Celebrating National Care Leavers Week

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28 October 2024

This week, October 28th-November 3rd, is National Care Leavers Week.

To celebrate this, and to spotlight the experiences of Care Leavers in their own words, we reproduce below a short piece by Hannah McCowen (National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum Manager, Catch22) on what this week is all about.

Please take the time to read it, the reports mentioned within it, and the ‘programme of action’ for this week.

“This National Care Leavers Week, we are publishing the ‘In Their Own Words’ reports – Five reports from the Young People’s Benchmarking Forum (YPBMF) that paint a picture of what life is like in 2024 for young people leaving care – based on a survey of over 200 care experienced individuals across the UK. Here are some of the headline findings:

77% reported they were struggling to buy food at least some of the time.
62% find it difficult to get the mental health support they need.
31% have a formal diagnosis, but a further 35% believe they are neurodivergent with many saying it is difficult to get the diagnosis or support that they need.
The majority of care experienced individuals do not know what support is available after the age of 21.
Mental health challenges and transport issues are some of the most common barriers to accessing community services and support.

The reports have been co-produced with care experienced young people from YPBMF from the start of the process – selecting the topics, designing the survey questions, analysing the results and sharing solutions they believe will make a difference.

Please go and read the reports and watch the videos of YPBMF sharing the key messages and do share them with others. As well as painting a clear picture of what life is like in 2024 for care experienced individuals, they demonstrate the power and potential in co-producing solutions with care experienced young people. I’d like to thank everybody who took part in the survey and in the process of co-producing the survey, event and report.

We have an opportunity at the moment with a new government, together with the highest public awareness and empathy around care experience that we’ve ever had, to really make a difference. There’s an urgency to ensure that we can make a difference for care experienced young people today, as well as those who will leave care in the future”.

Links to each report, and further information on the campaign’s goals, can be found here .

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