POLICY & PRACTICE: Soapbox - It's still too dangerous to admityou're a care-leaver

Care-leavers are treated like criminals, who from the outset are repressed and excluded by the system. Being a care-leaver is more than being disadvantaged, it means you are put at the bottom of the table within every institution that has been created to supposedly develop individuals to reach their full potential. The statistics about children in and leaving care paint a bleak picture. Like many other groups in society, we share the label of being marginalised and are largely invisible to society in general.

At many points in my own development I've endeavoured to place myself alongside my counterparts to compare the reality of life in general. I ask questions such as do I find it difficult to find employment compared to my counterparts? What are my experiences within the working world compared to my counterparts? This gives me a good view of society, from a visible ethnic person's point of view, and invariably the answer is "yes" to most of these questions.