Have you ever been so hungry you became delusional? I have, when as a child in care I was placed in a hostel a few months after finishing my GCSEs. I remember rummaging through old birthday cards in the futile hope of finding a tenner.
Despite my benefits and the job I did alongside school, I could not afford food and electricity – let alone books, school trips, or clothes. I once wrote an essay with a candle in one hand and a pen in the other. But the lack of human connection hurt most. In my first year of sixth form, I was in hospital for four days before “support” staff realised I was gone. I was 17, hooked to a drip, alone and terrified.
The state was a lousy parent to me. It does not care for all its children equally – in fact, thousands of children in the care system in England are not entitled to care at all. Once they turn 16, children in care can be placed by local authorities in shared houses with adult strangers, bedsits and hostels with no adult carers.
Before last year, children in care as young as 11 lived in “care-less” settings. The Department for Education has introduced secondary legislation which bans this – but only for children aged 15 and under. This leaves more than 6,400 children in England, a third of all 16- to 17-year-olds in care, unprotected. And it threatens thousands more, by allowing private companies to saturate the market when foster carers are in short supply.
In the absence of a government that cares, our hope rests on this week’s judicial review. Article 39, a small charity, has taken the DfE to court on the grounds that the secondary legislation discriminates against children aged 16-17. The charity is backed by more than 10,700 people who signed a #KeepCaringTo18 petition. Last week, I was one of six care-experienced adults who delivered it to Downing Street. The judge has now heard evidence from both sides, and we’re awaiting his decision.
It is arbitrary and cruel that a 15-year-old can be in a loving foster home until 11.59pm on the eve of their 16th birthday, but once the clock strikes midnight, they could end up in a hostel with offenders, gangs and vulnerable adults. No prisoner in this country is forced to forgo electricity or meals – yet children in care do.
The government plans to bat off criticism by regulating this so-called “supported accommodation”, yet its proposed standards are so pathetic as to be useless – for example, Ofsted would be brought in to inspect only a “sample” of each provider’s accommodation, rather than each individual property.
I recently published childhood diary entries exposing the impact of such accommodation on children’s wellbeing. In one, I wrote that “living is extremely difficult day in and day out. Coming home to a silent flat with no electricity. Being too frightened to leave the room at times, or being intimidated by the angry mob outside the entrance. The loneliness is astounding.” The combination of poverty and isolation left me self-harming, anxious and depressed. I cried myself to sleep most nights.
Being a teenager is hard enough. Surviving physical and psychological changes, navigating relationships and getting through exams is challenging. But these are the least of worries for teenagers in care. England’s statutory child safeguarding panel, analysed incidents where children died or suffered serious harm in care. It found many examples of children entering care in adolescence having suffered “long-term parental abuse and neglect, with significant trauma”. These children need loving care; instead, the government suggested “welfare and maintenance” should be enough. That such dehumanising language can be used to describe children in the care system exposes how little the government values them.
Private companies competed for £120m in contracts for accommodation in 2020 – at a time councils were running skeletal services after a decade of austerity. I know this because that year I was a frontline social worker. Things were desperate. So too were the issues faced by teenagers in care, who needed more nurturing and supervision, not less. They were vulnerable to county lines gangs, criminal and sexual exploitation, and online grooming. It goes without saying a child living alone in a hostel is at greater risk. But even if such threats were eliminated, physical and emotional needs still go unmet without proper care.
Twenty-two children in England aged 16-17 died in care-less accommodation between 2018 and 2020. Seventeen-year-old Caitlin Sharp, who had severe epilepsy, died after being found unconscious at a man’s home in 2019. She had not collected her medication for five months. Her family and specialist nurse thought she was not capable of independent living. Little seems to have been learned from this tragedy. According to Ofsted guidance, children in supported accommodation are still fully responsible for their own medication and health appointments – even though many have autism, disabilities or complex needs.
If a parent or guardian failed their child so miserably, there would be criminal proceedings. Shame on the government for caring so little about children that a small charity must take them to court to provide the bare minimum.
Rebekah Pierre is a care-experienced author and freelance writer