‘They don’t come to us skipping and singing, with backpacks on.” So says the actor Joe Swash’s mother, Kiffy – who became a foster parent 15 years ago when her own daughters and son were leaving home – of the children who find themselves part of the care system. It’s a system that, as her son discovers by meeting some of its inhabitants and graduates in Joe Swash: Teens in Care, is sometimes barely worthy of the name.
Swash considers her last foster child, Daniel, to be a brother; the family is bursting with pride that he is about to start university. At the same time, they are aware that Daniel is a rare success story – and emerging from a time (just) before the cost of living crisis and other factors pushed the system past breaking point.
Swash has the same charm and openness as his wife, the singer and presenter Stacey Solomon, which even without his connection to the world of fostering makes him an excellent choice for interviewing young, vulnerable people about their fragile situations.
He first meets 16-year-old Aiden, who has been in care since he was three. Aiden finally settled with Geoff and Stephen seven years ago, after five placements and an adoption that broke down after a year. Nine-year-old Aiden and a binbag full of his things were driven from one end of the country to the other – transferring to another car and social worker in the dark at Birmingham and arriving at the men’s house at midnight. There is now a law against children’s things being packed in binbags. It doesn’t seem enough.
Aiden remembers cuddling Geoff and Stephen’s dogs in a corner while he tried to get his bearings. He shows Swash a tiny toy soldier and a snow globe, all that remains from his early years. Swash exclaims delightedly over the objects. “You can pass them down,” he says. “Thank you for letting me see them.”
Seventeen-year-old Karl lives in a private group home. After three foster placements and three other care homes, he is about to age out of the system that has been responsible for him for 13 years. The staff do what they can to prepare him for life outside, because, in one of the greatest derelictions of moral duty with which the system is strewn, all support for these traumatised young people ends the moment they turn 18.
If they are lucky, they might be taken up by a volunteer, as 19-year-old Daniel was by Ruth. She spends a few hours a month with him, helping him budget and shop with his £70-a-week universal credit and taking him bowling. They may also get some kind of supported living from increasingly threadbare council provisions, but essentially they are on their own. “Can you imagine growing up without a mum and dad?” says Swash, clearly wrestling with the size of the loss and the challenge.“Without anyone looking out for you, showing you any love?” He returns repeatedly and rightly to the profound wrongness, in every conceivable way – ethical, practical, financial, social – of abandoning leavers to their fates at 18.
In the meantime, Swash interviews Josh MacAlister, who was responsible for putting together the independent report commissioned by the government as part of its manifesto commitment to improving children’s social care. The report found that nothing less than a complete reset was required. “When did the rot set in?” asks Swash.
MacAlister gives facts and figures and notes that the system was built for young children, not the teenagers who (as a result of grooming gangs and other factors) form an increasingly high proportion of the 80,000 looked-after children in England. There are not enough children’s homes, foster carers or early interventions in families; there is not enough support for relatives who might be able to step in, nor enough help for parents to treat addictions or leave the violent situations that are so often the cause of children being taken away.
In contrast, Swash comes away from his meeting with the children’s minister, Claire Coutinho, boggling at the vagueness of the promises: “It’s like an iceberg and they’re just playing at the top.”
Teens in Care presents a sanitised and simplified picture of the knotty and deepening problem of how, in essence, you can replace the loving family a child needs if it is to have a happy, fulfilled life. A care home manager speaks of “tiny glimmers of hope” that keep her going. Karl looks as though every one has been snuffed out. He is 18 now – and all on his own.
Joe Swash: Teens in Care aired on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer.
• This article was amended on 12 July 2023. An earlier version misspelled Stacey Solomon’s first name as “Stacy”.
