Care leaver strategy set to be another missed opportunity

They may represent less than one per cent of their age group, but the prognosis for children and young people who experience public care, especially those who have lived in residential institutions as opposed to foster care, is disproportionately bleak. In whichever direction of social pathology one looks, and the list is a long one - teenage pregnancy, substance misuse, mental health, educational drop-out and underachievement, homelessness, sexual violence and exploitation, crime and custody – we find unexpected if no longer surprising numbers of young adults who had once been "looked-after children".

Things have, admittedly, got somewhat better over the past decade. In parliament at the turn of the millennium, inquiries by the health and education select committees converged around the appalling educational failure of children in the public care: at the time, around 80 per cent left with no educational qualifications whatsoever. Subsequently, the Social Exclusion Unit established its own dedicated focus on the education of looked-after children. More recently, a cross-national study funded by the European Commission heralded the UK as having made significant progress in supporting care leavers in pathways to education.