Who is evil: children in care or hurtful corporate parent meant to be protecting them?

Image by Abbat from Pixabay with small addition by Exposure

Kerrie Portman responds to controversial comments made by Reform UK councillor

I am a local Care Experienced person and was horrified to read that Reform UK councillor, Andy Osborn had told a Cambridgeshire County Council meeting on June 3 that some children in care were “not just naughty children, they can be downright evil”.

Looked After Children and Care Leavers are amongst the most vulnerable in our society, with the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care describing “[t]he disadvantage faced by the care-experienced community should be the civil rights issue of our time. Children in care are powerless, are often invisible, and they face some of the greatest inequalities that exist in England today.”

We face considerably worse life outcomes than our non-Care-Experienced peers across all areas of life: 41% of Care Leavers aged 19-21 are out of education, employment and training, only 13% of Care Leavers attend higher education by their 19th birthday, only 22% of Care Leavers aged 27 are employed and those that are have an average pay gap of £6,000. One in five Care Leavers report feeling lonely always or most of the time, 45% of Looked After Children have a mental illness.

Many Care Experienced people, including myself, regularly face negative stereotyping, hostility and discrimination

Care Experienced people are four to five times more likely to attempt suicide into adulthood, 25% of England’s homeless population are Care Experienced, a third of Care Leavers become homeless within the first two years of leaving Care, 25% of prisoners were Care Experienced of any age over 18 and 16% of this number reported having had more than six placements whilst in Care. Care Experienced people are 360% more likely to die prematurely and more likely to die of unnatural causes such as violent deaths, suicide and accidents.

These are the results of failures throughout the Care System and the trauma experienced by vulnerable children before entering Care.

On top of these incredibly difficult life outcomes, many Care Experienced people, including myself, regularly face negative stereotyping, hostility and discrimination, including from those meant to help and protect us. Negative attitudes by others make it harder to find friends, get a job, find a home and increase the likelihood of getting caught up in the Criminal Justice System. It also impacts our identity and how we see ourselves when we’re constantly surrounded by these attitudes, increasing the risk of trauma, addiction, mental illness, suicide attempts, being involved in grooming or other abusive situations and increasing the risk of becoming involved in gangs.

All Councillors are legally the Corporate Parents of Looked After Children and Care Leavers

The way to counteract these negative life outcomes is by addressing the root cause of the issues, supporting Care Experienced people into being able to live positive lives and treating us with kindness and love, as any parent should. We are often not loved, cared for, told our voices don’t matter or told we can’t achieve things. We are often taught to see ourselves through the eyes and rhetoric of people such as Cllr Osborn, who perceive us in wholly negative stereotypes. We are taught to see ourselves as “evil”.

Under the Social Work Act 2017, all Councillors are legally the Corporate Parents of Looked After Children and Care Leavers, which the Local Government Association’s Corporate Parenting Resource Pack refers to as “one of the most important jobs”. The resource pack goes on to state “[e]very councillor and officer within a council has a responsibility to act for those children and young people as a parent would for their own child”.

Being a Councillor is a choice that politicians actively campaign for, and being a corporate parent is a part of that. If a non-corporate parent believed their children were “evil”, they would be questioned as an unfit parent. A councillor making such remarks is hardly different.

Several months ago, I stopped being homeless (a common situation for Care Experienced people) and have since been trying to make Huntingtonshire my new home, attempting to make friends, beginning to volunteer, studying for my university exams and applying for jobs and looking to find a community.

It would be bad enough if Cllr Osborn’s comments were isolated, but they are part of a wider rhetoric that is dangerous

The trauma of having been in Care, the ongoing challenges of being Care Experienced and everything that accompanies that, continues to plague me, and whilst my efforts don’t look like much to those who don’t understand Care Experience, I do try incredibly hard. But when I see Cllr Osborn, or any Corporate Parent, saying people like me “can be downright evil” I don’t feel I’ll ever be accepted into a community.

Attitudes like this are not uncommon. I have been treated as though I am inherently bad or “evil” since I was taken into Care and continue to be treated that way, especially in relation to trauma behaviours, to which Cllr Osborn was referring. I internalise these attitudes. They are that constant voice in my head that tells me to hate myself, that I am bad, that everyone hates me, and that everyone would be better off without me.

I have stayed in abusive relationships because I didn’t believe I deserved to be treated with kindness, self-harmed to punish myself because I believe I deserved it and have even previously attempted suicide because I internalise attitudes like this. It would be bad enough if Cllr Osborn’s comments were isolated, but they are part of a wider rhetoric that is dangerous.

In the meeting, Cllr Osborn proved himself to be an unfit corporate parent to society’s most vulnerable, and therefore unfit to be a councillor. Cllr Osborn owes it to his Corporate Children to apologise and resign.

After speaking with some other Care Experienced people, I made a petition calling for Cllr Osborn’s resignation.