How did you celebrate your 18th birthday? If you were in foster care you may have spent it packing your bags.
For it is the day that government financial support for
foster carers ceases and their charge would be expected to go solo and
grapple with all the uncertainties that this entails.
There is no legal obligation to leave, but the sudden cost hike
for the foster carers means that only those on above-average incomes can
afford to continue with the arrangement.
Andrew Mulley is a 17-year-old who will not be packing
his bags on his next birthday. He is one of the lucky ones whose carers can
afford to keep him on and his story in The Independent is worth reading.
His account coincides with the second reading of the
Children and Young Persons Bill in the House of Commons yesterday.
Assuming a safe passage through parliament, the bill will pave the way to fund a number of "Staying Put"
pilots so that young people can remain with their foster carers until they turn 21.
But in Northern Ireland there is already a permanent scheme
in place under which young people who undergo training and education post-18 can
remain with their foster carers for a further three years.
As Mulley says, why bother with pilots when you can look
at the results from Northern Ireland? He is right; what is there to debate?
The current state of affairs makes tertiary education a
pipedream for many care leavers. Instead they are offloaded on to a workforce
to take whatever job is going, often on low pay. With the associated difficulty
in finding affordable housing, the cumulative effect is a dampening of
aspirations and ambitions.
For too long we have failed to address the problem of
academic underachievement among looked-after children. To this we can add the
issue of vocational underachievement among care leavers.
Parliament has a chance to show a nod in the right
direction but it is up to central government to delay no longer and act on the
Northern Ireland experience.
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