My mother Kiffy became a foster carer over 10 years ago. I was all for it, I thought it was an amazing thing to do. My sisters had all grown up and left home, and if there’s one thing my mum is good at it is being a mum. She felt like she had more to give.
The first child she fostered found a permanent home. It was devastating to say goodbye – I think we were all grieving in a way – but it would have been selfish of us to try to stop it. We still see her – she came to my wedding, and she visits a couple of times a year. She’s like any other member of an extended family.
A few years later, my mum fostered Daniel. He was just eight then, now he’s 18 and in university. We’re all super proud of him. Mum jokes that she made all her mistakes with her biological children, so she has been the perfect mother to Daniel.
My sisters and I were so fortunate to grow up in a family environment and be loved. Daniel missed that for his first eight years, so we want to spoil him – he really is treated like a prince. He might be lucky to have been fostered – Government figures suggest the number of children aged 16 and over in care has increased by 37 per cent in the last decade alone – but we also feel incredibly lucky to have found him, too. Fostering is definitely something my wife, Stacey, and I will discuss when our children grow up. We’re in a position to be able to give back.
Despite my mum’s experience, I didn’t realise how little I knew about the UK’s care system – and the state it is in – until I started working on my BBC One documentary Joe Swash: Teens in Care. I was shocked at what I learned.
Once someone reaches the age of 18, the support provided by the care system drops off, leaving many of these teenagers with nowhere to go. Some of them end up homeless and in dangerous situations, falling in with gangs or developing a drug addiction. The people who work in the system do their best to provide them with the life skills they need, but people mature at different ages and the trauma and psychological difficulties that come with being a kid in care don’t just go away when you turn 18.
The cost of living crisis really doesn’t help the situation. There’s already a massive backlog of people who need houses, which filters its way back to the kids in care. Children are taken to homes and carers across the country, away from where they were born and bred. I met a boy, Aidan, who was taken to his foster parents in the middle of the night with all his stuff in a bin bag. I wouldn’t treat my kids or anybody else’s like that. Why are we treating kids in care that way?
My visits to care homes and meetings with teenagers in care really played on my conscience. It’s shocking that the system has been allowed to get in this state. The longer we faff around doing nothing about it, the more youngsters are not being looked after properly. There’s a whole generation of kids at risk.
When I met with Claire Coutinho, the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing, I asked her about the recent findings of an independent review into the state of children’s social care (since the review started there have been 11 different children’s ministers or Secretaries of State for Education). They must be invested in reforming the system –they asked for the independent review to be made, after all.
But I was disappointed with the response. Although the government has laid out a strategy over the next two years to start reforming the system, financially they aren’t going to support the changes it recommends. It will take £2.6 billion. So far, just £200 million has been allocated. If you’re going get a review done and then choose not to follow the recommendations, then what was the point?
At the start of making this film, I had high hopes that I was going to be able to change the system and push the government into doing something quicker. But then I realised that isn’t my job. My job is to highlight how the care system works, how it can be made better – and maybe even inspire people to help out and get involved. Anyone can help, it doesn’t have to be through fostering. You can volunteer as a mentor or donate to a charity – even just making more people aware of the problems in children’s social care is helpful.
History will tell you that the care system hasn’t been working for a long time. If it’s not been working for more than a decade, it’s not going to be magically fixed overnight. But it does need to be changed – these kids haven’t chosen to be in care, they’ve been pushed into the situation. They deserve to be looked after.
Joe Swash: Teens in Care is on BBC One and iPlayer on Tuesday 11 July at 9pm.
