Introduction

It would be remiss not to comment on personal experience – although this was all over 30 years ago – which included a few foster homes, a children's home, kinship care and, through adolescence, a local authority boarding school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. The relationship between these experiences and my current ideas about the care system is peripheral, consciously at least, and I am much more influenced by the experiences I have had, and witnessed, over nearly two decades working in the care system. That said, to be care-experienced gives any discussion about the care system an emotional resonance that is bound to affect thinking.

Much of my career, and therefore day-to-day involvement with children in care, has been spent working in residential children's homes – for the most part as a care worker, often in senior/team leader roles, a brief period as a registered manager, developing staff training and so on. The nature of the role of children's homes within the care system (the de facto ‘last resort’) means a significant majority of the children and young people I have been involved in caring for have had multiple foster homes, and sometimes a number of children's homes too, before I knew them. Many, of course, went on to have other homes when my part in their lives ended. I have witnessed many ‘placement breakdowns’ – to use the rather cold jargon. Similarly, I have seen numerous young people leave care, but rarely to a situation or accommodation that I considered good enough. In short, the vast majority of children I have been involved with have not only had to contend with the very difficult experiences, sometimes horrific, that led to them coming into care, but they have been manifestly let down by the care system too.

More recently, my contact with children in care has been with those I see as a therapist and I have been involved, at one remove, with children in foster care who have experienced developmental trauma and disrupted attachment in a role supporting carers to think about the experiences and needs of their foster children. I have had no involvement in my career with children who are very settled where they are living and quietly getting on with their lives with no particular difficulties.