What does the system need to do better? What could they have done for you in that home?
Some of them knew how to calm me down, some of them would give me a hug or the ones that are trying to restrain you,
that's just going to cause a scrap.
And what's the best method do you think?
I think the loving, the hug.
I'm Daniel Lavelle, a Guardian journalist and author from Manchester.
I spent my teens in care and as a kid I was restrained by the people who were supposed to
be looking after me.
You'd have a staff member in that chair, another staff member here and then push you down.
And arrested for things that would earn most kids a grounding.
I once got arrested for throwing a cup across the room in that living room.
I've lost count the amount of times I was arrested for stupid things.
After I left the system, I experienced poverty, housing insecurity and homelessness.
For a long time I felt I deserved my luck until I discovered that so
many of my fellow care leavers suffered similar outcomes.
I was in an institution where the people who were supposed to care for me were more concerned with blaming me.
People like me don't usually get to present Guardian videos, so I want to use my platform to
examine how the system failed me.
Do you think you've left the system better than you found it?
No.
Do you feel valued? – No.
And how things have changed for kids today.
I mean, how many times has this has been in the news?
About failings, failings by this, failings by that. Nothing's changed.
So this is the unit.
Brings about some memories.
The bars are still on the Windows though, Danny.
The bars? – Yeah.
That was mine.
Danny's bedroom.
I first met Lucy, whose name we've changed, when I was 14 and
we were placed together in a children's home.
If you ask Danny what he used to do to this tree when he was a kid.
What are you talking about? What are you about?
No, it's all fake news this part.
We may as well not even talk about it. Allegedly you said ...
He was quite funny when he was here, you know, I think Danny shouldn't have ever been in a home, personally.
Well, no one should, do they?
And we got lifted for the silliest reasons, like,
I once got arrested for throwing a cup across the room in that living room.
I've lost count the amount of times I was arrested for stupid things.
You're just criminalised from a young age, something that you don't really understand.
We were asked to leave the premises halfway through our trip down memory lane
by a rather officious person who angrily threatened to call the police.
Where were we up to when before ... – We were talking about kids being criminalised.
And automatically she was going to call the police, so it just proves the point, really.
That was her immediate response, wasn't it? Straight to the phone for the police.
Did you see yourself as a criminal when you was a kid because of that?
Yeah ...
We would be a threatened that we wouldn't get fed in the morning.
Or they put you on basics which is what they say in prison, you're on basics.
You are treated like a prisoner.
Lucy was one of countless vulnerable children in care exposed to sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester
over the years.
What could the staff have done to stop someone like you going out and
getting involved with grown men?
Well, first of all, they knew I was already being exploited in this area.
Did they ever make an effort to stop you going out or when they saw you?
Not really.
They would tell me I'd be grounded or 'we'll phone the police, we'll phone the police'.
'We'll report you missing, we'll phone the police'.
A restrain is if we broke a cot but if you
are going out to see men, they'd just let you and said you get grounded.
Yeah.
13 when I got pregnant.
And then how long did you have her before she was taken?
Three months.
The reason they they took her off me is because I didn't have no family support and I think that's really unfair.
Everybody said parenting is brilliant because I'd raised my brothers and sisters so I've never been
called a bad mum and she was never took off because I was a bad mum.
What was it like on the day that you had to give her up? Do you remember?
It was the first time in my life ...
How often do you think about her? Every day.
In 2019 Lucy sued the council for negligence and got an out of court settlement.
What I wanted was an apology and what procedures have you got in place,
like, what you're going to do differently to protect these kids ... I didn't get the apology
and I didn't get an explanation.
I got a five figure sum which means nothing to me to me.
To my that's dirty money, that's not the answer to solving these cases.
I mean how many times has this been in the news?
About failings, failings by this, failings about that, failings for ... but nothing's changed.
Lucy and I were in the system 20 years ago, is it true that nothing has changed?
I'm going to Blackpool to meet another Danny who was a care leaver. A recent care leaver.
And talk to him about his experiences and what's life been like for him after he's left.
We caught up with Danny at a soup kitchen where he volunteers.
It's run by his friend's dad, Mark,
who took Danny out of the system and fostered him at 15.
A crucial intervention that he said saved his life.
Thank you very much. – No worries, sir, see you later.
When did you go into care?
I went into care about six years ago, seven years ago.
So when you were 13. – Yeah.
Same age as me.
I wasn't the best behaved child as a kid because obviously I had loads of
things going in my head, yeah, I had loads of things on in my head and I couldn't really
express myself in a way without being naughty.
As soon as I went into care that's
when I really started to, like, lose my head with my anger because obviously I thought
no one cared about me and I was on this on my own sort of thing.
What was that first night like?
It was very strange because I knew it was the start of something else so I was just trying
to think in my head how it was going to go, how care was like in real life.
When I was in the system 20 years ago, the staff there often used the police as a means of discipline so I got nicked
from like a young age ... were you getting arrested as well?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was getting arrested it's like when
a kid gets angry at home, the parents are not gonna call the police because he's smashed a
plate or something like that.
Did they restrain you ever? – Yeah they restrained me, yeah, yeah.
... like laying face down?
Oh, yeah, yeah yeah. – A the knee in your back?
Knee in your back, yeah, yeah.
Some of them knew how to calm you down,
some of them would give me a hug and they'd be like right what's up or the ones that
are using violence for violence, they're getting angry and they're trying to restrain you and
that's just going to cause a scrap.
And what's the better method, do you think?
I think the loving. – The hug.
The hug, the loving.
What does the system need to do better? What would they have done for you in that home?
Maybe not have 12 staff members swapping and changing swapping and changing because you need
to have the same people around like a mother figure and a father figure, someone that's like
caring and then obviously someone that will put you in your place but not in a way where it will
make you feel like shit.
I went to care for the same reason as you off the fucking wall,
fighting, had ADHD and I blamed myself for a long time but you're a kid yeah it's not your fault, man.
That's a good way of seeing it to be fair because obviously the mind isn't wide, right?
Both Danny and I needed more love and support from the system.
But what is it like to be a professional carer?
Hiya, are you alright?
I'm going to see Pete, my former care worker who's my uncle now kind of a sort
of good uncle.
Well, Pete was a lot different from the others because he felt like there
was a personal relationship there.
He would be aware that you'd you were having a hard time
and he'd just take you out, take you out for the day and actually invest his time in you.
Hello? – Hey, come on in.
Nice to see you.
Pete has worked in the care system for nearly 30 years.
He helps 16-year-olds in semi-independent
accommodation prepare for life on their own.
Take a seat I got some coffee on the go here.
So, I hesitated to ask you this question but what were your first impressions of me?
You were grateful, you were always erudite, you liked to use big words that were funny.
Even though I didn't understand what they meant.
You like to say them.
Just talking about the system a little bit,
so, how have things changed over the years in your opinion? Have things got better or ...?
I'll tell you why I came to work for Oldham. Oldham had already put his money where its mouth was,
and hadn't had a program for preparation for independent and living in aftercare support when
nowhere else in the country had it and it came up from the 80s right up into 90s and and then it just ...
It was stripped back to absolutely nothing, really, and it's
just cut, cut, cut.
Is that since the 2010?
Yeah, a bit earlier than that it started.
Do you think the care system sets people up to fail sometimes?
It may do, it doesn't make any sense that they aren't better prepared for adulthood when
they've been in the care of the corporate parent.
Do you worry about some of the kids at all,
especially when they go off and then everything's cut off ... because obviously you build,
like, close relationships with them.
Yeah, of course you do, but I always say that no matter how grown up
you think you are and how much you think you're ready for this, the hardest time ever is when you
shut that front door for the first time and you're on your own.
And there was a point in which I came across you in particular in your 20s and by that time you'd had that period of homelessness
which I was totally unaware of and I was so angry about that because I remember saying
to you, why didn't you just come and tell me?
I didn't even tell anyone.
It was a humiliating for me.
Of course it was.
There's loads of Danny's out there and Daniellas.
But they don't maybe have the skills that you have.
So their story gets untold.
And you tell your story, they'll identify with it and feel as if they've said it themselves and I think
that so your book is out there but it should be on the shelves of every children's home
and it's certainly a essential reading for any residential worker.
Pleasure, right? I love you, Pete, thanks.
Don't divert all the calls to me.
Thanks a lot for doing this by the way. Nice one. – You're welcome.
So what happens to the other Dannys and Daniellas?
Well, the stats aren't great.
One in four of us find ourselves homeless like I was.
I eventually made it into higher education,
but care leavers are more likely to end up in a prison cell than a lectured theatre.
I wrote about all of this in my book which I'm now at the Bradford literature Festival.
I mean, yours is a success story, you know, but as you say in your book,
you know, you are an anomaly.
A walking, talking anomaly.
Everyone I know from the system is either dead, in prison or they've got awful issues they're dealing with.
What was it like for you kind of revisiting some of those quite painful memories?
It really hit me, especially when I got all my social services records and
like, 10 or 12 thick folders in big bags, I'm a personal baggage personified in a way.
Down and Out is a result of five years trying to understand my story and others in care.
Hiya, are you all right?
What's your name? – Julia.
You're welcome. – I wish you the very best.
You too. Thanks, Julia.
Also at the Festival is poet and playwright, Lem Sissay.
Lem also grew up in care and has talked extensively about the impact that reading his care
records had on him.
One of the first things that struck me about, in your book, because I've been reading it,
is the trouble you had getting your records.
What impact did they have on you?
Because it destroyed me like when I read them.
Yeah, it's quite shocking when you read what
people have been saying about you throughout your childhood, you know.
You see yourself being set up,
I don't know if you saw that. – Yeah.
But I saw that.
I didn't recognise a lot of what was being said about me,
I mean, I went on happy pills because of it, I had a panic attack for a week.
Because I just I didn't see myself like that.
I do see people constantly faced with their
files and they might read half of them and then say I can't read anymore and knock them away,
you know, I know one woman who burned her files she never wants to see them again.
I've got the same plan for mine, I think.
Either that or the shredder.
I don't think you have to.
The record of what happened to you and what people said about you and how they treated you, it's very important.
They are a record that I was alive somewhere and somebody did something to me for reasons
which were not fair.
I like to keep that record, thank you very much.
It's like, once I was restrained, the way they do it on three chairs
so they plonk you in the middle one here, so that's the middle one,
they have a staff member in that chair, another staff member here and then push you down.
I remember once I was so frustrated I spat on the floor and someone wiped it up and wiped it in my face,
that's not in the records, but as I say, it's a practice they used to do.
They were taught, they were told that you should do that. If the child spits or ... you know.
And that still fucks with me to this day.
Yeah, of course it does.
That's, hands down, abuse.
Do you ever regret that you may be giving too much of yourself out there,
you're putting too much of yourself?
Because I think, like, how much do I want to carry on like using
myself as a specimen to dissect for everyone.
I mean, I might have agreed with you some time ago
and said, yeah, I am doing but actually the truth is that, you know, you do it for you.
When you don't want to do it, don't do it, because this isn't about the audience.
More people who went through what we went through they're off the map or they're dead or they're
in prison yeah and they can't tell the world what they went through and they can't
relate in the way ... not they can't, but they won't so that that's the only reason
I'll continue to do it um I don't know if you think the same.
I don't really care about anybody else to be honest. – Awesome.
Psycho. Thank you very much.
I would love to say I'm hopeful about the future but I'm not.
The system was bad when I was in it
all those years ago but it's got worse.
Lucy, Danny, Lem, and I have made it out damaged but not broken.
We got lucky and making it through childhood shouldn't just depend on luck.
Things need to change and that's why voices like ours need to continue to be heard.
It takes a lot of courage to open up like this, I know why I've done it but why have you done it?
I wouldn't want what happened to me to happen to someone else.
if I can help someone
who's in care any slight way just to know that at the end of the tunnel it's not all doom and gloom,
it's all about staying positive really, that's what that's the main thing.
If you want to stay positive, then you will get far in life.
It took me a long time to get where I needed to be.
I went through all sorts ... I took drugs, drink, partying all the time and now you're doing the Open University, law,
studying law.
Criminology and law.
And you working as a part-time carer as well, aren't you?
Looking after the elderly.
I mean, I still have a lot of trauma so every day is a fight for me, but ...
Are you winning though? – Do I feel like I'm winning? Sometimes no
but everyone around me tells me I'm winning.
I think you are doing great.
Thanks.