National Care Leavers’ Week

A major charity awareness week coordinated by Bryn Melyn Group Foundation

National Care Leavers’ Week is an annual awareness campaign run and supported by a coalition of charities who seek to improve the life chances of young people leaving the public care system.

On this fifth occasion of the annual week we

• Appreciate the recognition by central and local government of the importance of this transition
• Celebrate the positive differences that legislation and the efforts of services have made already for young people in this modern rite of passage
• Honour the resilience, bravery and integrity of those who have moved from care to “where”
• Remain concerned that for a not small number of “Care Leavers” this continues to be a sad and lonely passage fraught with uncertainty
• Notice the words: Care Leavers, Leaving Care. Of course at one level we understand their meaning – the movement out of the public care system. What’s less apparent is where these young people will be going and what del they will encounter when they get to “where”.

The risk today remains unnecessarily high for far too many young people at 16 or 18 and beyond that “Leaving Care” will be a process that renders them and their particular needs, and even their ordinary developmental needs, invisible. On leaving public care these “objects of caring concern” can quickly disappear out of the sight and out of the minds of those formerly (and formally) responsible for their well – being. While not true for all, it is indisputably the case for some. And for these young people, however many or few they may be, the question can be asked “Is this what any of us would want for our own?”

For the parents amongst us, how many of our own children leave or will leave our care without ever again needing our active involvement in their lives, their hopes, their fears, their failures, their successes?

Of course we neither  expect nor require that they should; for our children they will never undergo a transformation from those that we raised, continue to love and hold  in mind on a daily basis into ‘former relevant’ children and ultimately, unconnected adults.

A young person’s “Leaving Care” should not be a sign that society and our public services can be “Past Caring” and assume that life must now be largely a matter of sink or swim – while invisible to our eyes, excluded from our mind and dropped from our hearts.

What all those who have an interest in the well being of care leavers choose to do or not do can have a major impact on the quality of care leavers’ lives, both in the present and in the future. During this dedicated week there is an opportunity to commit again to becoming agents for genuine, positive change and growth. We invite and encourage everyone – individuals, groups and agencies, to act to improve the lives and life chances of this potentially vulnerable population.

National Care Leavers’ Week

“Continuum Care & Education Group Ltd is delighted to support National Care Leavers’ Week as we recognise the importance of the need for a voice for these young people and support for the issues they may face on leaving the security of their looked after provision.

Because we can accommodate a child’s ever changing needs, our young people benefit from the stable environment provided within the Continuum Group.  In my view, it is paramount that this level of stability and support continues to be available on leaving care, and National Care Leavers Week blazes the trail on the behalf of these young people who could, once again, become vulnerable to the pitfalls of life if their voices are unheard and their concerns unsupported.”

Steve Parkin  (Chief Executive Officer, Continuum Group)