Cathy Glass

Many young people in care feel they have limited say in the decisions that affect their lives and this can have a knock-on effect on their behaviour. Having relinquished responsibility for their actions they no longer hold themselves accountable for the outcome of any negative behaviour. While no one is responsible for the decisions and actions of others we are always responsible for our own decisions and actions, although sometimes we would rather not admit it. Often young people need to have the benefits of taking responsibility for their actions explained to them.

Although most of us know that 18 is the age at which a young person reaches the age of majority in the UK and becomes an adult in the eyes of the law there are other significant age milestones before then, which are less well known and can cause confusion. It’s a subject that often crops up in training and support groups so that I thought the following might be useful.

The end of one year and the start of the next is often a time for reflection. A little like a review when we can ask ourselves what has gone well for us, what hasn’t gone so well, what we have achieved, what we could have done differently, and what we hope to achieve in the coming year.

I wanted to try and capture what Christmas meant to children in care. I thought the best way to do this was to use their words. Here are some quotes I’ve remembered, happy and sad. I’m sure you have plenty of others. Please share them.

When I first started writing my fostering memoirs in 2007 it broke new ground. No one before had written about the often hidden and sometimes secretive world of fostering and the social services. My reason for writing was partly cathartic and also I wanted to raise awareness. I’d previously written articles and short stories on issues that had moved me or about which I felt passionately.

There has been a lot of (horrific) news recently about children being groomed. I wasn’t sure if it was a subject I knew much about so I did some research. Grooming in this context is when an adult deliberately befriends a child or young person with the intention of sexually abusing that child, either for the abuser’s gratification or by trafficking the child into prostitution.

I regularly receive emails from young people who are in care, or adults who have been in care system. I would like to say that these people emailed me to say how positive their experiences had been but sadly that is not the case, far from it. The majority of care leavers who have emailed me felt that they’d had a bad experience in care: let down by the system, their social workers, and even the foster carers who looked after them, whom they felt simply didn’t care.

World events are now so accessible and immediate – coming into our homes through live television and the internet (as well as radio and newspapers) – it is as well to remember the impact that seeing a disaster can have on our children. At one time, before live coverage of world events, the most shocking pictures we saw were stills of starving children in Africa, usually shown to raise money for famine relief, which were shocking enough. Now, through satellite television, we can witness disasters across the world as they unfold, with the effect that we are closer, more involved, than we ever used to be and they have greater impact and stress on us. Censoring of the news is usually left to the carer or parent.