National Care Leavers' Week 2023
#NCLW 2023 (25 Oct - 1 Nov) we called on everyone to CARE
NCLW 2023: time to CARE
National Care Leavers’ Week will run from Wednesday 25 October to Wednesday 1 November. This NCLW 2023, we’re calling on the public, professionals, carers, decision-makers, and the media to CARE.
CARE stands for:
- Celebrate care leavers
- Amplify their voices
- Raise awareness of challenges
- Encourage change in policy and practice
Find ways you can get involved below:
Ways you could get involved:
- Shout out a care-experience young person & celebrate them. Tag us so we can repost!
- Download our social media pack.
- Write a blog, create an art piece or choose another way you want to express yourself relating to any of the letters in the acronym (for example, you could choose R for Raise awareness of challenges and write about issues surrounding the care cliff).
- Come along to one of our events & listen to care-experienced young people, find out more here.
- Sharing our socials & highlighting the changes to the system that need to be implemented. (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Download our TikTok brief below and post a video, or if you work with care-experienced young people then share the brief with them. We want to create a big thunderclap moment!
'C' for Celebrate care leavers
We asked you to get involved by using our template and sharing something you’re proud of or shouting out care-experienced young people.
Check out the gallery below to read some of the messages shared.
'A' is for Amplify care-experienced voices
Listen to young people & read what they have to say:
Listen to young people’s TikToks for #NCLW:
'R' is for Raise awareness of challenges
A young care leaver we work with, Casey, recently spoke to Annie Mac about the challenges and barriers young care-experienced people face, including the care cliff.
Did you know..
19%
of all care leavers aged 18 continued to live with their foster carers in 2022 (this drops significantly by age 20).
38%
of care leavers aged 19-21 were not in education, employment or training (aka NEET) in 2022, compared to 11% of all young people aged 19-21.
Event: Young Trainers' Takeover
For National Care Leavers’ Week, we held two webinars where professionals could hear directly from care-experienced young people on what they want to be changed, over Zoom.
Hear the audio recording from one of the sessions below.
'E' for Encourage change in policy and practice
We are calling on the Government to #EndTheCareCliff.
We want to permanently #EndTheCareCliff and the expectation of ‘independence’ asked of young people as they approach 18.
Join us by sharing this information with those you know, both online & offline.
NCLW 2022: #EndTheCareCliff
During National Care Leavers’ Week 2022, we continued to call on the Government to finally #EndTheCareCliff. We shared the experiences of young care leavers and amplified their voices about what needs to change to make the system better.
Care doesn’t truly ‘leave’ you and transitioning out of the care system should not feel like falling off a cliff edge.
What happened in #NCLW21?
During National Care Leavers’ Week 2021, we looked at how we can improve the lives of care leavers today — and in the future — so that no care leaver faces a ‘care cliff’. Most importantly, we put your voices front and centre.
‘Leaving’ care should make care-experienced young people feel safe, supported, confident, and ready for the future.
But, all too often, this isn’t the case. Many young care leavers face a ‘care cliff’ where they are forced to leave their placement and start to live independently before they feel ready.
Turning 18 can feel incredibly scary, abrupt and disruptive, as the feeling of ‘care’ stops at a time in life when you need stability the most.
This must change.
We wanted to ask care-experienced young people: what do you think leaving care should be?
We were looking for BIG ideas from care leavers — like radical changes to policy, talking about how leaving care should make you feel, and exploring: do you think ‘leaving care’ should even exist? What would it look like instead?
It was all about looking at what leaving care is like now, and what can be done to make it better.
Check out some of the fantastic content created by care-experienced young people below
What happened in #NCLW20?
For National Care Leavers’ Week 2020 (#NCLW2020) Become launched a campaign to raise awareness of the ‘care cliff’ – where upon turning 18, many young care leavers are forced to leave their placement and start to live independently before they feel ready.
For many care leavers, this can be incredibly abrupt and disruptive, falling at a time in their life when they need stability the most (last years at school, when they start university or a job).
Young care leavers that Become supports have described that time as a “cliff-edge” or “like being on death row, counting down the days” until they turn 18 and their placements are abruptly stopped.
During the COVID-19 crisis, the government stepped in to protect young people from this upheaval, pledging that ‘no one has to leave care during this period. This was a lifeline to many youngsters.
We called on the government to provide clarity on how long this pledge will last, and better yet, to permanently remove the ‘care cliff’ with more funding and flexibility for local authorities to enable young people to transition to independence with the stability, security and support any 18-year-old needs.
A number of celebrities, including actresses Michelle Collins and Samantha Morton, author and broadcaster DJ Annie Mac, Baroness Floella Benjamin, Olympic champions Fatima Whitbread and Jamie Baulch, and comedian and podcaster Deborah Frances-White took to social media throughout the week to show their support for the campaign by sharing their personal memories of turning 18
If you’d like to get involved in our NCLW activities, please email Kirsten at [email protected]
We have social assets, such as example Tweets & images, you can download & share below to show you CARE: