This blog has been written by Kerrie Portman, who has lived experience of the care system and homelessness. Kerrie is part of CRAE’s Care Leavers for Housing Rights campaign which campaigns for positive change and policy reform to help ensure that young care leavers have their right to adequate housing realised. As part of this campaign, Kerrie shared her experience and recommendations for change with the Government’s Care Review team. She is particularly passionate about ensuring that being care experienced becomes a protected characteristic, as recommended by the Care Review. In her blog, she explains how making this change would greatly impact the lives of children in care and care leavers.
Where Did It Originate?
One of the recommendations in the Independent Care Review in 2022 was to make being care experienced a protected characteristic. Despite this being rejected by the Government, councils across the country have passed motions to act as though it is. One of the pioneers of this campaign is Terry Galloway, who is care experienced himself. He has published resources on making care experienced a protected characteristic, including workshop tools and a report.
As of June 20th, 31 councils have voted to pass the motion to make being care experienced a protected characteristic. This has received support across all the main political parties with examples of cross-party support. In some cases, the motion was passed unanimously. In one council, a Labour Cllr proposed the motion, whilst a Conservative Cllr seconded it. It is inspiring to see Councillors, our corporate parents, coming together to support this campaign.
As well as calling for local authorities to make being care experienced a protected characteristic, the campaign calls on partner agencies, such as housing services, the police and healthcare providers, to adopt these principles, along with their corporate parenting principles.
What Is A Protected Characteristic?
There are currently nine protected characteristics in the Equality Act. These are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
People with these protected characteristics are legally protected against discrimination under the Equality Act. The four main types of discrimination are direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
Things such as requiring a guarantor to rent a home are discriminative to care experienced people, falling under indirect discrimination. Aspects of the local connection test, used to determine whether councils have a duty of care to someone who is homeless or at risk of homelessness, also fall under indirect discrimination, such as needing family to live in the area in order to have a local connection.
Why Should Being Care Experienced Be A Protected Characteristic?
As part of the 2017 Childrens and Social Work Act, local authorities are named as the corporate parent of children in care and care leavers. As the Local Government Association's Corporate Parenting Resource Pack (p4) states; "[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."
Children in care and care experienced people of all ages are more likely to have a lower quality of life or die prematurely, compared with our peers. Statistics on the lives of care experienced people show that one in five care leavers feel lonely all or most of the time. Adults who have spent time in care are 360% more likely to die prematurely than our peers. 39% of care leavers aged 19-21 years are not in education, training or employment. 25% of people in prison are care experienced, 16% of these having over 6 different placements whilst in care. Just under 50% of under-21-year-olds in contact with the criminal justice system have spent time in care. 25% of the homeless population is care experienced. 45% of Looked After Children have a mental illness, including 72% in residential care. Those in care and care leavers are 4-5 times more likely to attempt suicide into adulthood.
Making care experienced a protected characteristic can help lessen this disadvantage. It can help stop discrimination in housing, reducing the risk of homelessness. It can address discrimination in work and education, leaving us with more opportunities, options, stability, security and higher quality of life. It can also help to address the over criminalisation of care experienced children.
When children are taken into care, the state tells us that they are now our parents and we are their children, but nearly every single system discriminates against us. Ironically, if councils treated care experienced people as they should, passing this motion wouldn’t change much for them, it would merely be codifying our protections.
Councils now have a very clear opportunity to take a stand and say this isn’t right. They have the opportunity to be our parents and tell us we matter. They have a very clear opportunity to change our lives for the better, change the lives of their corporate children for the better. And I hope councillors, officers and councils continue to take this opportunity.