4 minute read
The Care Leavers’ Association: Participation in Action
By Jim Goddard, PhD, CLA Chair
Photo: CLA archive
The Care Leavers’ Association (CLA) was set up in the year 2000. We are one of very few organisations around the world that were both set up by and are run by care leavers of all ages. By ‘care leavers’ we mean anyone who was in the legal care of the state as a child. Such people were usually brought up in either foster care (i.e. in a family setting) or in children’s homes. Some of these children’s homes have been small, with perhaps as few as six children, while the older ones, back in the 1960s and earlier, often had hundreds of children in them.
In our work, we cover England and Wales. There are about half a million adult care leavers (i.e. over the age of 18) in England and Wales. The percentage of children in care in many countries around the world, not just in the UK, is between 0.5% and 1.0%. When they are adults, many have issues related to their childhood in care. They often suffer educational and other forms of disadvantage due to their experience in care and the reasons why they came into care.
One of our biggest issues – we have been campaigning on it since 2005 – is about access to care files. All children in care in the UK will have a file kept on them. These files used to be on paper but now they are more likely to be digital. The files contain many useful details about our childhoods. However, getting access to these files can be difficult. Also, information in the files is ‘redacted’ (i.e. censored) to protect other people. This means that we cannot read information in the files about our parents or siblings, unless they have given permission.
In the past twenty years, we’ve helped hundreds of care leavers to access their files. We’ve also helped achieve a change in the law so that younger care leavers, those under the age of 25, are entitled to support when accessing their care files. We’d like to get that right to support extended to care leavers of all ages and we’d also like to reduce the redaction of file information to the absolute minimum.
As a legal charity we have a Board of Trustees. Their job is to set our priorities and oversee the work of our staff. Since we were set up in 2000, all of our trustees have been care leavers. I myself was in care in children’s homes between 1966 and 1980. This included some large homes run by Roman Catholic nuns and a smaller ‘Family Group Home’ on a normal state council housing estate.
Also, almost all of our staff have also been care leavers. This is particularly important for our work because it helps other care leavers to trust us.
For example, the three staff members who are currently running our ‘Connected’ project, which helps to connect care leavers with each other and provides support in various ways, all grew up in care. This makes it easier for them to work with fellow care leavers by enabling them to develop empathy.
As well as our Trustees, we also regularly consult our care leaver members. Only care leavers can be full members. Every year we have an Annual General Meeting and what we call a ‘National Gathering’. This is an opportunity for care leavers to come together and influence what we do.
When we engage in projects with care leavers, such as with providing support and advice to younger care leavers or those in the criminal justice system, we always try to follow principles of co-production, where care leavers help to design the projects and shape how they are going to be helped. This is very different from how many of them were treated by professionals when they were in care.
Because we are governed by and staffed by care leavers, the maximum participation of care leavers in what we do is central to how with think and act. It always will be.
www.careleavers.com
