When care meets race: why the campaign ignores intersectionality

A young girl sits at home with her foster carer. The news comes on. She hears campaigners say: “care-experienced people are dying prematurely.”

She turns and asks, in panic: “What does that mean?”

Campaigners often state that care leavers are “70% more likely to die prematurely”.

This does not show that care experience itself is what shortens people’s lives, but when headlines like this, land in living rooms, it does have consequences. This is a risk this campaign has failed to assess, how the language it uses can cause panic for those it’s aiming to protect.

This statistic doesn’t tell us that discrimination occurred. It tells us that harm occurred. When we have a look at this, it’s obvious that care is not the only problem; for many children, it’s also what happened before they came into care.

It’s worth stating, before the Linkedin lobbyist accuse me of saying ‘care doesn’t cause harm’. Yes, care can cause harm. But so can abuse, neglect and poverty, and for most young people in care, those harms came first.

Two thirds of children come into care because of abuse, neglect or poverty (Department for Education). Evidence shows how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can increase health risks and reduce life expectancy (Anda, Brown, Felitti et al., 2009).

The research speaks for itself:

• 2+ ACEs linked to a 57% higher risk of dying before 50 for men and an 80% higher risk for women, compared with no ACEs (Kelly-Irving et al, 2013).
• 4+ ACEs linked to 45% higher risk of premature mortality (Jing Yu et al 2022).
• 6+ ACEs linked to people dying 19 to 20 years earlier than those with none (Brown et al 2009).

The danger here is not just misinterpretation, it undermines a whole body of evidence, research and understanding of how trauma impacts us.

It also ignores the 400,000 'children in need' the UK, 58% of whom experience abuse and neglect, and all have a social worker. Their adversities and experiences are completely excluded in the campaign narrative. This raises a question: what we are defining as care experience? If children in need are supported by the same system, for the same reason, should they should get the same protection?

The reality is, equality law will never stop the abuse, neglect and poverty children face. What we can do is demand tougher consequences for abuse, earlier intervention, and a child protection system that acts before damage becomes detrimental.  As well as looking at supporting wider society overcome financial hardship.

This is no small task and equality law will never mitigate this. That said, it doesn’t detract from the fact that prevention is always better than protection.

This isn’t the only place the campaign ignored intersectionality and hijacked a narrative. A similar argument is made about the criminal justice system.

The campaign often highlights that 25% of the prison population are people who have been in care. On the surface, this sounds like evidence of discrimination. But it ignores a major factor that already shapes the entire criminal justice system: race.

Non-white British make up 27% of the prison population in England and Wales (UK Prison Population Statistics, 2024), and you are twice as likely to be arrested if you are black (UK Gov, 2024).

At the same time, 29% of the care population are non-white British (BASW, 2025), despite these communities making up only 18.3% of the UK population (UK Gov, 2024).

Care-experienced people are overrepresented in justice statistics. But, so are non-white British people, who are themselves overrepresented within the care population.

Just as with the criminal justice system, evidence shows that care system reflects the same structural racism - meaning race shapes who enters care, how they are treated, and the outcomes they experience. When race is missing from the analysis, we have to examine the lens shaping the narrative.

In a society that increasingly understands power and privilege, a campaign like this requires more than good intentions. It requires self-awareness, research, and an honest account of what is causing harm - especially when evidence already shows that race, ACE’s and other intersectional factors are significant contributors.