Own two feet

Billy stood up, put his hands behind his back and began to fill the silence of the room. At first he stumbled through his words, but then quickly pulled them together and with them the attention of the crowd. ‘I have been in care for 13 years and have had 16 placements’.

It should have been shocking, but a collective understanding flooded through the room. He was one of us. Many had walked in those polished black shoes. It was in the nods and the murmuring.

He talked about being in one placement for two and a half years. ‘I was neglected’. More nods. I, like many was hanging off his every word, while at the same time hanging off my own memories of my time in care.

It hurt, but at the same time here was a stranger who knew me and I knew him and yet we had never ever spoken. The fact that over fifteen years separated us seemed of little importance. His story, so familiar, but still no less powerful then took a turn. He found the Lodge. ‘I feel safe there…all my needs are met…they support me’. We were all with him. All on the same curve of a smile.

It may not have been us that had found the Lodge, but he gave people hope that such places existed. But then he took another turn. ‘They want to close it’…’There was no consultation with any of us [young residents]’. Saving pounds and pence seemingly more important than people’s futures. The place where he felt safe was now under attack and Billy was standing there in his dark suit fighting for himself and probably without even knowing it, for many others in the room and beyond.

At times, as I stood leaned up against the wooden panelled wall of the Boothroyd Room at the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers, it felt like  war. On one side and showing in force young people living in care and with them the people that fight by their side. The care workers, social workers, volunteers, charity reps, care leavers, even the slick and humorous Edward Timpson MP. But there is no escaping, this side is outgunned and out manned.

On the other side, and far away from the room (even though it was in the heart of Westminster), the great hulking faceless machine. A machine that hides behind the overused words of ‘the system’. A machine that seems to have no real accountability. It doesn’t matter who is in government. This machine doesn’t care about political colours. Every now and again it gears up and spits out policies and slogans of what it might do, could do, but then sinks back into the safety of anonymity and shrugged shoulders, blaming the ‘necessary cuts’ we all must accept and how ‘we’re all in it together’.

If all that fails then the machine switches to the finger pointing game that goes on between central government and local government. Like two kids fighting over a toy, except neither wants it. The excuses and the faces have changed over the years, but not much else it sometimes seems.

Unfortunately this war that most in the room had come to fight is not one that is fought in the full glare of the media (even Iraq and Afghanistan struggle to make the news these days). It is fought behind closed doors, on phones and in forms and in offices and in bedrooms and in doctors surgeries and sadly often in silence.

I look down at the notes I made on the day, some are hard to make out now because of the state of my writing, but I see ‘care system lets people down…they fall through the gaps’. Further down the page, ‘lack of rights and entitlements…lack of remedies’. Hanging off the bottom of my page is ‘there is good practice going on out there, but people are not sharing it’.

Later on a care worker stands up and says he is happy to share what works for his area, but people are unwilling to come and see. Another care worker stood up to talk about a film he had made about the successes Hackney had achieved, but hardly anybody came to see it. ‘Why won’t they come?’ he asked.

But even in the darkest places hope can always be found if we go looking for it. Success stories were scattered throughout the room with people entering higher education, further education, finding families, finding flats and ultimately finding their voices (more than once I was in awe at the eloquence of how people spoke).

There is no doubting that the struggle for people in care will go on on so many levels. In heads and hearts. In schools and colleges. In the attempt to hold family relationships together. In the constant fights for funding. The fights for stability and consistency. The fights for good social workers. The fights for more foster families. The fights for good accommodation and so the list goes on. But being in care has a way of making you battle hardened and you learn quickly how to fight, but is this really what this system should be about? Is this really ‘care’?

In the end more is needed across the board and it is not just about money. It is as much about good organisation and serious accountability. The ‘decision makers’ must stand up and be counted. Too many good ideas are following too many young people down the gaps that exist in the system. The room all night demanded better than the recycled words that we’re so tired of hearing. We need action. As a man said towards the end ‘we need people to stop passing the buck because it’s been going on for too long’. Everyone agreed.

I left the meeting with Billy at the forefront of my mind. I had clapped hard for him after he had spoken. It is not easy to stand up in a crowd and tell your story. I was proud of him, proud of his will and proud of his eloquence.

In the end I was most proud to be on the same side as Billy and everybody else that had come to be acknowledged in the Boothroyd room that night.