Have you ever been so hungry you became delusional? I have, when as a child in care I was placed in a hostel a few months after finishing my GCSEs. I remember rummaging through old birthday cards in the futile hope of finding a tenner.
Despite my benefits and the job I did alongside school, I could not afford food and electricity – let alone books, school trips, or clothes. I once wrote an essay with a candle in one hand and a pen in the other. But the lack of human connection hurt most. In my first year of sixth form, I was in hospital for four days before “support” staff realised I was gone. I was 17, hooked to a drip, alone and terrified.
The state was a lousy parent to me. It does not care for all its children equally – in fact, thousands of children in the care system in England are not entitled to care at all. Once they turn 16, children in care can be placed by local authorities in shared houses with adult strangers, bedsits and hostels with no adult carers.
Before last year, children in care as young as 11 lived in “care-less” settings. The Department for Education has introduced secondary legislation which bans this – but only for children aged 15 and under. This leaves more than 6,400 children in England, a third of all 16- to 17-year-olds in care, unprotected. And it threatens thousands more, by allowing private companies to saturate the market when foster carers are in short supply.
In the absence of a government that cares, our hope rests on this week’s judicial review. Article 39, a small charity, has taken the DfE to court on the grounds that the secondary legislation discriminates against children aged 16-17. The charity is backed by more than 10,700 people who signed a #KeepCaringTo18 petition. Last week, I was one of six care-experienced adults who delivered it to Downing Street. The judge has now heard evidence from both sides, and we’re awaiting his decision.