Clare Chamberlain, co-chair of the Independent Review into the Deaths of Care Leavers, shares what the review found, and why care leavers need more than a Personal Adviser to help them navigate life after care and thrive as adults.
Why I wanted to lead this review
When I heard about this review, I was immediately very interested in being selected to co-lead the work. I am a retired Director of Children’s Services and since the early days of my time as a senior leader, I have heard many, many times from groups of young care leavers who feel that we don’t understand, or meet, their wants and needs. The state is no substitute for family. This review of early deaths of young people who have left care has only reinforced that message.
Over the last few months, I have been working alongside the co-lead for the review, Ashley John-Baptiste, a young man in his 30s with care experience and skill as a working broadcast journalist. We have visited local authorities and spoken to professionals and families who knew the young person who had died. There is 40 years between Ashley and myself, and we have had different life experiences, but we both felt that this combination worked well to provide alternative perspectives about what we found.
Loneliness, instability and the loss of trust
We heard of extreme vulnerability, of acute loneliness, and of young people who really had no trusted adult to help them deal with enormous difficulties they faced as older teenagers moving into their early twenties. These young people had experienced abuse, turbulent childhoods, instability, and trauma. Making sense of your childhood and thinking about your future as an adult is difficult enough for most of us, but without the solid support of family and friends, it can feel overwhelming.
When support falls away at 18
For me, the most important element of the review was a deepening of my understanding of just how difficult it is for young people to make that transition from child to adult. The experience of being in care is intense. As a child in care your health and wellbeing is closely monitored. Your emotional life is of concern to many, you are in meetings with adults who talk about you, who write copious notes about you, who make decisions about where you will live, who will look after you, where you will go to school, which members of your family you can see, and so on and so on. Then when you reach 18, so much of that falls away. What might seem a relief initially can soon turn into isolation and a sense of belonging to no-one.
These were some of the most vulnerable of care leavers, those with the greatest needs and the task of helping them into adulthood is a complex one. We heard about young people who had experienced repeated rejection, who had suffered abuse as a child and who found difficulty in maintaining trusted relationships. We heard of young people who had made perilous journeys during their teenage years, alone in a foreign country without the security of family around them. We heard of young women who had lost the care of their children and who found this deeply traumatic, a huge loss for both parent and child.
Why we need more than a Personal Adviser
The workforce that we have supporting these young people mainly consists of Personal Advisers who help with practical tasks such as finding accommodation or helping with budget management. These are valued and trusted workers, but the overriding message I came away with is that we need a more sophisticated workforce to help young people transition into adulthood. We recommend the development of a wider team to support those Personal Advisers. We need people who are very skilled; who can form a relationship of trust; who understand systemic practice and can help young people rebuild relationships with family; who have mental health expertise; and who can help young people reflect and come to terms with an unstable childhood and build confidence and emotional resilience to move into adulthood.
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