“The difference that a good foster parent can make is world changing”: Ashley Baptiste on growing up in care

Some of us may remember Ashley as a finalist on the X factor, however he’s now widely known for his role as a presenter and journalist at the BBC. Having entered care at the age of two, Ashley was moved between three different foster families and a residential care home before leaving care at the age of 18 and going on to study history at Cambridge University.

The hope that putting forward his account of growing up in care could help other care experienced children and young people “to feel validated in their voice and their impression of what's happened to them” was a key motivation in Ashley writing his new book ‘Looked After: A Childhood in Care’. 

“When you're a looked-after child” explains Ashley, “you've got social workers telling you what’s happened, you’ve got foster parents helping you navigate your journey and all these records that could be court documents etc, and as a result many young people don't feel they have legitimacy over their own story”.

For those of us who haven’t experienced the care system first hand, Ashely’s story provides an honest and often raw insight into what it feels like to be a child growing up in care. Telling that story required a willingness to tap into often traumatic memories from his childhood. 

“Remembering that feeling of rejection or of being let go, or going on a respite, or not feeling included in a particular community that I was fostered by, I’ve allowed myself to remember and to feel all these things for the purpose of articulating it to others” he explains. 

Ashley entered care aged two, however his earliest memories are of his second foster carer Joyce, with whom he believed he’d found his forever home. He was told little information about his biological family, the only link being a photo of his mother given to him when he was five.

“In the photo she was this beautiful blonde woman and when I saw it, I just thought, oh, she's like an angel” he recalls. 

“That was the only evidence I had of her, and I remember for a long time she was just this mythical person who one day I would hopefully get to meet. There was a lot I didn’t know growing up.”

With the innocence of a child, he accepted what he was told – that she was good and that she loved him – and the belief that someday they would be reunited. It wasn’t until he got older that questions about his parents began to manifest.

“There was a lot I didn’t know growing up” he reflects. “Now, as I've become more sensitive, I'm more alert to what I didn't know and what I should have known – issues 
that I know are indicative of so many other young people who have had to go through the care system.”

Following expulsion from primary school for his involvement in a fight, it was decided that Ashley should leave Joyce’s care – a distressing event in which Ashley recalls a 
group of ‘unfamiliar professionals’ arriving unexpectedly at his home whilst he sat watching tv, naive as to what was about to happen. 

Ashley was taken, without explanation, to a residential care home for boys. Left feeling betrayed and unable to process what had happened, Ashley developed a wariness of adults and a fear of becoming attached – something as an adult he acknowledges he’s having to address. 

“I learned to always doubt people, to have a veneer of a barrier to protect myself – I've got to unlearn that, especially when it comes to my family and certain work relationships.”
It was at the care home that Ashley was to encounter one of a succession of interventions by care workers and individuals who, at pivotal moments in his childhood, were to shape his future and steer him on the road to success. People who “unwittingly and without really realising their power have ultimately, positively shaped my life for the best.”

One particular care home worker made it his mission to ensure that Ashley enrolled in secondary school and regularly attended, phoning the care home every day, even 
when not on shift, to ensure that Ashley was up and ready. At the time, Ashley was the only boy in the care home to attend school.

“I didn't realise just how major that intervention was at the time. Going to school became the norm. It meant I was able to get critical and it gave me the foundation to do what I'm doing now in terms of work”, he explains.

Despite regularly attending secondary school, Ashley was still getting into trouble and found himself on the brink of being expelled as he entered his GCSE year. Thankfully, the headteacher saw potential in Ashley and gave him a second chance – one that couldn’t have come at a better time.

Ashley had recently moved from the care home and had been placed with a new foster family. The nurture they provided, along with the importance they placed on education, began to alter Ashley’s perspective. “I think feeling included and feeling loved and seeing the value they put on their daughter's education, subconsciously I began to consume this culture that I was a part of and so it gets to my GCSEs and I find that I'm actually revising”, he explains.

Ashley’s newfound attitude to studying continued and he went on to become the only student in his year to get a place at Oxbridge, something he acknowledges wouldn’t have been possible without certain people intervening at crucial junctures in his life.

“The difference that a good foster parent can make is world changing”, he reflects. 

Although still coming to terms with a lot of what he experienced as a child, Ashely is grateful for the gifts, both social and mental, that he developed as a result of his time in care. 

“There are so many positive characteristics that can be cultivated through adversity and through being care experienced” he says.

“That ability to ease into new spaces and assimilate has served me really well in my education and in the working world – the mental resilience of knowing that this is a 
new space and I don't know anyone and but I'm going to be OK – that confidence is something that I really value from my time in care”.

“Every adult in the life of a looked-after child has such weight and influence and how they use that is critical to the outcome of the child, even if they don't necessarily think that who they are and what they do is important.”

The process of writing and re-living experiences from his past has enabled Ashley to “celebrate just how far I’ve come” –  something he hopes his book will inspire others to do too.

“If any care experienced person reads this book, I hope they can see themselves in it, they can see their own journey, they can see their own struggles and they can take pride in all that they are and all that they’ve overcome.”