feel able to engage with support while it’s available
“I think it’s about the safety blanket that is here… they do get anxious about it. And I think it’s a really difficult process. We try to pull back as much as possible… in the summer holidays we started really kind of pulling back. No lifts, gotta get the bus, gotta make the tea… making it more structured for them… just tell em, straight. I don’t fluff it up. Y’know this is what you gotta do, you’re gonna be 18 soon… we kind of do it in a playful way. So that it’s not a rejection, we’re not rejecting them.”
— Residential home manager
Young people experience a heightened sensitivity to anything that makes them feel as though they are being ‘forced’ to move on. Some react in a state of denial about moving on from care and withdraw from support.
We discovered that:
- Attempts to prepare young people for independence don’t go unnoticed by young people; it’s important for those around them to be honest and clear about how and why they are preparing them to move on.
- Some young people turn down or don’t feel able to take advantage of support possibly in an attempt to delay leaving care.
- Others don’t feel able to reach out or ask for the support they need and deserve.
- Young people seem to experience huge uncertainty about how and when they’ll move on from care.
4. It’s harder to stay safe when you’re ‘off the radar’
“You can set the kids up to do their best but as soon as they make bad decisions, you don’t have the back up.”
— Foster carer
When young people go ‘off the radar’ for whatever reason, it becomes harder for them to keep themselves safe. Professionals can feel frustrated with their inability to intervene.
We discovered that:
- Young people don’t feel able to engage with support and find themselves in unsafe situations.
- Young people are out of sight, out of mind to practitioners when they move back home or out of the area.
- It’s harder to keep young people safe after 18 — foster carers found this especially tough as other professionals, such as the police and children’s social care, now regarded the young people they were still caring for as adults. Where before they may have intervened or shared information with them, they now take a different response.
- As a care experienced new parent, the focus is off you because your own children are ‘on the radar’ of children’s social care. If your own children have come to the attention of children’s social care, the perspective of you as a care leaver who is eligible for support, becomes diminished against the risk that might be posed to your child.
5. Care leavers have fewer options about how they spend their time and the things they work towards
“We kind of get into this habit… you have to go to college, you have to go to university… you have to become successful. When care leavers might not want that…How about I come to college and do 2 days of this, 2 days of that, 2 days of the other. Until I find something I really like. Because I haven’t had the last 3 years sitting at home, in a comfy home, with my mum and dad around me, to think about what I want to do with my life. I’ve been thinking about the abuse I’ve gone through, or the times I’ve been running away from home or the drugs I’ve been taking. Or the money that I owe to people.”
— Former care leaver
When young people leave care, the options for the things they spend their time on and work towards are limited to what they see, are encouraged to do and have the freedom to explore.
We discovered that:
- Some practitioners treat training and courses as placeholders rather than stepping stones for young people. For them it’s a way of keeping them busy until other forms of support begin.
- When support is tied to education or training, young people’s options are reduced e.g. staying put (which means their foster family can continue to support them up to the age of 21) may only offered where young people are in employment, education or training.
- Although exposure to new opportunities and new people increases the kinds of things young people aspire towards, there are very few opportunities to do this.
- However, work or training can act as a distraction and give young people a sense of purpose if other areas of their life are not stable.
- It is a common belief that expectations for care leavers are set too high, however this must be balanced with believing in and supporting young people.
- It’s hard to plan long term, young people need support to imagine what else is possible.
6. The importance of belonging and creating a home
“You are being told this is a big step and it’s your first flat and it’s you going to have your own adult life, but then you can’t actually make it look the way you want or have any personality. I had to use Argos and I’m saying I can find used things that are half as much but in my style, but that’s not allowed.”
— Young people
Of those who were living on their own or in a shared property, many had experienced challenges of living independently for the first time. Challenges ranged from loneliness through to having the basic needs of a home.
We discovered that:
- Young people move into their home and feel lonely.
- Young people do not feel safe in their accommodation from others — this might be neighbours or people within their social network.
- Young people do not feel safe in their accommodation from themselves.
- Moving into their own place is an opportunity to create a home and make it their own, yet some young people are moving into their accommodation without the basic furniture and furnishings.
- Owning a pet can bring a sense of belonging and purpose.
What did we do next?
We learnt a lot about some of the most commonly experienced ‘pain points’ when leaving care, and from this identified eight possible areas for further exploration in our second phase of discovery:
- Removing uncertainty for young people approaching 18 and leaving care.
- Re-imagining how young people learn about and prepare for independence.
- Re-focusing the role of the Personal Advisor.
- Tackling debt amongst care leavers.
- Tackling loneliness and isolation amongst care leavers living alone.
- Re-imagining what moving in and creating a home looks like for care leavers.
- Creating a safety net for young people to rely on.
- Growing the imagination, ambition and networks of care leavers.
The next and final blog post in this series, will explain how we worked in collaboration with young people and Plymouth City Council to agree an area of focus, and what we learnt in discovery part two .
Amy is a service designer in the Barnardo’s Digital & Technology team. To get the latest updates from the Barnardo’s Digital & Technology team, subscribe to blog.barnar.do on Medium, and follow #FutureBarnardos on Twitter.
