These figures have been mulling around my empty head for about ten days. I need to get them moved one. So please can some of you take them for a while. I'm finding their burden somewhat heavy:
- After 11 years in school 80% of children in care leave school with no qualifications at all.
- 1% of children in care go to university, compared to what's the national average? 50%?
18% have not had a dental check in the last year, 25% have immunisations that are out of date. Half the kids in care don't get praise if they do well in something. Half of them! And I thought they were looked after by carers.
So what's the consequence of this neglect, this wilful, deliberate, institutional neglect?
- 50% of prisoners under 25 have come from care
- 50% of the prostitutes on our streets were in care as children
- 30-50% of the homeless have been in care
- 80% of big issue sellers have been in care
There are 6000 kids in care. When they leave half will be unemployed, 30% will be mothers or pregnant and 20% will be homeless.
Does it have to be this way?
NO, he said, emphatically.
The same article that gave me these stats compared us with Germany where the numbers and reasons for children entering care are roughly similar, yet over there "the majority" of kids in care go on to Further Education and lead comparatively trouble free lives.
The difference? Oh, that's plain. Here 30% of our carers have degrees, there it's 95%. Here some 30% of staff leave each year. There it's just 8%.
Talk about a vicious circle.
Time to break it.
Shouldn't this sort of thing be what politics is for. Not whether someone drives a four-wheel drive to school or not, but whether the kids are alright?
And isn't it us that sets the political agenda? If we care enough, 'they' will do something to save their own skins.
.
5 comments:
Golly
bloody hell (scuse my language) - when you're back, you're back with a vengance, aren't you?
brilliant post
a good friend of mine is the CEO of a prisoners charity, and the statistics for rehabilitation and reoffending are equally shocking (as you have touched on here)
I think you've missed your vocation in life - forget marketing, it's never too late for politics. . .
(is it alright for me still to despise people who drive 4x4s in town?)
word ver: red-rag-to-a-zebra (altho I think that should be bull)
Makes you think that someone rather lost the meaning of the word care doesn't it?
Yes, I'm ridiculously late but I wanted to comment because I know something about this.
The care system is slanted to supposedly help children who are particularly troubled in some way. In real terms, this means that if you behave like a complete git while in care then you will be given lots of attention by lots of people (something which, obviously, children in care are desperate for) and you will also get trips out, presents, holidays etc. If you behave in care, you get fuck all. If you do well at school, they don't know what to do with you because they are not geared up as a system to reward or encourage good behaviour. When I went to university they wanted to dump me, not support me. They would have stuck me in bed-and-breakfast during the holidays rather than continue to place me with the family I had been with, which was clearly the best way of supporting me and making sure I had a decent start in life. I only escaped that because I had a foster family who weren't in it for the money and cared enough about me to fight the system.
The idea what children in care can do well is so far out of social services head that it never occurs to actually encourage it.
Hi Bella (may I be so bold?)
Fantastic, illuminating comment. You leave me with the resolution that something NEEDS to be changed.
Now the question is how?
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