Benni-Jo Tyler, the young people's involvement worker for Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa, speaks to ePolitix.com about the particular barriers that face care leavers in seeking employment.

Question: What were your career ambitions when you were in care? Do you feel you were supported and encouraged to achieve these?

Benni-Jo Tyler: When I was in care, my career ambition was to become a journalist, but I was so disheartened by the way that young people in care were treated that I abandoned that idea and decided that the best thing for me to do was to actually work within the care system to try and change it and make it better for other young people.

Question: What particular barriers do young care leavers face in entering the job market?

Benni-Jo Tyler: We're talking about 10 years ago for me, so some things may have changed, but I wouldn't bet your bottom dollar on that.

There was absolutely no expectation for care leavers to achieve. I actually left care at 15 but continued to go to school and my social services were actually surprised that I was still attending. It just wasn't expected that you would want to succeed.

I know young people now who just aren't entered into GSCEs, and at Shaftesbury we fight just to make sure our young people are entered because not sitting a GSCE at all is a bigger failure than getting a low grade.

We've even paid for young people to do their GCSEs privately when schools have refused to enter them, so that lack of expectation is still there, and if you're not expected to do well, then it is very difficult to do well.

If your 'carers' can't be bothered, more likely than not, neither can you.

Question: What do you think should be done to address these issues?

Benni-Jo Tyler: I think that we need to expect more of our young people and I know that that has been addressed in the Leaving Care Act, but I don't have a huge amount of faith that it has made much difference.

Yes, we do have some young people going on to university from the care system, but it is something like one per cent.

We should have much higher expectations for young people, and much better support for people who want to do well, because at the end of the day they aren't going to achieve until we start pushing them to achieve.

The care system has to become a pushy parent, that's what we need today.

We need to push our young people into drama and dance and the arts and school and university and college and everywhere else in-between.

All the activities outside school we would want our own children to benefit from and enjoy.

Question: As you're aware, Bollington Insurance is announcing four career bursaries as part of National Care Leavers' Week to give care leavers a kick-start towards a sustainable and worthwhile employment opportunity. Do you think a scheme like this will help, or is positive discrimination just another way of stigmatising groups?

Benni-Jo Tyler: It could help, but it won't help unless it goes to the right people. If you're not joined to some after school club or some group to play football, or in touch with and aftercare team then young people aren't going to access that opportunity.

So, it's a good idea to have those places available, but you need to think about how to get in touch with the people who will most benefit, and who is going to encourage them to go for it.

We've got a young woman at Shaftsbury who has represented our country in a javelin competition, and when that young woman went to the European Championship and came in second, she was wearing someone else's clothes and throwing someone else's javelin.

Now could you imagine if she had the right equipment, how far she would go?

Shaftesbury got fed up of asking her local authority to provide the equipment and so now we are giving her the money ourselves, and now the local authority has changed their stance and are clamouring to get her the equipment, but if we didn't instigate that, she wouldn't have anything.

Question: Are there other examples of schemes to help young care leavers into employment?

Benni-Jo Tyler: Well, I'm trying to set up a modern apprenticeship scheme within our organisation, and that will be a chance for young people to get paid and to get a qualification as well, and we're going to be offering everything from maintenance to decorating, admin and even my line of work (participation and development) if anyone is interested in that, but we are going to try and give them a broad range of options so that they can work within our organisation, get qualified, get paid, and have a good career at the end of it.

Of course, there shouldn't be that push of 'oh we can only do it for you if you take part in participation-style work,' they can take part in gardening or whatever else they are interested in. We don't just want to create a contingent of ‘professional care leavers'.

Question: The green paper 'Care matters' aims to improve long term outcomes for children leaving care. Do you see access to employment improving as a result of these proposals, and do they go far enough?

Benni-Jo Tyler: Well, how can I put this? Young people are very fortunate if they get out of the care system without a criminal record.

That isn't necessarily because the young people are any worse than any other child in the world in terms of their behaviour, but things are dealt with very differently if you are in care.

If you have a temper tantrum and you smash something, in a family you would be told off and sent to your room and made to pay for whatever it is you broke, either by working it off through chores or out of your pocket money.

In care, you are just as likely to get arrested and charged with criminal damage. Until that stops, how can young people get a fair a career option like anyone else?

I meet young people who are young parents and they want to be mid-wives and they want to be youth workers, but they can't because their children have been placed on child protection registers and the category of at risk of neglect.

Now that isn't necessarily because social services do genuinely believe that they are at risk of neglect, although of course some may be, but it is a standardised way of making sure that young parents are supported.

They try and get their baby on the child protection register because that's the way to instigate services being offered to young parents.

Until that stops, these young women can't be teachers, they can't be midwives, they can't be youth workers, because it will be flagged up on your police check that your child was placed on the child protection register.

Let's look at better ways of supporting young parents and let's look at better ways of dealing with unnecessary behaviour, because at the end of the day if I had my children arrested every time they broke something, my poor little children would have spent have their lives in prison.

Let's treat our looked after children like we would our own children. Our looked after children are our collective responsibility and we need to deal with them as we would our own, because that criminal record is going to follow you around for the rest of your life.

Question: If you could make one recommendation to government to substantially improve the life chances of care leavers, what would it be?

Benni-Jo Tyler: I'll tell you what; it would be to treat residential care with the same respect that you treat foster care, because residential care plays a part in the care system.

Some young people don't want to go into the foster care, they don't want to live in somebody else's home, with somebody else's family, and residential care is being completely undermined, completely stigmatised, and actually we have a role to play too, and we care about our young people as much as a foster care person would care for their young person, and if it is ok for young people to stay in foster care up to the age of 21 then we need exactly that mirrored for residential care.

National Care Leavers' Week co-ordinator Janet Rich said: "Benni-Jo flags up familiar issues that were true for her time in care over a decade ago and still resonate with what we are hearing from many children in the care system today.

"There have been many improvements and there is a lot of good practice around now, but still far too many care leavers not getting the right level of support through their transitions onto adult life.

"During National Care Leavers' Week, we call on everyone in the sector to work with government in ensuring that the aspirations for children leaving care in the Care Matters green paper are realised, and that we do not allow this to become another piece of well-meaning legislation thwarted by insufficiently flexible thresholds to eligibility and woolly statements which are not backed up by firm requirements for best practice across the board and the resources needed to make this possible.

"Leaving care is not just a government responsibility however, and we welcome initiatives from private sector organisations like Bollingtons, who are opening up significant training and career opportunities through this scheme.

"Benni-Jo is right of course to point out that the scheme will have achieved nothing if the four places go to young people who would have easily found themselves entering the workplace anyway.

"So to all who read this during 'National care leavers' week', if you know of care leavers who would be interested in walking into a fully salaried job with a qualification at the end of two years and work place mentoring throughout to provide support and encouragement, and who may have experienced knock backs in previous attempts to find suitable and sustainable employment – or of course if you are such a care leaver – please get in touch."

As part of 'National care leavers' week' Bollington Insurance has announced four career bursaries to give care leavers a kick-start towards a sustainable and worthwhile employment opportunity.

Paul Moors, chairman of the Bollington Group, said: "Bollington has always recognised its responsibilities to the community it serves. We see this latest initiative as a natural extension to our insurance partnership with the care home industry."

He added: "We want to make a difference to the future of these young adults and firmly believe that we will achieve this through this exciting innovation.

"Our comprehensive training and mentoring scheme aims to provide young adults with the skills they need to make their way in the working world."