This is not a campaign. It's a lobby.

Anyone working in children’s social care understands the importance of governance, consultation and scrutiny. These processes do not weaken a movement; they strengthen it. The care experience as a protected characteristic campaign’s public approach gives the impression of a controlled environment rather than an inclusive one.

As of December 2025, there is no published engagement methodology, no information on dissenting views, no breakdown of participation, no public consultation report, and no governance structure showing how care experienced people can shape or challenge the campaign.

What does exist is an expression of interest form to attend a parliamentary group, administered by the campaign founder, but with no transparency around how applicants are selected or how representation is decided.

It is hard not to recall the many rejection emails sent to care experienced applicants who tried to join the Children’s Social Care Review’s Expert by Experience Board, a process criticised by several of the same campaigners now leading this movement.

The irony is difficult to ignore.

I raised this issue 18 months ago. I wrote three blogs asking questions about the campaign’s engagement methodology, the language used in its briefing document, and whether evidence existed to justify a change to equality law.

I didn’t say discrimination didn’t exist; I asked if it was the main cause of the outcomes we see.

Instead of answers, I was blocked, my inbox filled with people telling me to stop, and I was accused of being discriminatory for even asking. That is a problem in this campaign: scrutiny is treated as a threat and it shows anyone else that silence is safety.

This behaviour continues today.

I applied to take part in the parliamentary group via the expression of interest and heard nothing back. I didn’t expect to be invited, but I at least expected an email letting me know, after all, this is about ‘equal’ opportunities.

When I followed up with the campaign leader via LinkedIn, he told me:

‘You have made various comments that I feel undermine care-experienced people.’

When I asked him to show me which comments, he was unable to.

Meanwhile, the other 'leader' publicly responds to care-experienced people’s views with aggressive, foul language and comments such as:

‘Two years, too late, mate.’

‘I’ve got bigger fish to fry.’

In other words: ‘Sorry, care-experienced people. Your views have an expiry date, and I don’t have time to hear them.’

The reality is, this campaign is not designed to allow challenge; it is designed to lobby and attack. We only need to look at the Care Experienced as a Protected Characteristic Briefing Report (Galloway, 2023), which reads like a flat-pack instruction manual - designed to prompt politicians to pass the motion.

The report sets out its asks in this order:

• Government should introduce legislation without delay…
• Government should commission an information campaign…
• Government should consult with care-experienced people…

Legislation first. Information second. Consultation third.

This reverses the natural order of change, something I know a lot about.

I have spent the last decade in leadership roles, working with councils to change the way their services support young people. My work has focused on change management, service design, and building impactful projects with and for care-experienced people, all underpinned by meaningful engagement with staff and young people.

In my time as a leader, I have not seen evidence of discrimination at the scale or consistency required to justify a change to equality law.

However, I have come across my fair share of “act now, consult later” initiatives. I am usually brought in afterwards, to fix the problems this guillotine-style change has created. This approach to change never empowers people; it alienates them.

For a campaign to be a campaign, it needs to bring people with it, open its doors to support and scrutiny, and be moulded by both. A campaign creates community, gathers momentum, and speaks outward to build pressure.

This campaign doesn’t do that. It lobbies.

A lobby persuades power in private, secures formal commitments and votes, and asks for amendments. It speaks inwards.

This is visible in how motions have been passed: in most cases, through meetings with the campaign leader rather than wide-spread, diverse and considered engagement with a local care-experienced communities.

A protected characteristic is a serious legal step. It cannot rest on untested assumptions put forward by a small corner of a large and diverse community.

If this is truly a movement that seeks justice and equality, it must practise those principles first. You cannot ask for equality in law while practising inequality in process.