I told my boss I was a care leaver: this is what happened

I wake up in my bed and breakfast accommodation. It's winter, it's cold and my parchment paper duvet does nothing to keep me warm. I was 15 years old, living in a building with abandoned adults, whose support had turned to shadows leaving them heavy with their own trauma.

It was bleak.

Battling with loneliness, mental health and not having enough money to live - I forced myself out job hunting. I landed a job at Dixons (now Currys) which gave me community, capital and a purpose to get up everyday.

However, it didn't take long for my motivation to be overtaken by misery again. I skipped shifts, lied for loneliness, and masked melancholy. Eventually, work had had enough and I was asked to leave.

Losing a job is hard. Being left with a guilt that it's all your fault is even harder.

I went back to my manager, Sharon, and pleaded for my job back. I told her I was lonely. I told her I had no support. I told her I was eating noodles from a kettle.

I told her I was a care leaver.

Instead of being judged, I was supported. I was given my job back. I was told to come into work so I would be fed. I was given a number I could call when things got heavy. I was told that none of this was my fault.

Sharon gave me something the state names but often fails to provide: care.

I am not pretending that employers are all kind, enlightened or fair. Some are exploitative, biased and hostile. But harmful behaviour does not automatically mean structural injustice. The question is not whether harm exists, but whether that harm is caused by discrimination. Right now, there is no robust national evidence that it is.

Yes, there are stories of care-experienced people who feel they were discriminated against when they disclosed their status to an employer. Just as there is mine, which was met with humanity rather than prejudice.

This is not to minimise those hard experiences. But this campaign is bigger than the sum of its parts, and for something this significant, it must be built on evidence - not individual testimony alone.

And the evidence does not point to a system organised around discrimination:

• The Care Leaver Covenant brings together more than 400 employers offering tailored routes into work.
• The Civil Service Care Leaver Internship Scheme has supported nearly 1,000 care leavers into roles.
• Many councils now offer guaranteed interviews and ring-fenced apprenticeships, and the care-leaver bursary has increased to £3,000.
• Virtual schools commission work-readiness programmes through £24 million of Department for Education funding.
• Lloyds Bank, John Lewis, Channel 4 and other huge corporate have developed their own initiates exclusively for care experienced people./

I don’t deny that provision can exist alongside prejudice. But this does not read like an employment sector designed to exclude. It looks like one trying - imperfectly and deliberately - to make space.

Is it working?

No.

The data shows us that:

• Around 38% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are not in education, employment or training (NEET), compared with around 13% of their peers (UK Government, 2024).
• In the eight years after leaving school, 25% of care-experienced young people had never been in employment or education, compared with just 4% of other school-leavers (NatCen, 2025).
• Those who do find work are more likely to be in insecure, short-term or low-paid roles rather than stable employment (Rees Centre, University of Oxford, 2023).

However you look at it, care-experienced people are being failed in employment.

The question is: why?

There is too much evidence of employers imperfectly trying to support care experienced people to say the primary barrier is discrimination. If we chase law without legitimacy, we risk diagnosing the wrong problem, designing the wrong solution, and wrongly accusing the world of discrimination without evidence.