MP calls for all politicians to find out more about life in a care leaver's shoes

17 October 2011

National Care Leavers' Week 26th October-1st November 2011

National Care Leavers' Week 2011 challenges policy makers to consider the real impact of their decisions on children leaving care and spend 'A Day in My Shoes'. Edward Timpson MP, interviewed this week for ePolitix.com, chairs the APPG on children in and leaving care. Timpson, who grew up in a family that cared for over 90 foster children, described the care system as 'fragmented, disjointed and unstable'.

Speaking about the impact this instability has on children once they have left care and begin to make their own way in the adult world, Timpson said: "We have only really begun in recent years to understand how much more needs to be done for young people leaving care, and it is important that that renewed focus is not lost in the push for more emphasis on early intervention."

He believes that care leavers are still held back by professionals and carers who fail to hold high enough aspirations for children brought up in public care "There is no doubt that care-leavers still get a raw deal when it comes to support and guidance, and a lack of belief by others in their ability to succeed in higher and further education and thereafter get into the workplace" said Timpson, however he does not believe that the answers lie solely in the hands of Government, but needs to be shouldered by all those who come into contact with care leavers "Investing in high-quality social work, recruiting superstars to become foster carers and challenging all those who work with the vulnerable to never settle for second best for them: that's a good blueprint on which to push 'policy' forward."

Timpson's interview echo's comment made by Ashley John Baptiste, in a recent interview for National Care Leavers' Week. 22 year-old Ashley, who graduated from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, earlier in the year and is now battling for the nation's votes as he soars his way to yet another success in ITV's X-Factor, spoke out strongly about the lack of aspiration held for children in care by many of the professional adults they come into contact with. In particular Ashley wants social workers to be more politically aware and to fight harder for the rights of the children for whom they have responsibility.

And in a move to ensure that MPs have a better understanding of the very particular barriers care leavers face, Timpson is hoping to set up a matching programme to hook each MP up with a care-leaver in their constituency so that the politician can really understand what it means to be a care leaver.

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