‘My Care Story’ is a new series dedicated to amplifying the stories of care-experienced individuals and providing social workers with vital insights to improve the support they offer.

Rebekah Pierre, deputy director at children’s rights charity Article 39, has dedicated her career to championing the rights of children in the social care system.

Formerly a professional officer for the British Association for Social Workers, she has consistently used her platform to challenge the use of unregulated accommodation for children in care and the language used by practitioners in children’s case notes.

This included sharing her own experience of reading her case files in a widely shared open letter to her former social worker. In it, she criticised the practitioner’s “cold and formal” language and multiple writing errors, including over 100 misspellings of her name.

In 2024, she published Free Loaves on Fridays, an anthology of letters, stories and poems from 100 individuals, aged 13 to 68, with experience in care – offering a powerful reflection on the system.

Rebekah’s advocacy is deeply rooted in her own time in care and, speaking to Community Care, she shed light on what she wished her social workers had done differently.

How would you describe your time in care? 

My experience of care (if one can even call it that) was incredibly unstable.

I was always fearful of settling after my first placement ended unexpectedly, when four days before Christmas, my foster carer left me a note on the kitchen table informing me that I had four days to find ‘somewhere else to live’.

It was completely out of the blue, and with no apparent reason, which led me to anticipate rejection wherever I went. From this point on, I bounced between sofa surfing, informal fostering arrangements and unregulated accommodation.

Whilst it would be clichéd to say this was character building – because I certainly could have done without these experiences at such a young age – I am full of gratitude for the few caring and committed adults who carried me through this time.

My experiences with social workers were mixed. While I received genuine care and dedication from a residential social worker, who believed in me far more than I believed in myself (and was a large part of the reason I applied to university), the same cannot be said for others.

I was ghosted by one, victim-blamed by another and cheerily told to return to an unsafe environment by two more.

But what applied across the board was that each social worker, regardless of their treatment toward me, appeared always to be in a rush. They were not fully present, and were always racing to the next call or appointment.

It’s why I feel so passionate about campaigning for more manageable workloads.

What is something that has stayed with you from your time in care? 

Without a shadow of a doubt, my tendency to use writing as a coping mechanism.

Between placement breakdowns and the revolving door of professionals, my diary was a rare constant in my life. It was a sounding board whereby I could pour my heart out without fear of being labelled or judged.

I published some extracts back in 2021 to demonstrate the harms associated with unregulated placements.

Keeping a diary fostered a love for language, which has stayed with me ever since and helped my editing process for Free Loaves on Fridays.

It felt wonderful to be able to pass on the baton to up-and-coming writers of all ages, given that the book featured dozens of care-experienced people who had never seen their names in print before, alongside seasoned authors such as Lemn Sissay and Kirsty Capes.

Can you give an example of a time you received good support from a care professional?

A wonderful woman named Debbie, my sixth-form pastoral worker, springs to mind.

While she technically wasn’t a ‘care professional’, she certainly cared. It was the combination of emotional and practical support that made her so effective.

Firstly, she had an open-door policy, which meant I could seek support no matter the mood I was in (or whatever lesson I had escaped from!).

It sounds so simple now, but she was one of the first people who ever really validated me – who told me that I didn’t deserve what I had gone through. The impact of this cannot be overstated.

This was coupled with what I like to call street smarts – the knowledge that no amount of emotional support alone could overcome poverty.

While I was living in unregulated placements and struggling to make ends meet, she made sure I had basics, such as a bus pass, free meals and train tickets to visit university open days.

Without these things, I would have needed to drop out of school.

Can you give an example of a time you received bad support from a care professional?

A few years ago, I wrote an ‘open letter to the social worker who wrote my case notes’, which went viral on the app X at the time.

The letter speaks to poor support, including a culture of disbelief, adultification and poor record-making.

What would you have wanted to be done differently?

Firstly, to have been believed.

As a child, it takes an incredible amount of courage to make a disclosure of any sort. To have made such a leap, only to be vilified and written about as if I was complicit in what had happened to me, was painful in the extreme.

Secondly, how professionals write about children holds up a mirror to the way in which they think, feel, speak and act toward them.

Therefore, my care records speak volumes about the lack of respect underscoring my social worker’s whole approach to me as a young person.

Reading them made me feel powerless and invisible – my voice was completely absent.

It’s why I advocate for children to contribute to their records in their own way (whether through words, pictures, art or even voice notes), rather than have their wishes and feelings being shoehorned in at the end of a report or assessment.

The key takeaway is to imagine how you would want to be written about, and to write accordingly.

What would you tell social workers today?

Use your voice to stand up for children in care at every opportunity, and don’t make the mistake of assuming that somebody else will.

Forget about any imagined hierarchies or pecking orders. There is no guarantee the other professionals in the room or your service have, or ever will have, access to the child’s world in the way that you do.

You’re in a unique position to do immeasurable good, which often involves challenging the status quo.

Oh, and get a copy of Free Loaves on Fridays.

My experience does not represent the masses and I can’t speak for anyone else past or present.  But in this book – proceeds of which go to Article 39 and fellow children’s charity The Together Trust – you’ll find 100 accounts from diverse backgrounds, written by care-experienced people aged 13 to 68!

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

In a 2018 survey of young people in care, one in eight said adults had done things that made them feel “embarrassed about being in care”.

The finding came in research for Bright Spots, charity Coram Voice’s ongoing programme to highlight care-experienced young people’s views, in order to influence local authority practice.

Since then, various literary works, campaigns to make ‘care experience’ a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 and qualitative research have highlighted the effects of stigma on care-experienced people.

Lemn Sissay’s views on stigma in the care system

But where does the stigma around being in care stem from?

In an interview with Community Care, renowned poet and care leaver Lemn Sissay said that the idea of ‘something being wrong’ with children in care originated from those directly supporting them.

“[In my experience,] the most institutionalised people were those who worked in the care system,” he said.

“It’s very easy to have a blanket opinion of a person who’s obviously traumatised but quite demanding.”

A Community Care poll with 530 votes found that social workers largely agreed with him.

Over half (56%) said that the stigma surrounding care-experienced people originated, to a large extent, from within the care system itself, with a further 28% saying this was “somewhat” the case.

Only 16% believed felt this was “not very much” or “not at all” true.

What are your thoughts about the stigma children in care face within the care system?

Hearing directly from people with lived experience of social care is one of the most powerful and effective ways to learn and reflect on social work practice.

Author, motivational speaker and care leaver Jenny Molloy, in partnership with Community Care Inform, will be sharing her experience of childhood neglect, parental addiction and domestic abuse, in a session at Social Work England’s Social Work Week 2025.

She will discuss the opportunities missed by professionals to help her and how practitioners can intervene more effectively with children today. She will also share the complex trauma arising from her childhood that has lasted long into adulthood.

The session takes place on Wednesday, 19 March 2025, from 1.30pm-2:30pm and you can book your free place now.

About Jenny Molloy and CC Inform

Jenny, writing under the penname Hope Daniels, is the bestselling author of Hackney Child, Tainted Love, Neglected and This Isn’t Love, which was reviewed recently in Community Care.

She is also a practice improvement consultant, who works with several organisations to support positive change in social work, in which capacity she has worked for many years with Community Care Inform, providing learning on topics including neglect, child sexual exploitation and trauma.

Community Care Inform delivers expert-produced practice guidance, in a quick and accessible format, to help social work professionals make and evidence their decisions, through our subscription-based Inform Adults and Inform Children sites.

For information on how we can help you and your team, contact us at ccinformhelpdesk@markallengroup.com or on 020 3915 9444.

Social Work Week

Social Work Week, which runs from 17 to 21 March 2025, is a free programme of events on social work, with other sessions this year covering topics including the future of the profession, artificial intelligence, retention, fitness to practise and social work’s public image.

You can book tickets for individual sessions now.

Moments into our conversation, Lemn Sissay kindly grounds me with a sobering truth.

Before our meeting, I’d spent most of the previous year conducting interviews that reflected on social work over the past five decades – including the progress the profession had made – for Community Care’s 50^th anniversary.

But when I ask Sissay – renowned poet, author, broadcaster and former child in care- what progress he has seen, he politely shuts the question down.

“There is no child in care right now who’ll ever find themselves feeling better by thinking whether it’s better now than it was 10-15 years ago,” he says instead.

Should ‘success stories’ be highlighted?

A prominent activist for improving the care system, Sissay has spent decades delivering talks, writing books and plays, and making documentaries about the challenges of the care experience. And he seldom fails to command attention with his work.

His 2012 TED Talk, A child of the state, at the Houses of Parliament, has garnered over a million views, his autobiography was a number one Sunday Times bestseller, and his 2018 documentary, Superkids, where he helped seven children in care put their experiences into words, was nominated for a BAFTA award.

“I’m reporting back to you to say quite simply that you can define how strong a democracy is by how its government treats the child of the state,” he said, when concluding his 2012 talk.

All this may explain why he’s averse to sector organisations highlighting positive experiences of care. Doing that would be missing the point, he tells me.

“The [core] of the care system is that it gives care. So, why would I spend all my time talking about the success stories, when that is why the care system exists?

“A child is in distress in a familial situation and finds themselves in care to be cared for. All of them should be success stories. All I am saying is that if one person is being ill-served then that person is the one we need to pay attention to,” he says.

He pauses, laughs, then attempts to clarify further.

“If somebody falls out of a window and breaks their leg on the pavement, I don’t say, ‘Look, there are lots of people who haven’t broken their legs.’”

The scars of a childhood in care

His voice drips with ardency whenever he speaks about children in care, which, as you can imagine, is often.

You can spot it in every interview, talk or documentary. He approaches the topic with generosity, passion and openness despite the indelible mark of pain behind each experience he shares.

Because, for Sissay, this has always been personal. He is well aware of what it means to be failed by the care system.

At two months old, he was plucked away from his Ethiopian mother, renamed Norman and placed with a long-term foster family.

At the age of 12, the family rejected him and he was sent back to social services. He spent the next six years in various children’s homes, the only black boy in most cases.

In his long career, Sissay has frequently detailed the abuse he faced in the children’s homes – whether emotional, physical or racial. He was attacked with profanities and racial slurs, kicked at and spat at. Within 12 months, he became suicidal.

“The most common thing that I learned from 18 years in the care system was that everyone will leave you when you love them – which would play out more in my adult life,” he says.

‘I was in an emotionally desolate place’

Sissay’s emotional state at the time he left care was mirrored in the flat he was placed in. It was empty – no furniture, no bed. No monetary help had been allowed him either – a specific request by the then head of social services at Wigan, he tells me.

“It was so desolate,” he says now. “I think it as a metaphor [because] I too was in an emotionally desolate place in the aftershock of an explosion that happened around me and inside me throughout my time in care.”

He’d go on to spend his career trying to articulate that feeling, and the lifelong consequences of an adolescence devoid of care, through his work.

“I can’t have what I wasn’t given. And all I’ve ever tried to do is articulate what it’s like not to have it. Because then, that might show people how big what was taken away from me is, how all-consuming. I search for metaphors like “an emotional Hiroshima” that can give somebody an idea as to what the experience of nothingness might be.”

Seeking accountability from the care system

Through his work, it seems to me, he has continuously asked for accountability – from the system that was supposed to be his guardian and the government that failed to recognise the importance of supporting children’s social care.

In 2015, when he received his files after years of inquiring, he sought financial accountability from the state.

“Upon seeing my files, I saw in writing that a lot of the decisions that impacted me as a child were financial,” he says. “It wasn’t social workers who were mediating, it was insurance companies.

“So I wanted the government to be answerable on its own merits. That’s how you dealt with me during my childhood, so that’s how I should ask for you to be answerable.”

Six months later, he received an offer of £2,000, 11 times less than the amount he had requested.

“They said to me, ‘We have to treat you like we’d treat everybody else, so we’ve got £2,000.’ And I thought, ‘No, you have to treat me like me. You have to treat every child in care like an individual.’”

And so began a three-year legal battle that was finally settled out of court in 2018. Sissay used the money to buy a house – something concrete and permanent to mark years of instability.

‘People need to see the care system for what it is’

Throughout the years of telling his story, Sissay has also sought accountability from the public.

In 2017, he put on a one-night-only show at the Royal Court in London, where he had Julie Hesmondhalgh, formerly of Coronation Street, read out to him the psychologist’s report from his case against Wigan council.

It would be the first time the audience and Sissay would hear of its contents.

“I wanted to show them that what happened in my childhood has affected me in my adult life. It affects lots of people in care – they end up in prisons, mental institutions, or committing suicide,” he says.

“I wanted to show the depth of that – I think that’s been part of my purpose, whatever that means.”

He maintains that his work has always been primarily aimed at the general public. Politicians, he argues, are driven by the need to secure votes, often through leveraging the public’s prejudices but also by prioritising the matters it deems most pressing. Currently, the care system is low on that list.

“[People] need to see the care system for what is and what it isn’t. And I think it’s the most important government department. I don’t know why we don’t see this other than [because of] society’s prejudice against children in care and social workers.”

He attributes this to what he calls ‘familial hypocrisy’ – families’ conviction that they don’t need to concern themselves with the care system unless they come to need it.

“The stigma is based on the simple fact that a child in care is living, walking proof that things can fall apart, and all families are about proving the opposite. A child in care is therefore seen as a physical, walking threat to an idea families are trying to uphold,” he says.

“This is why social workers are incredible; they see the truth, that families are a mess but also beautiful. And, actually, social workers do more work to keep families together and not apart.”

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

‘Social workers need to feel valued by society’

Addressing that stigma and establishing the care system as an urgent public concern are how it will find a place in politicians’ priority list, he continues.

“I see too much evidence of children who are in care who have suffered at the hands of inadequate foster parents or the budgetary constraints of our local councils. Children being moved around for no other reason than [financial ones],” he says.

“It’s got nothing to do with their wellbeing. And I’m also sorry that social workers have to watch this happening. It’s on their watch and they need our support.”

As a spokesperson for children’s social care, he has experienced, seen, read and heard about the issues plaguing the social work workforce.

He was a big supporter of Josh MacAlister’s 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which stated that its recommendations depended “upon well-supported, confident and trusted practitioners who have the knowledge and skills to meet the needs of children and families”.

Sissay adds: “Social workers need and deserve to be the highest paid civil servants in local government. They’re dealing with the most important asset of our society – children in care.

“They should have the highest regard [and so] there needs to be a massive year-long PR campaign about social workers. When they come to work, they need to feel that they are valued by society.”

The stigma within the system

However, he warns, social care also needs to take a deep look inward, because some of its cracks are self-inflicted. Prejudice plays its ugly part here too.

When I ask him about the stigma of being a child in care, Sissay admits that the idea of “something being wrong with a child in care or them being overdemanding” is born within the system that cares for them.

“It’s very easy to have a blanket opinion of a person who’s obviously traumatised but quite demanding. All children are challenging – it’s the nature of childhood. But a child in care, by nature of them being in care, has to be challenging.”

And so he leaves me with one final reminder – something always insinuated but never clearly stated when discussing children’s social care.

“The word ‘love’ should be right at the heart of the care system. And love is an action – an active verb.”

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Anyone who has read Hope Daniels’ first book, The Sunday Times bestseller Hackney Child, will know that when she was nine, she walked into Stoke Newington police station with her two younger brothers and asked to be taken into care.

What readers will not know from reading Hackney Child is that Hope was a victim of child sexual exploitation, abuse and rape. This is because Hope herself didn’t realise it at the time.

The publication of Hackney Child led to Hope being invited to talk at events across the country for professionals from social services, police, health and education about being a child in care. And it was, ironically as it turned out, at a safeguarding conference in 2016, that Hope went off script and talked about “an affair” she had had with a married man when she was 14.

The lens of realisation

A police officer approached her afterwards and gently explained that there had been no affair or relationship: she had been groomed, sexually exploited, abused and raped by this man. She was the victim.

In that moment, Hope’s world “jolted and shifted” and “a single atom of the shame and blame which had weighed on me, and bent me double throughout my life, was lifted. From me. To him. This was the start of my healing”.

And so the second part of Hope’s autobiography, This Isn’t Love, retells her childhood through the lens of that realisation.

With a few exceptions – the teacher, social worker, and residential care workers in Hope’s life who showed compassion – this is a story about a care system that spectacularly fails to deliver anything approaching “care”.

It is a care system that makes a girl spend her childhood repeating the mantra: “I am a whore. I am a little slag, I am a slut.”

An uncaring care system

This book made me angry on Hope’s behalf for so many reasons, including at:

• Social workers and teachers who either failed to notice or do anything about what was going on in Hope’s family home. Her parents were alcoholics, neglect was obvious – the children were often hungry and wore dirty clothes. Wherever they lived reeked of urine, sometimes there were rats. Hope’s dad stole a variety of items including food, things for the house and goods which he peddled out of a suitcase at the local market to make money. Hope herself stole food so that she and her brothers could eat. Their mum had stints in prison for soliciting and her dad was convicted twice for living off immoral earnings. Knowing this alone, at the very least, why did it not occur to any professional to question how many bedrooms there were and where Hope’s mother took clients? A walk upstairs would have revealed that Hope slept in her parents’ bedroom and saw everything. The family was moved multiple times, often because of complaints from neighbours. And yet, there were no interventions, as if by moving the family on, the responsibility for what was happening would also be passed on.
• The person responsible for replacing the staff at Hope’s children’s home with no explanation or warning. The children woke up to find a new team in place, denying them the opportunity of saying goodbye to anyone they had become attached to. Yet again, they were given no control over anything in their lives, which left Hope thinking they left because of something she’d done.
• The professionals who not only turned a blind eye but, in some instances, colluded to allow neglect and abuse to continue in children’s homes, secure units, and foster placements. Hope was self-harming by 11, drinking and sniffing aerosols; staff knew but did nothing.
• A system that selected completely unsuitable people to become foster carers and then allowed them to continue when it must have been apparent they were cruel at best, abusive at worst.
• A system that, to this day in some places, gives children bin bags for their possessions when moving between placements. What message does this give?
• The head of the children’s home who told Hope she was disgusting for seducing a married man – when she was 14.
• The construct of secure units – for Hope, these placements were the complete opposite of therapeutic, and to this day traumatised children, young people and adults can be further harmed in such settings. In one secure unit staff encouraged an atmosphere where children fought and then watched rather than intervened – except to physically hurt them under the pretence of restraint. And in another secure unit, a residential youth worker openly sexually abused the girls.
• The fact that some of these people are still working as foster carers and in social care.
• The male doctor who after Hope gave birth to her first baby, didn’t stop to think why a woman would scream at him, “Don’t come near me”. With the pain and drugs, Hope delusionally thought he was the man who groomed and raped her. How many women who have been abused or raped go through childbirth with no thought from professionals about the lack of control and position of vulnerability they are in, lying there with an unknown man over them? All this doctor said to Hope was: “If you don’t settle down, we’ll leave you unstitched. Stay still.”

One of the most heartbreaking stories in this book is when Hope receives an email, not long after Hackney Child is published. It was from the couple that she thought were going to foster her but whom she never met. They were also never told why the placement fell through and were so badly affected that they never reapplied to foster. Hope went to meet them and saw the bedroom that would have been hers.

Adult legacy of childhood trauma

The adult legacy of childhood trauma runs deep. In 2022, to the outside world it looked like Hope was thriving: she was married, had successfully raised two children, had become a grandmother, had a job she loved and had been sober for many years. But a catalyst of events led to her drinking again and then making a serious attempt to end her life.

Fortunately, she was found in time and it finally led to her getting the help she had needed as a child.

It can be no coincidence that the author chose Hope as her pseudonym. Her story ends with hope: she is free from addiction, working and happy. In Hackney Child, Hope feels a lot of anger towards her mum and blames her more than her dad for her childhood.

At the end of This Isn’t Love, Hope has reconciled with her mum after not seeing her for 20 years, and realised that she too was a victim of the care system (as was her dad). After hearing her mum’s story – much of which mirrored Hope’s own – she gradually begins to forgive her and recognises that they are both strong women and survivors.

And so the story comes full circle.

More change needed

Every professional who works with children in care can learn so much from reading This Isn’t Love. It is only because of brave, resourceful, resilient people like Hope that these stories are written. There are signs their voices are being heard, but more change is needed for the care system to live up to its name.

Hope is inspiring and courageous, and so it feels fitting to end this review with her own words from her author’s note at the beginning of the book:

“Since Hackney Child I’ve had a major breakdown and I’ve come to terms with all these issues. I’ve also learned that my mother, whilst she made mistakes, was a victim herself. This book addresses all of this, once and for all. For me, it’s closure; it’s my full stop. There is no more shame, no more secrets. This is my everything. I hope you can enjoy it – it’s a bumpy ride but there is so much light at the end.”

• Jenny Molloy writes under the pseudonym Hope Daniels. To learn more about Jenny’s story and the adult legacy of childhood trauma, you can listen to our Learn on the Go podcast if you subscribe to Community Care Inform Adults or Community Care Inform Children. Or you can subscribe to the series through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
• This Isn’t Love is published by Mirror Books. ISBN: 9781915306722. £9.99.

Care leavers aged up to 25 will be exempted from the need to have a local connection with an area to access social housing, the government has announced.

The policy, designed to tackle homelessness among the group, was a commitment made by the previous government in last year’s Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, based on a recommendation of the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

The exemption will also be applied to domestic abuse survivors and armed forces veterans.

According to government data for England, 2,270 care leavers aged 18-20 and 2,810 aged over 21 were owed a duty by councils to help them secure suitable accommodation on the grounds they were homeless in 2022-23. A further 1,440 18 to 20-year-olds and 1,390 were owed a duty to prevent them becoming homelessness on the basis that they were at risk of becoming so.

How local connections tests apply to care leavers

However, councils with housing responsibilities are permitted to apply a local connection test, in determining a person’s eligibility for homelessness support, with 89% doing so.

In the case of care leavers under 21, or older if in education or training specified in their pathway plan, those who owed leaving care duties by the same authority, or by the relevant county council in a two-tier area, are deemed to have a local connection with that area.

If a care leaver has lived in another authority for at least two years, including some time before they turned 16, they also have a local connection with this other area.

The government said it had written to councils to ask them to prioritise veterans, care leavers and domestic abuse survivors for social housing and would bring forward regulations enacting the change in due course.

‘Young people face care cliff’

Become, a charity for children in care and care leavers, welcomed the policy shift, saying that the current rules meant care leavers often faced the disruption of having to return to their local authority’s area, where they may have felt fear.

“Young people leaving care face a care cliff where important support and relationships disappear and they are expected to become independent overnight,” said chief executive Katharine Sacks-Jones. “Today’s announcement is a welcome step in addressing this and ensuring that young people leaving care have somewhere safe to live.”

For youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, policy and research manager Tom Kerridge said: “Care leavers often find themselves moved all over the country because of budgetary constraints and a lack of housing availability, so this is hugely positive for a particularly vulnerable and often neglected group.”

However, he warned that homelessness duties were “barely worth the paper they’re written on without a sufficient social housing stock and properly resourced councils”.

What is the book about?

This book is a memoir based on author Ashley John-Baptiste’s childhood experiences growing up in care. Throughout the book, Ashley, who is now a BBC journalist, reflects on his childhood and adolescence as a looked-after child, recounting times of hardship, trauma and confusion with such detail and introspection that you can’t help but be tremendously moved.

The take-home messages

Ashley describes specific encounters with social care professionals, teachers, foster carers and friends, reflecting on how specific words and moments in interactions have forever imprinted in his memory. He demonstrates the power that words – what is said and what is left unsaid – can have on someone throughout life.

He covers complicated topics such as identity, relationships and intergenerational care and the impact that foster care, and recurring placement moves, have on a child. Despite the harshness of his experience in the UK foster care system, the extraordinary resilience he has showcased is inspiring.

A must-read for social care practitioners

Having worked as a social worker, I believe this book will be tremendously helpful for other social care professionals, as it provides insight into the impact our role can have on a child’s life. Ashley’s reflections on past social work interactions demonstrate the need to have hope and motivation for any child in care and to look beyond the ‘professional role’ as one with authority to simply make big decisions.

Rather, he shows us the importance of helping a child find their voice and identity by listening to what they need, and of continuously checking in, as what may appear to be a ‘positive placement’ to professionals may not be reflective of the child’s experiences day-to-day. As social workers, we must try our best to provide opportunities and encouragement for a child in care to find success.

What else should I know?

The book challenges us to reflect on our own childhoods and relationships, and how we have come to relate to others and build trusting, reciprocal relationships. At times the book is quite sad, given the visceral, honest accounts of life in care. However, it is important to understand this side of care, which most of us will never experience, and the importance and impact of key individuals in providing light during periods of darkness.

• Looked After: A Childhood in Care – A memoir by Ashley John-Baptiste ★★★★
• Hodder & Stoughton
• ISBN: 9781399711920
• £14.99

By Jo Stephenson

Life story work can play a key role in helping care experienced children and young people understand their family background and how they came into care.

“Ultimately it contributes to their sense of identity, which is absolutely critical,” says CoramBAAF adoption consultant Jane Poore.

“It’s a grounding in who they are and where they came from, and if they don’t have that information they will either seek it out themselves – possibly putting themselves at risk – or internalise it and have various problems because of their lack of ownership and sense of who they are.”

High-quality life story work can help improve placement stability and relationships with family members and reduce mental health difficulties, says clinician and practice researcher at Royal Holloway University Laura Hanbury.

Life story work ‘shouldn’t just be a book’

But a lack of research, standards and training, on top of time pressures and high turnover of children’s social workers, means the quality varies widely.

“It shouldn’t just be a book and it’s not a piece of work that is ever completed, in my opinion,” says Hanbury.

Meanwhile practice – which often involves a one-off piece of work to create a paper-based life story book – has failed to keep pace with advances in the use of technology and improved understanding of trauma.

“With all the trauma-informed training that is out there, we haven’t seemed to be able to connect the importance of life story work within that,” adds Hanbury.

“We know that trauma manifests more when there is a lack of comfort, a lack of protection, a lack of context and understanding around certain types of experiences some young people might have. Yet we don’t link that to the importance of life story work and putting meaning and adding context to those experiences – sort of connecting the dots.”

However, researchers and practitioners are devising new ways to deliver life story work and improve outcomes for children and young people.

Creative activities

The All About Me packs. Photo: Blue Cabin

Charity Blue Cabin is exploring how creative activities, from painting to puppetry, can be used as part of life story work, through its All About Me Creative Experience – a six-week programme facilitated by artists trained in trauma recovery and attachment.

Aimed at care experienced children and young people aged five to 17, it sees a “pastoral support worker” – usually a local authority staff member, such as a social worker – working alongside the artist to run weekly sessions exploring themes such as “people in my life” or “places I have lived”.

These are delivered face-to-face or online to groups of up to six children and young people, supported by a trusted adult, such as a foster carer.

“Unlike traditional life story work, the focus is the creative activity as opposed to, ‘Let’s talk about your life,’” explains Blue Cabin director Jenny Young.

Photo: Blue Cabin

“By exploring a theme, such as who is important in a child’s life, you start to find out about them and their needs, but it’s on their terms and builds on things they want to know about.”

Research findings

A trial at three local authorities in north east England found most staff who tested the approach felt it was more effective than traditional life story work and had improved children’s wellbeing.

Of about 60 staff and foster carers who took part, 78% felt it had improved placement stability to some degree and the vast majority – 93% – believed it had had a positive impact on relationships between children and parents or carers.

However, the evaluation as a whole found no statistically significant difference in wellbeing, placement stability or school stability between children offered and not offered the intervention

Sharing learning

Blue Cabin has also recently launched the Creative Life Story Work online platform, to share good practice and support social workers to deliver creative life story work activities themselves.

“We have bottled up those creative sessions into bite-sized activities social workers can use as part of life story work practice every day,” says Young, who hopes it will go some way to filling gaps in training and guidance.

Darlington Borough Council trialled the All About Me creative experience and has since signed up to the membership scheme.

Therapeutic social worker Charlotte Swainston, who is leading work to embed high-quality life story work across the authority, says creative activities provide a fresh and effective way of reaching children and young people.

“Children and young people have often had many different social workers as part of their journey and what we hear from them is, ‘Here’s another one who is going to get the three houses out and ask the same questions,” she says. ‘Three houses’ is a commonly used direct work tool.

“This is different; it’s not a standardised approach and gives professionals the opportunity to put their own creative spin on things, so children don’t feel it is the same thing over and over again.”

Using objects

CoramBAAF’s Objects and their Stories course helps social workers and foster carers understand how both precious and everyday items can be used to help communicate and build relationships with children and young people generally and as part of life story work.

“Young people often have objects from their birth parents or foster placements and this is about using those objects to bring stories out,” explains course trainer Karey Taylor, independent visitor co-ordinator and an advocate for the Leaving Care with Confidence project.

“’This is the bunny I won at the fair with that foster carer’, or, ‘This is the object your birth mum gave you in hospital’ – and the story just flows from there.”

Using objects as the starting point for conversations is a powerful technique that can help social workers in so many situations, including when they first meet a child and are trying to make a connection.

Crucially, the young person is in control of the narrative, says fellow trainer Lisa Handy, relationships, sex and health education programme manager for personal, health, social and economic education provider Coram Life Education.

“Life story work is done with the child but often comes from the adult. This is very much about [putting] the child at the centre of their memories and is completely led by them,” she says.

Digital solutions

Other are innovating in the digital space. Coram-i, the children’s charity’s improvement consultancy, is working with a software development company to create a life story work app for all care experienced young people and is currently seeking local authorities interested in trialling it later this year.

Most young people have access to a vast depository of “digital memories” accessed via their own smartphones or by scrolling through devices belonging to parents or other family members.

But this is often not the case for care experienced children – especially those who have had  multiple placements.

The idea of the app is to enable children to have a safe and secure, but similarly detailed and constantly updated, digital record of key people, activities and events in their life, explains managing director of Coram-i Kevin Yong.

A more vibrant alternative to case records

Unlike case records, which tend to consist of official reports and minutes of meetings – or a traditional life story book – the app would provide a fuller, more vibrant record of a child’s life so far, through photos, videos and even voice messages.

It wouldn’t end with an adoption or permanent care placement, but could continue to grow and be updated with content uploaded by birth family members, foster carers, adoptive parents, social workers and, eventually, the young person themselves.

The content could be used to create timelines and albums and explore relationships.

Importantly – when a child is old enough – they will be able to carry it around with them and access it at pretty much any time, via a smartphone, tablet or laptop.

‘The content is owned by the person in care’

“First and foremost the content will be owned by the person in care and no one can take it away from them,” says Yong. “It is theirs forever.”

He expects the young person’s social worker would also have access to the app and believes it could help them in their day-to-day practice, as well as life story work in particular.

“It should make the job of putting together a life story book a lot easier and also help social workers keep up to date with what’s going on in a young person’s life, so next time they see them, they can have more informed and meaningful conversations,” says Yong.

“Ultimately, it could help with placement stability, behaviour and other issues that stem from the frustration young people feel in not having access to this information.”

Sue Williams, the mind behind the family safeguarding model, has been recognised for her outstanding contribution to children and families in the second annual Frontline Awards.

Her award was presented by chief social worker for children Isabelle Trowler, who described Sue as “a leading light in bringing change and innovation to children’s social care across England”.

“Her incredible tenacity, intellectual clout, creativity and commitment to the sector has made a huge and lasting contribution, not just to every practitioner she’s influenced, but to every child and family that they in turn have supported,” she added.

Sue, now programme director of the Centre for Family Safeguarding Practice, conceived the model in 2015 when assistant director of children’s services in Hertfordshire council. She secured funding from the Department for Education’s (DfE) innovation programme to test it in the county.

Family safeguarding involves teams of children’s social workers and specialist adults’ practitioners using techniques such as motivational interviewing to tackle the root causes of adult behaviours that increase concerns about children, particularly domestic abuse, substance misuse and mental health difficulties.

It reduced the number of children going into care and onto child protection plans and was seen by parents as “participatory, supportive and empowering”, found a 2020 evaluation for the DfE, which has subsequently supported its rollout across the country. It has so far been adopted by 23 areas in England.

‘Challenge your biases’

Helena Oatts (photo by Frontline)

The outstanding contribution gong was one of two new additions to the Frontline awards line-up, the other being participant of the year, which recognises a trainee on the charity’s fast-track social work course.

This award went to Helena Oatts, who was praised for being a “fierce advocate for children and families and practising with empathy and passion”.

“I love every moment of [being a social worker] and to be recognised for doing something you enjoy is absolutely amazing,” she said of her win.

“I’ve always been someone who has loved people, I think there’s something in everyone that we can all resonate with.”

Helena’s piece of advice for future social work students was to always believe in themselves but also challenge their biases.

“We all have biases, but you have to be open to challenging the views that you have about the world and about yourself. Keep an open mind. When you’re meeting families, you might have a slight idea of what could be going on, but keep challenging yourself, there could be multiple truths and possibilities.”

‘It’s important for young people to feel seen, loved and wanted’

Addy Siwko, Annie Whitley, and Artur were selected as winners of the award for young people.

Addy Siwko (photo by Frontline)

Addy, who lives with cerebral palsy, set up his own car wash business to raise money for a charity raising awareness for the condition and, more recently, wrote a song, ‘I Can Do Anything’, about his disability not holding him back in life.

Annie has led a consultation on making care experience a protected characteristic, secured a household living fund for care leavers and helped review, reshape and relaunch children’s residential care in her area.

Artur is the chair of a children’s active involvement service and, for the past five years, has worked to improve support for care leavers. He has set up a food and toiletry bank, lobbied for suitable housing for care leavers and managed to increase care leaver allowances from £1,500 to £3.000 in his area.

Speaking to Community Care, he called for better funding towards allowances and housing placements for care leavers and said he would continue to advocate for a “better service so that young people have the best and easiest experience”.

He advised practitioners working with children to do everything “with their hearts and mean it”.

“A young person can always tell when a social worker means what they say,” Artur added. “Social workers do kind of take on the role of a parent so it’s really important for the young people [they support] to feel seen, loved and wanted by them.”

Big night for Islington

Kenneth Atigah (photo by Frontline)

The London Borough of Islington saw two of its practitioners go home with an award – Celia, who won the leadership award for her commitment to improving social work practice, and Kenneth Atigah, who won the award for practice.

Celia has helped deliver multiple initiatives, including the edge of care service, which provides prevention support for children and young people at potential risk of needing to become looked after.

Kenneth left Ghana for England in 2008 and has spent years caring for his autistic cousin, whose social worker inspired him to join the sector.

Other winners included Kasey Thompson, who won the fellowship award for being “an integral part of Frontline’s racial diversity and inclusion steering group”, and Darlington council’s Staying Close team, which won team of the year for their work supporting 22 young people transitioning from children’s homes or supported accommodation to independent living.

‘When we respond to sexual exploitation, we need creative approaches’

The final award, for innovation, went to Jo Ritchie for her decade-long work on sexual exploitation, including setting up ‘Night Light’ with Avon and Somerset Police, which sees professionals partnering with sex workers to support and identify children at risk.

“This award is very much shared with the women. They’ve been so instrumental and we couldn’t do Night Light without them,” she said.

“I think so often sex workers are criminalised, demonised and totally misunderstood. The women I know and love have the biggest hearts, are the bravest people – they keep on surviving. And the fact that they’ve got the strength to safeguard children, it’s phenomenal.”

She said that in the last few months, her team has responded to 12 children and gathered “lots of information on other children at risk and customers that can be dangerous”.

Her advice to professionals working to safeguard young people from sexual exploitation is to be creative in their approaches.

“We need to think about where the gaps are and how we can intervene in a way that will meet people where they’re at and make a difference. I think sometimes the more traditional responses don’t work, so it’s about being creative.”

‘Making space to ‘celebrate social workers’ brilliant work’

Introducing the awards, Lord Tony Hall, Frontline’s chair of trustees, said: “At a time when children and families are experiencing more complex issues and worsening living conditions, it is so important that we make space to celebrate the brilliant work that social workers do day in and day out.

“The endless commitment and support that they give to children and their families can help to provide both the essential tools and hope for a brighter future.”

You can read more about the other nominations and winners on the Frontline website.

Free Loaves on Fridays, a new anthology containing letters, stories and poems by 100 care experienced children and adults, was launched last week.

The book, edited by Rebekah Pierre, professional officer at the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), features contributions from people aged 13 to 68, from renowned poet and author Lemn Sissay to first-time writers.

“The book holds up a mirror to the system, exposing both the wonderful potential that good, well-funded social work can have, as well as the lifelong consequences when children are let down,” said Pierre, who spent time in care before becoming a social worker.

Speaking at the launch, Pierre said she hoped Free Loaves on Fridays humanised care leavers and challenged “the stigma and stereotypes that still exist”.

“I hope it flips everything on its head to show we don’t have to just be a small voice at the end of a feedback form but we’re capable of the whole narrative,” she added. “I hope it leads people to action.”

‘It brought up a lot of memories’

The book, whose proceeds are going to children’s rights charities Article 39 and The Together Trust, took Pierre two years to put together and edit.

She attributed this in part to how deeply the stories resonated with her own experience in care – so much so that she had to take time off at times to reflect.

“Having lived experience of [care], [the stories] resonated at a deep level and it brought up a lot of memories so the process [of editing] was very slow,” she said.

“It couldn’t be rushed but it was a privilege. My hope is that the next generation will see themselves represented in bookshops, so it’s absolutely worth it.”

Pierre spent ages 16-18 living in an unregulated hostel after her foster placement broke down unexpectedly, right before Christmas.

Years later she decided to read her case files, only to find “pages and pages of cold, very formal language” where her name had been misspelt “over 100 times”.

Pierre later addressed her social worker in an open letter that included extracts of her case notes, criticising the language used. This is now part of Free Loaves on Fridays.

‘Care experienced people telling their stories in their own words’

Kirsty Capes, care experienced author and one of the contributors, said the book gave care leavers the opportunity to do something rare, to “tell their own stories in their own words”.

Capes, whose debut novel, Careless, is the story of a teenage girl in foster care, strongly praised Free Loves on Fridays’ no-rejection policy, which meant that all submissions were accepted, no matter the author’s level of writing experience.

“To have that no rejection policy, and for [care experienced people] to speak truth to their stories in their own words, that’s an incredibly powerful thing,” she added. “It’s even more powerful for people who’ve often had other people speaking for them.

“I hope it’s just the start of a wider conversation that we all need to have about how [care] experienced people are spoken about and how they’re represented.”

Similarly to Pierre, Capes’s entry in the book highlights the shame she felt when reading her notes, where her social worker often labelled her as a “liar”.

Changing language, she said, was a small thing that practitioners could do that would have “a big impact on care experienced people’s self-identity”, she added.

Another contributor, Kasmira Kincaid, highlighted the importance of acknowledging both the pressures social workers were under and the complexity of children in care’s lives.

“I think children in care will often not see the complexity and challenges social workers are confronted with,” she said. “[But] social workers often have the tendency to do the same thing.

“I think it’s important for them to take away that children in care might have different struggles, but they’re no less numerous and not that substantially different. So, I suppose it’s about seeing people as individuals. To see the complexity and avoid seeing people as a simple stereotype.”

A must-read for every social worker

Emma Lewell-Buck, MP for South Shields and a former social worker, described Free Loaves on Fridays as an emotional journey that would make readers “understand the reality of our system and why it absolutely must change”.

“So often, care experienced people are not listened to, their exclusion from policy setting and decision making is ever apparent,” she said. “Often those who have experienced care are spoken about as though they are all one homogenous group. They aren’t. Their diverse experiences are brought to life in this book.”

National director of BASW England Maris Stratulis called the book a “must-read for every social worker”.

“We must hear and learn from the voices of the care experienced community, and influence and change practice and systems for the better.”

Free Loaves on Fridays is published by Unbound and is currently available from Waterstones.com and uk.bookshop.org.