Thinking out loud about children’s social care
Writing by Luke Rodgers BEM, drawing on his lived experience of care and his professional experience of changing the services around it.
Care experience as a protected characteristic
A 12 part series from 2026. Each blog takes one area of life and asks whether discrimination is really the main barrier, and whether equality law would change it.
Protected characteristics: you decide if care experience belongs in it
Should care experience be a protected characteristic? That’s not for me to decide, it’s a decision that sits with you, the reader.
5 January 2026Blog 2 of 12'Care experience' is not a civil rights movement
On 1 December 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks sits on a bus beneath a sign enforcing segregation. Black people in the United States at this...
12 January 2026Blog 3 of 12This 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...
19 January 2026Blog 4 of 12When 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.”
26 January 2026Blog 5 of 12Social workers: you've been forgotten again
Making care experience a protected characteristic also has consequences that could genuinely make life harder for children, if these risks are not...
2 February 2026Blog 6 of 12Trauma walks into a classroom before care experience does
One of the most important areas to examine in the care experience as a protected characteristic campaign is education, and whether discrimination is...
9 February 2026Blog 7 of 12When we don't have psychiatrists, equality law can't save us
One of the biggest sources of confusion in the campaign to make care experience a protected characteristic is the failure to distinguish between...
16 February 2026Blog 8 of 12Law can't replace love
At 10 years old I was taken into care; removed from a home where I experienced both love and pain. Like most care-experienced people, I didn’t...
23 February 2026Blog 9 of 12Money 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....
2 March 2026Blog 10 of 12I 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...
9 March 2026Blog 11 of 12The sign that said: “No care leavers”
Whenever I think about housing for care leavers, I see dark, dilapidated properties accommodating lonely souls. Behind them, I see social workers and...
16 March 2026Blog 12 of 12Dear care experienced people, I don't think discrimination is our biggest problem
I’m writing this blog directly to you, because you are the young change makers and aspiring advocates who are working so hard on this campaign to...
23 March 2026