Money that stops at the microwave
When I was 15 years old, I was moved into bed-and-breakfast accommodation and given £50 a week. £4 a day for the bus to school. £10 for phone credit. £8 at the local laundrette. Whatever was left, about £12, had to cover all my meals, made using nothing more than the limescale-flaked kettle that came with my “accommodation”.
All while my local authority proudly displayed a question on their email signatures, posters and official documents:
“Would this be right for my own child?”
Was I discriminated against? Honestly, I’m still not sure. At the time, I was angry at the system, and from where I stood, it felt like the system was angry at me.
What I do know is this: discrimination wasn’t watching my girlfriend’s dad sprint down the road, microwave in his arms, determined to make sure I could eat something warm. And when the local authority offered to reimburse him, he was offended - because he knew, as I did, that he shouldn’t have been the one providing it in the first place.
This was 2005. I wish I could say it belonged to another era, but it doesn’t. The practice still happens today, and many call it discrimination.
Experiences like mine are being used by a campaign to argue that care-experienced people face such severe and widespread discrimination that we now require protection under the Equality Act.
I don’t think this was the case for me. I wanted to be on my own, I did everything I could to force the systems to give me independence, and I don’t blame it for the situation I found myself in.
The challenge I never anticipated was it came to finance, you don’t understand how to manage money, until you are given it and the responsibility it comes with. Yes, I didn’t have much and I had to find other ways to make it, but I don’t see this as a bad thing, it’s an important skill for life.
Between 16-18, the £50 a week allowance covered my basic costs. This came directly from Children’s Social Care, not Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), so I could get away with having a job on top of this and not losing my allowance. To begin with, I started a weekend pot-washing job, and when my GCSE’s finished, I started working at Dixons (now Currys).
I know many you are reading this thinking that 16 is too young to be in the situation I was, but for me, this was a much better situation than being in care. Looking back I stand by that, I wanted to take control of my own lifeand nothing was going to get in the way of that. If the system forced me to stay in care, I would have called this discrimination because for me, it would have created a barrier that prevented me from getting what I needed, freedom.
When I turned 18, finances became a little complicated. I had to go onto ‘benefits’, this was a mix of ‘income support’ and ‘housing benefit’ - now know as ‘universal credit’ (UC). This is designed to support people with living costs and rent and people need them for a variety of reasons that prevent them from work.
The challenge is that entry-level wages are often lower than UC. An entry-level wage rarely covers rent, so the young person still cannot secure stable housing. Often, we assume people don’t leave UC because they lack motivation, the reality is, they struggle because they become poorer working.
This isn’t a discrimination against care experienced people, it effects everyone on benefits, and it’s been termed by sociologists as the ‘benefit trap’. Basically, we have a system that punishes the poorest, and creates structural barriers to social mobility.
Is this discrimination, absolutely. But, it’s not care experienced people who are discriminated against in isolation, this is discrimination of the poorest people in society.
However, care leavers do get more then most when it comes to money.
Across all levels of the system - national policy, local authorities, universities and employers - we see proactive attempts to redesign financial structures around care experienced people.
The Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in 2017, and a year later the government created a £1,000 bursary for care leavers starting an apprenticeship.
Since around 2017, many local authorities have also introduced discretionary council tax reductions, with some offering 100% discounts for care leavers, and Wales making all care leavers under 25 exempt from 2019.
Care leavers are also assessed by Student Finance England as independent students, meaning they do not need to provide parental income and therefore receive the maximum maintenance loan.
Many universities now act as rent guarantors for care leavers, removing the need for a parent to sign a tenancy or pay large deposits. And where universities don’t offer this, some local authorities have stepped in with their own schemes.
Employers have changed their own systems too - Lloyds Bank, for example, introduced bi-weekly salary payments after care leavers told them it would help with cashflow.
One thing is clear: on paper, care leavers have access to more financial support than their peers not in care. These examples show intention, not discrimination.