Failure of care laid bare
I’ VE undertaken no research for saying this other than my own daily wanderings around the capital. On the occasions that I have found myself talking to homeless people, I’ve noticed something. A lot of them seem to have grown up in care.
KICKED OUT KIDS ( C4) gave me some clues as to why this might be the case. It began with a bold speech, from our Deputy Prime Minister, affirming a commitment to young people, whatever their backgrounds.
Under this Government, in fact, the age at which young people have to leave foster care has been raised from 18 to 21. Behind that accomplishment, however, there is a lurking failure.
Young people in care homes are often there because their problems are too deep- seated to warrant a placement in a foster family. These young people, despite their increased needs, are still forced to leave care at the age of 18.
We followed three care- leavers, before and after being kicked out, and spoke to them and the legion of social workers, carers and mentors who were doing their best for them.
No one was exactly being handed a holdall at the door and told to get lost. If they weren’t, though, it seemed largely due to some over worked, underpaid and very decent people going the extra mile for them.
Demornia, a burly, determined sportsman, had largely found meaning in his life thanks to the gym run by his science teacher.
The shy, bright, vulnerable Connor, was trying to trace his mother, assisted by a social worker who clearly wanted to protect him from the probable outcome.
Around the headstrong and troubled Gemma, there seemed to be a host of older adults trying to make her pause, breathe and think about her actions.
You’d have to be hard- hearted to call any of these youngsters lucky. They were fortunate, though, in having good people around them and perhaps, given the numbers of their peers who seem to end up on the streets, exceptional.
Connor didn’t know how to switch an oven on while Demornia struggled to organise his money. Gemma moved in with an aunt she barely knew and, like a younger child, kept calling her “mum”.
No sane, compassionate adult would have looked at her and thought, you can manage on your own. Only an insane policy would require her to.
Around Britain, there are dozens of archaeologists scraping away at the soil, revealing new things about the old. DIGGING FOR BRITAIN ( BBC4) armed them with cameras to capture their findings on film.
These discoveries are usually the sort of things that only really excite archaeologists. In amongst the animal bones and the postholes, however, there’s some astonishing stuff coming out.
In just one episode, we saw a Stone Age cathedral complex in the Orkneys and sea caves stuffed with the eerie symbols of the little- understood Picts.
Archaeology’s always at its best, though, when it shines some light on the present. In this sense, there was no finer haul than the one from the former Roman barracks at Binchester in County Durham.
There was a silver ring with Christian symbols on it, and, dating from the same time, the head of a Roman god, with a Celtic hairdo.
Our forebears understood something about co- existing peacefully, it seems, something long since buried in the bogs.