On 26 March 2025, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, delivered her first budget, publicised as the ‘biggest shake up to the welfare system in a generation’. Among the many announcements was the decision to restrict the health element of universal credit, which gives extra financial support for health or disability conditions, for 18-22-year-olds. This will be cut for new claimants by around fifty per cent and then frozen.
This cut discriminates against young people in care, potentially affecting their future achievements. There are 13,000 care leavers a year who face discrimination accessing accommodation and education while experiencing financial problems. In her letter to the Guardian last month, Katherine Sacks-Jones, chief-executive of Become, a Care Leavers’ charity, sums up the predicament for care-leavers and warns that the impact of the restriction on universal credit:
for those aged under 22 will have a devastating impact on young care leavers. These are more likely than other young people to have health conditions or disabilities due to early trauma and a care system that fails to provide the support they need. Many have no family to turn to for financial or emotional assistance.
Rebekah Pierre describes her experiences in Community Care ‘My Care Story’, explaining how difficult it was for her to survive and continue her education after leaving care: ‘While I was living in unregulated placements and struggling to make ends meet, she made sure I had basics, such as a bus pass, free meals, and train tickets to visit university open days. Without these things, I would have needed to drop out of school.’ Rebekah explicitly identifies some of the basic support she needed to continue her education, without which she would have had to give up her university prospects.
Shifting attitudes
Historically children leaving care did not have much support from agencies responsible for them. In the nineteenth and early twentieth-century children were expected to work in domestic service with live-in accommodation from aged 14. If this employment did not work out and there was no contact with the responsible authority, a care leaver would inevitably have to find their own employment and accommodation. Factory work or recruitment to the armed forces were among the limited alternatives to domestic service. Care-leavers faced stigmatisation obtaining employment and discrimination seeking accommodation as being in care was associated with criminalisation. Consequently, care leavers were often forced into poverty with limited social mobility. Following the introduction of the welfare state improvements began to be made but not enough: government identified further improvements for children in care in the 1989 Children Act. In 1998 the term ‘Corporate Parent’ was introduced and subsequent legislation, notably the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 and Children and Social Work Act 2017, required local authorities to provide more for children in care. Barnardo’s highlighted how the system still lets care-leavers down, making the following observations from government statistics: 1 in 3 care leavers become homeless in the first 2 years after they leave care; 38 per cent of care leavers aged 19-21 are not in education, employment, or training; 57 per cent of care leavers say that managing their money was difficult when leaving care; and 82 per cent of care-experienced young people said following the cost of living crisis they were struggling to afford food all or some of the time.
The Role of the Corporate Parent and practice
Corporate Parenting aims to ensure that children in care receive the same opportunities as those living in stable family homes. Corporate Parents are responsible for providing protection, and ensuring the education, safety, health and wellbeing of their charges, preparing them for independent living. However, given the range of institutions standards are inconsistent. Support for mental health, education and employment are limited, and lack of appropriate housing results in homelessness. These shortcomings present government, the ultimate Corporate Parent, as a failing parent. Aware of these shortcomings the new Labour government have begun the introduction of new legislation.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Care-leavers’ struggles were articulated at the hearing of Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Commons Committee earlier this year. Lamar was one of four care leavers who addressed the Committee:
For the first couple of months, I had to pay £580 per month in rent and when I had to reduce the hours that I worked to study for A levels, I could not afford the rent. I remember being on the train to college realising I could not afford it. I started crying. Was this what it was going to be like from now on?
Several care-leavers’ organisations submitted written evidence to the Committee. Surveys carried out by the National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum revealed 77 per cent of care leavers struggled to buy food; 75 per cent said that the cost-of-living crisis had affected their mental health and was a barrier to planning their future. The Care Leavers Association (CLA) did not consider the bill would significantly improve outcomes for care-leavers. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health also advised the Committee of the need for adequate resources to support care-leavers ‘staying close to support for care-leavers, if needed by the young person, is welcome and must be properly resourced’.
The ‘biggest shake up to welfare in a generation’ promised a new era for those in care and for care leavers. But can promised improvements be delivered if the government’s restrictions to universal credit target care leavers? This compromises the state’s responsibility as the ultimate corporate parent.
Evidence from care-leavers and support organisations appears to have been ignored. The Department of Education Guidance states that when applying corporate parenting principles to children in care and care leavers the question should be asked, ‘Would this be good enough for my child?’ The evidence presented indicates they do not. If so, the reforms to the welfare system have once again failed to address the fundamental stigmatisation and discrimination of care-leavers and therefore are not replacing the existing system with anything better.
