|
Projects and Development Worker:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
My experience of the care system is primarily as a service user, growing up with many long spells in various children’s homes, foster parents, assessment centres and eventually a community home with education, from where I eventually left care at almost 16 years old, having taken it upon myself to go AWOL. That’s how it remained for some time, spending long periods living homeless and jobless and seeing my choices as very much limited.
I had spent the majority of my childhood in care as described above, but did have some periods of time at home, however, they were short lived and only whilst it was deemed ‘safe’.
Following many failed moves between children’s homes, foster parents, assessment centres and my mother’s home by the age of 12, I was eventually moved out of the County and taken to York where I was admitted to a Community Home with Education that housed some 150 boys, from various backgrounds and for various reasons. This was the most stable period of my life up to that point.
I came out of care with no qualifications and was led to believe that my prospects were limited having been told that the school had no mechanism by which to take students through formal examinations and as such my requests to take exams as would be normal was I in a regular comprehensive school fell on deaf ears.
I was determined to take those exams and I eventually enrolled in college in 1996 – I worked extremely hard to gain GCSE’s in a classroom of 16/17 year olds (I was 24 at the time and had two children) being asked many questions as to why I was there. I dealt with that and went onto take an Access course (taking A level subjects as outlined in the above section).
This led onto my application to and acceptance into the University of Leeds, where I attained a very good BA (Hons) degree in Sociology. I took it to the next level and did a Masters` degree in Social Research, graduating as post graduate in 2003.
My natural progression into work took me into community development work, with a particular focus on young people and equality. I have continued this work to the present day and have had the privilege of working with some extremely talented young people who have experienced similar disadvantage and who continue to aspire for more. My own life experiences have moulded my passion to work towards a fairer society, where young people have a voice and influence.
As a social researcher my interests have a focus on exclusion, identity, labelling and social divisions in urban society; asking questions in a policy context of current discourses on social cohesion, the law and social control as experienced by ‘excluded groups’.
My role at the CLA affords me the opportunity to bring my community development, research and networking skills to an organisation that works to benefit care leavers.
I hope to work with care leavers across the country in building a strong, vibrant and unified care leaver community that has an increasingly stronger voice and influence, campaigning and advocating on care leaver issues across the life course.
|
