Care Leaver Deaths: Our Response
We welcome the Review into Care Leaver Deaths and appreciate the considered and empathetic way the co-chairs undertook the review.
It has brought into sharp focus a crisis that the sector has long understood but government has repeatedly failed to address. The statistics are shocking — but they should not surprise anyone who knows how the leaving care system works in reality.
Headlines
The headline figures that care leavers are three to four times more likely to die than the general population and have a suicide rate potentially five times higher than the general population is scandalous. If a parent
Why the numbers matter
For most young people aged 18 to 24, these years are marked by gradual, supported transitions into adulthood. Parents, siblings, and wider family provide a safety net — sometimes stretched, but fundamentally reliable. Care leavers experience only the palest shadow of this support.
The review rightly points out that these figures align with decades of consistent research showing disproportionately poor outcomes for care-experienced young people. All governments have known this. Yet year after year, deep structural change does not happen. Instead, we see tinkering around the edges while young people continue to fall through the gaps.
The cliff edge and social isolation
There are two main factors that contribute to the elevated mortality rate among care leavers: social isolation and the cliff-edge withdrawal of support, typically at ages 18 and 21.
When young people leave care, they often move frequently due to housing instability. Each move increases isolation, at least in the short term. For most young people, home — even an imperfect one — serves as an anchor, a place to return to when things go wrong. Care leavers have no such anchor. They are expected to manage independence while carrying unaddressed trauma, often without stable relationships, accommodation, or employment.
The review identifies multiple markers of social exclusion that have featured in leaving care research for decades: unemployment, homelessness, involvement with the criminal justice system, and — particularly for women — children being removed from their care. Add unmet mental and physical health needs to this picture, and the high mortality rate becomes predictable.
What government has offered — and what it falls short of
Some progress has been made. The Staying Put arrangements, which allow some care leavers in settled placements to remain until age 21, have been welcome. But this only benefits a minority of care leavers.
The government’s recent response — focused on Staying Close, Staying Put, and Enduring Relationships — continues this pattern of partial measures. Staying Close is genuinely positive, but it is not available to all young people, and it remains assessment-based, meaning local authorities can refuse further support. Enduring Relationships help, but the service is in its infancy. This is incremental change when systemic transformation is needed. None of these measures will meaningfully reduce the number of care leavers who die.
What good practice looks like
Leaving care should replicate what good parents do. A fully integrated care system covering ages 0 to 25 where all care placements are therapeutic in nature and address trauma would be a positive step.
More fundamentally, all care leavers need a “right to remain and a right to return” — the ability to stay in or return to care until at least age 25. This may sound radical, but it simply replicates what all good parents offer their children without a second thought.
This approach provides young people with a secure base — a reliable anchor during the turbulent journey to independent adulthood. Stability is one of the best routes to finding belonging in a local area, in education, or in work.
Workforce and specialist support
The Personal Adviser system is highly variable. Some care leavers receive excellent support; for others, it is inadequate or sporadic. Government must take the lead in creating a standardised system across the country.
The current requirement to see a Personal Adviser only once every six weeks is insufficient. The role needs expansion and reframing — with greater focus on wellbeing, mental health, loneliness, and relationships, and stronger links into public services.
Specialist mental health services for care leavers aged 16 to 25 are essential. Many care leavers are locked out of adult mental health services due to access barriers and diagnostic criteria. A dedicated service would circumnavigate these obstacles and address trauma, which must be central to all support offered to this group.
Accommodation and practical support
Supported accommodation for 16- and 17-year-old care leavers currently provides no care — only a roof. This is wrong and needs to change. Young people at this age remain vulnerable and require developmental support, not just housing.
What needs to happen now
We welcome the review’s recommendations on criminal justice, accommodation, health services, and workforce training. But recommendations alone are not enough. Government must commit to:
- Ending the cliff edge through a right to remain and a right to return for all care leavers until at least age 25. This is the right to remain in care and the right to return to care (residential or foster) at any point when independence is not working out
- Creating a standardised, well-resourced Personal Adviser system with meaningful contact and a wellbeing focus
- Establishing specialist mental health services for care leavers aged 16 to 25
- Ensuring supported accommodation genuinely supports young people, not just houses them
- Extending health provision through trauma-informed practice across all services
- Building on progress in identifying and supporting care leavers in custody
- Improving support offered to care experienced people over 25
The sector has known what good practice looks like for decades. The research is clear. The evidence is overwhelming. What is needed now is the will to act — not piecemeal, but with the structural ambition this crisis demands.
Older Care Experienced People
We note the citing in the review of the work of Amanda Sacker in this area from 2021 about the lifelong health issues facing care leavers. This is something we are concerned about and in particular the deaths of care leavers over the age of 25, when the appropriate level of support and vulnerability isn’t recognised.
The research on older care experienced people is clear that they experience greater disadvantage in relation to ACE’s, mental health, addiction, suicide, homelessness and criminal justice contact. We must make headway in challenging this situation.
Care leavers of all ages deserve what all good parents offer their children: a secure base, consistent support, and the knowledge that home — and help — are always available. Until we provide that, the death toll will continue.