Meet Anne-Marie Bird, consultant across SLN's care leavers' support projects
25th – 31st October is National Care Leavers’ Week – a time to reflect on, and look for practical ways to address, the unique challenges that care-experienced young people face, particularly as they leave school.
Here we speak with Anne-Marie Bird, a specialist consultant on our team responsible for co-ordinating and strengthening the impact of projects designed to help more young people in care, or with care experience, successfully progress onto, and through, higher education …
Why do you believe this work is important?
It’s not just important; it’s essential. Currently only 6% of young people who have been in, or are in care at the time they leave school will enter higher education by the age of 21. That compares to 43% of 18 and 19 year olds with more settled home lives[1].
We can’t allow that inequality to continue. We have to do better at creating the support networks around these young people that will enable them to have the same opportunities to build positive futures.
What particular challenges do care leavers entering higher education face?
They face a multitude of hugely complex challenges, from negotiating the maze of potential financial support, to finding affordable accommodation (that is also available in non-term times), to overcoming the academic challenges that their often disrupted education may create. Many of them are also grappling with complex mental health issues brought about by their childhood experiences.
What does your role with SLN involve?
After decades of relatively little support for care leavers, the last few years has seen far greater awareness of the ‘cliff edge’ that care leavers can face after they leave school and at the age of 18. Part of my role is bringing together all the great initiatives out there and making them as accessible as possible to care leavers and those supporting them.
Tell us about the new SLN ‘Home Comforts’ initiative’
This is an initiative I'm so passionate about! It’s brilliantly simple but so important. At the moment, care leavers are 38% more likely than other students to withdraw from their higher education course[2].
A huge reason for this is the lack of a consistent source of support for them to turn to when times get tough. The ‘Home Comforts’ initiative provides that for them. Existing foster carers volunteer to have a student come into their home a couple of times each term for Sunday lunch for the duration of their course.
This simple connection transforms the higher education experience for many care leavers – giving them a solid, warm foundation and a sounding board to go to when things are challenging, making it much more likely that they will successfully and happily complete their course.
What I love most is that it’s the little touches that mean most with this project. One student talked about how much it meant to her to have a plant sent to her for her new university room – it made it feel like home.
Having been piloted in Sussex, we are now looking into the possibility of rolling the Home Comforts programme out as a national offer, in collaboration with NNECL (the National Network for the Education of Care Leavers), and are seeking potential sources of funding to support the project. For further information, or to discuss the project, please contact Anne Marie directly by clicking here.
To find out more about our projects and how to support care leavers successfully move onto, and through, higher education click here.
[1] NNECL: Moving on Up: Pathways of care leavers and care-experienced students into and through Higher Education
[2] NNECL: Moving on Up: Pathways of care leavers and care-experienced students into and through Higher Education