Why isn't there more help for teenagers leaving care?

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:11Nick Martin:Young people leaving care are dying at a deeply troubling rate. Nick Martin has spent years reporting on what happens to children in the system and what happens when that system begins to let go. This is why.

0:33Nick Martin:Hi everyone, Neil here, and you'll have heard him on the podcast before. My colleague Nick Martin has been reporting on the care system for years now. He's met children sent miles away from home. He's investigated places that were supposed to keep them safe and didn't. He's spoken to foster carers, leaving a system they no longer believe is working. And one question keeps following all of that reporting around. What happens to these young people next? because when you turn 18, you don't suddenly stop needing people. Most of us carried on relying on our families for years. Money, advice, somewhere to stay, or just somebody checking that you are actually all right.

1:08Nick Martin:But a government-commissioned review has now examined 112 deaths in a single year among care leavers aged 18 to 24. That's data that shows they're dying at three to four times the rate of other young people their age once they've come into contact with what's known as the care cliff. And that is because children in care live a hidden life. They are unseen, unheard. We don't really know what goes on. So today Nick and I are looking at that jump into adult life. Where the care system helps young people, where it fails, and why having support written down on a plan is not always the same as having someone in your corner.

1:52Nick Martin:Nick, let's start with this review. What have we learnt? I mean, it's pretty concerning. I think what this review is successful in doing is it's consolidating all of the elements of the system that we already know are pretty bad. I'd be surprised if they've learned anything particularly new. But I think the government wanted to have this review to focus their minds to figure out once and for all whether there is a way of solving the problem of looking after our most vulnerable children. Deaths, though. Deaths of young people, some of whom have lived the most horrendous lives. I mean, every single one of them is something we should regret.

2:28Nick Martin:The problem is, is that there are increasing numbers of them. The Children's Minister, Josh McAllister, has said it's a stain on our society. When I raised this with the then Education Secretary, Bridget Phillips, and she said it shames us all. It's grim, isn't it? It's grim. When we first started looking at this, 90 care leavers died over the year. Last year, it was 112. It's gone up by a quarter. The numbers, Neil, are going in the wrong direction. And the government know this. they need to look at why young care leavers are dying and what it is about the age of 18 which is particularly triggering Even that headline figure might not tell the full story I mean local authorities they don't know where all of these kids are When a child in the care of the state and what we mean by that is in the care of a local council because they are the corporate parents horrible phrase but that's what they are if a child in the care of the state dies really that should be notified to the government to the Department for Education the system is frankly ad hoc to say the least the suspicion is that that 112 is an under-reporting because there's evidence to suggest and this was brought up in the review that councils are losing track of children once they leave 18 and so they die without them knowing it there's no delicate way to put this question how are these children dying the age the biggest cohort of deaths are 18 There's a reason for that.

3:5318 is the point at which the system goes goodbye. All of the support falls down in England and Wales specifically. There is a transition, so some support can be up to 25, but 18 is the big number. And the majority of causes of death were suicide. And that paints really quite a sad picture. Now, I've been reporting on children in the care system who have died for a few years. It has an effect on you. You read stories, you get to know them, you speak to their parents, it sort of stays with you, as a lot of reporting does. But there's something about the age of 18 that the government are beginning to recognise is perilous.

4:35And that is because the support falls away.

4:38Nick Martin:You and I have talked on this podcast so many times about the care system. But there was one of your reports from last year, which is really chiming with the outcomes of this review. And that was a girl called Nanita. Just remind us. I came across Nanita's story last year and knew instantly we needed to tell her story. She was pretty much unknown. In fact, we made a whole documentary without even having a photograph of her. She was 18 years old. She'd been in the care system for a few years. She had told pretty much everybody around her, doctors, social workers, that she was scared of leaving the care system at 18 and that she intended to take her own life when she got to 18.

5:18Now you would think that the system would react to that, but she was able to unfortunately sadly carry that through and she died on railway lines just a few weeks after her 18th birthday. There were wholesale failings in her care and her corporate parent should have, the coroner said at the inquest, done a much better job. But you trace back the origins of a story like Nanita. She'd struggled in school. She didn't have the proper special educational needs support. Her mental health support was patchy. She had the full gambit of issues that should have been addressed. And her story really stuck with me.

5:55Nick Martin:That documentary, one of the reasons why this review has been carried out in the first place. But you mentioned their corporate parent. I think we probably need to get back to basics. When we say someone is in care, what does that mean? Well, without giving you a big history lesson on this, the rights of a child and what happens to a child when their normal parental structure falls away is, you know, 150 years old, dating back to sort of Barnardo's homes, which were set up to look after children who didn't have parents. And over the years, we have legislated in layers and layers and layers to make sure that children are protected when they don't have traditional parenting set up or can be looked after by grandparents.

6:35Today, the system that is in place is really down to local councils to act in loco parentis when a child doesn't have parents or cannot be cared for by their parents. It's called corporate parenting. That corporate parent should act as any other reasonable parent would. Nurture, support, advise, love, be compassionate, have a shoulder to cry on, recognize when someone goes quiet at the meal table. They are just parents, but of course it's a system. And that is when the system becomes quite faceless. And children have told me that they often feel that they have received anything but love or compassion.

7:16And often that's what they need.

7:18Nick Martin:What is the system designed to do? Because of course I had 18. That is the point, you know, legally where you're an adult. So what is the care system supposed to be doing for those that are in its care? People who are charged with the care of young people need to protect them. They need to make sure that they're educated. All of the things that anyone watching this who's a parent would do anyway for their child. The way the system becomes a bit more brutal is that sort of 17 years old, if that child is still in care, conversations start to be had about what happens when you leave care. That late?

7:52That late? It can be quite late, yes. It can sometimes be 17 and a half. So the road to 18 can often be very compressed. And that is what causes anxiety and worry about what we now know is the care cliff, when, as I say, all that scaffolding falls down. Well, what the government do recognise, but what they need to figure out how to do it in practice, is how to smoothen that path. There are current systems in place to make it a slightly lesser abrupt transition. But fundamentally, at 18, you're out the door.

8:23Nick Martin:I mean, a lot of the kids that we are talking about, young adults, I keep saying kids, but they are young adults at this point, you know, will have lived fundamentally the most horrific, unsupported lives. This has been perhaps the only moment of stability that they have enjoyed. and they can see it ending. The care system is a double-edged sword because often that child's life is undoubtedly probably better in the care system than the alternative would have been if you think about how some families break down and children lead themselves into the care system. So parents can be sent to prison, for example.

8:59Parents can die. The care system is there to catch them. The issue is the systems that are put in place to look after them. we have a chronic shortage of children's homes so much so that four in ten children are moved out of area away from their networks and that can lead to huge isolation we have a chronic shortage of foster carers which are by far the best way of looking after children but they are leaving in their droves we have an issue with children's mental health services when children turn 18 it goes from children's mental health service to adult mental health services completely different systems.

9:36And so it all compounds at 18. So all of these are, what I would describe,

9:41Nick Martin:points of contact, points of human contact. I mean, these children were isolated to start with. Removing all of that must have a huge effect on them. And I think the problem for the government is, well, what do we do about that? Because we've got thousands of children in the care system. They have to leave the system. We can't just expect them to stay in the system. Ultimately, this does come down to money as well as compassion. and I think the government are struggling to think about how they can keep nurturing children when as one child leaves another one enters the system. It's the stories, the human stories, the very personal stories.

10:19Nick Martin:I think every time you and I have talked about this, there have remained with us. And in your reporting around this, there is an example of a kid which I think goes away from the popular perception of what children in care are like. This was a kid, Joe Ash, who had significant needs, but it did have a parental structure there. We've made a film about Joe Ash, and the reason why I wanted to make the film about Joe Ash is because he does challenge that stereotype, that we think that children in care are parentless, do not have parents. Joe Ash's parents, and I've spent a lot of time with them, they've done an awful lot of work to try and understand what's happened to their son.

10:54Andy and Jess could not keep their son safe at home. There were multiple attempts for him to take his own life. He was quite violent. He had autism. So they made an agonizing decision to put him into care, to entrust him into the care of the state. That is obviously something they regret now because at 18, he took his own life. And they are now searching for answers as to what went wrong. And there is an inquest, Neil, in February next year. So we're not prejudging that. But it is fair to say that they have a lot of questions about the level of care that their son received.

11:32Nick Martin:And as you say, inquest ongoing and conclusions being drawn from that particular example. But the review itself identified a number of kids who'd been very clearly being failed by the system. There was a kid called David who stuck with me. I think David is an example of how relationships can be forged in the most unlikely areas. So David was a diabetic. He had a diabetes nurse. He struck up a relationship with that nurse. She obviously expressed interest in what he was doing. He was a lifeguard, although that didn't last very long. and towards his 18th birthday as those services fall away he lost that relationship and it was possibly one of the only formative relationships he had in his life but on paper was like a nurse who was seeing him a couple of times a month and it's an example of how health services falling away at 18 can have a significant impact on that feeling of isolation because David really didn't have many other people to talk to in his life and he died at 19 and so when the government look at all of the services around children they are I know concerned about how quickly and how rapidly services can be pulled away and how suddenly a person can be the only person in the room

13:17Nick Martin:Are there examples of where best practice is being applied, of where we are getting this right? Ofsted rated 72 % of English councils good or outstanding for care, leaver service provision. And that doesn't seem to chime with what you and I are discussing this morning. There's a lot of good going on in the care system, and I've seen it for myself. And I'm the last person to just bang on about the bad. And some councils are better than others. Some councils are recording deaths properly. Other councils aren't. And there's a suspicion that the 112 care leaders who died last year isn't an accurate number, I'm afraid.

13:53And we've got some evidence to suggest that some councils are a bit confused about when they should be notifying. There are good charities stepping into the breach, doing work, and there's a lot of work to try and smooth that transition so that the care cliff is not so much a cliff, but more of a road that's set out clearly ahead of a young person.

14:11Nick Martin:What then is the role of central government in making that care cliff disappear? The solution, I don't know. It's going to cost money, of course, but the government departments that revolve around a child in care need to work together an awful lot better than they do now. And it is coming back to this question of what happens at 18, what happens at 18. And the Scottish system does smoothen this transition a bit. So it generally keeps children in care at close hand until 25. And in some cases, we do that in England and Wales as well. The government really need to get over this idea of the care cliff.

14:49They've got to stop people falling off that cliff. And I've not heard anything in this review that convinces me that any of these wholesale root and branch reforms are in the pipeline. I'm hearing schemes here and schemes there. But I'm yet to be convinced that the government is able, in a Treasury sense, to grasp this, to spend the money that needed.

15:11Nick Martin:What should that period of transition look like? What does it look like at the moment and what should we be doing? I think it's important to say that every child in care has their own individual needs. So what works for one child may not work for another. I have met children in care who couldn't wait to leave the system at 18. They were all right with it. But for some children, 18, they may as well be like 12. They're not ready for the world. And I think the system needs to flex a lot more to understand the individual needs. So when Josie comes to a social worker, Josie can have a tailored exit from the system.

15:51When John comes, he can have a tailored exit from the system. But the system isn't as flexible as that.

15:57Nick Martin:So currently, 17-year-old coming to the end of their time in care, on the day of their 18th birthday, are they just packed up, shipped off and stuck in what, temporary accommodation? One girl I spoke to on her 18th birthday was sent to a travel lodge with pizza tokens. You're joking me. Another was sent to a bedsit where there was a mattress on the floor. So yes, it is as brutal as that. Others will be in bedsits, studio flats, and probably surrounded by people who either find themselves in a similar situation or who are, for whatever other reason, in temporary accommodation. Without the mental health support that they'd had the day earlier, without the social worker that they'd had the day earlier, without the access to information about how to find jobs, etc., that they'd had a day earlier, the overnight change in the British care system is what's causing this spike in deaths.

16:52It is the feeling of isolation, the lack of compassion that is causing people to do the unthinkable.

17:00Nick Martin:You mentioned compassion there. And that, I think I'm right, is a word that I keep hearing more and more of from the government. I hear a lot from children in the care system who feel like they weren't loved. Now, my children are loved. Your children are loved. If we go back to the corporate parent is there to do what any other reasonable parent would do, then why can't we have compassion in the system? Why can't we have someone who can feel loved? because if they're going through that system on their own and they feel like they've just got this faceless corporate parent, then is it any wonder that they can quickly descend into isolation, depression, and in some cases take their own lives?

17:41Nick Martin:Why wouldn't a corporate parent share that level of compassion? Well, if you look at the corporate parent, that's basically a council at a council office somewhere with social workers who are probably very well-meaning and are working hard but have 30, 40 children on their books. This is where I find myself every time you and I talk about this particular subject, because you know what? I've been damned lucky in my life. Fundamentally, I have parents who have been there from day one and will be there until they go. And when we talk about those who haven't been so lucky, I've always struggled to understand why the level of public outrage over the way in which we have treated some of the poorest wee kids in our society has not reflected the situation that they find themselves in.

18:32And that is because children in care live a hidden life. They are unseen, unheard. We don't really know what goes on because there is a wall put up between society and the children who society is tasked with caring for. There are good reasons for that. Children are vulnerable. We can't just be prying into their lives. Of course. But we need them to feel like they are part of society. And often what they feel is that they are isolated from society and that the system treats them like a number or a line on an accounting sheet. And we have to move away from that, I think. Government thinks that as well.

19:16we need to bring their lives into some more sense of normal that they can feel like they have a part in society and that they are loved by whoever is tasked with caring for them.

19:29Nick Martin:Nick, thanks very much. Thank you. And that is your lot for today but of course we are always looking for your feedback at yesterday's episode on social media and the posting of videos of dangerous driving provoked and response. Robert Lackey said this The amount of times I've contacted TikTok about things like this, all videos should be vetted before they're allowed to be posted, or TikTok needs to be taken down altogether. Robert will find out if the government is listening. The rest of you, why at sky.uk to get in touch. We're back tomorrow.