Member News
27th October 2011
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest unequal treatment of care leavers by local authorities, a backbench MP has said.
Addressing an audience of care leavers in his role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for looked-after children and care leavers, Edward Timpson MP said he would write to the minister for children and families, Tim Loughton, to try and ensure the inequalities are addressed.
As an MP Timpson is unique in the fact he has direct experience of what life is like for children in care and care leavers, having grown up in a family that cared for over 90 foster children.
Acknowledging that most MPs lack this insight, he urged the young people present to "engage with their own MPs" over the matter.
The meeting of the APPG was taking place at the beginning of National Care Leavers’ Week 2011. Started as a single day in 2002, the week aims to promote what it is like to be a care leaver, and urge policymakers to think again about how their decisions impact people on the ground.
Janet Rich, co-ordinator of National Care Leavers Week and a trustee of the Care Leavers' Foundation, a charity that provides much-needed help to care leavers, said local authority inequality was a constant theme that care leavers come up against.
Members of the panel and audience raised the huge discrepancies in the level of grants provided by authorities for care leavers. A care leaver and volunteer for the Who Cares Trust asked why the government could not "write it down in black and white" to ensure all care leavers are entitled to the same amount of support.
Devon County Council's operations manager for the Leaving Care Service, Ian Stewart-Watson, agreed that the issue of equality is very significant. "Too much is left to the discretion of the local authority," he said.
22 year-old care leaver Jessica Inwood belongs to a group of care leavers that meets with minister for children, Tim Loughton on a quarterly basis to ensure these issues are firmly on his agenda. "We are really pushing for Tim Loughton to do something," she said.
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