Comment: Care-experienced people shouldn't have to pick up the pieces of their lives in adulthood

At seven years old I became ‘the man of the house’. It was a phrase that defined my childhood as the eldest child of five in a single-parent family. That meant I grew up without a father and without any real consistent male role model. 

In many ways it hasn’t impacted my life at all. As a naturally curious person, I’ve taught myself many of the skills that media tropes show fathers showing their sons, whether it’s how to shake hands, negotiate with salespeople or DIY.

Even as a dad of two, I haven’t really relied on any male role model to understand how to parent. I’ve gone into the experience with love, affirmation and curiosity at the forefront of my mind. I like to believe it’s served me well. 

My two kids make me proud every single day as they approach the world head on, and they’re growing into wonderful people.

Recently, I was struck by the first one of those experiences which felt particularly different. I taught my son to shave. I knew it was coming. For some months he’d tried to grow out a moustache, I think in an attempt to emulate 70s footballers or perhaps some character from a computer game. It wasn’t working for him and recently we looked into the mirror together and went through the process of shaving. 

As a child I spent time in care around a number of men and then afterwards returned home to my mum, still with the absence of someone who had to shave their face. So, when it came time for me to shave I didn’t have a clue. 

I thought about many different ways to write this next sentence. I tried to make it poetic, to take the sting out of it, I thought about making some kind of political point but I’ve decided on just saying it as it was. In the absence of YouTube, I learned to shave from watching the film Sweet Sixteen. 

It was an okay film, but hardly the best instruction manual for life skills. There are a lot of formative skills that people traditionally pick up at specific ages and stages that I’ve had to work out in unusual ways, such as how to shake hands, how to do up a tie in different ways, or how to know a suit fits. 

There are also things I’ve had to pick up later in life that I know I share with many of my care experienced peers. This includes things such as cooking from fresh and driving lessons. 

It’s these sort of life skills that I find many care experienced people struggle to pick up, especially if you’ve grown up without someone around who knew the skill themselves. As you’re moved about from placement to placement, it’s difficult to pick up some of the finer points of life.

It might be easy to get distracted by the small detail of this column. Someone might read this and order every care experienced person who needs to shave a razor and some shaving gel. Some enterprising person out to make some money might even set up a social enterprise where you can buy a razor and donate one to a care experienced person. It’s bigger than that. 

The small detail is important, but it’s about creating an environment where people don’t have to fix the symptoms of the care system or for those growing up without stable parenting. It’s also about ensuring we have an environment ripe for change.

Recently the Welsh Government announced a plan for a basic income for care experienced people between the ages of 18 and 20. It received wide acclaim from those in the know about the impact it would have. At the same time, critics immediately jumped to discussions on whether it was deserved. If it wasn’t that, it was their fears that people would spend the money on something they didn’t want them to or, worse, claims it was setting people up for failure. 

The same criticism-focused discussion happens time and time again with support for care experienced people. Whether it’s the care experienced bursary, the council tax exemption or the minimum guaranteed offer for university or college places, people will find a way to have a problem with change and use the small detail to slow the pace.

We can’t allow people to get caught up in the small detail for change if we’re going to overhaul the environment. It’s important to know who is accountable and the methods of delivery but, ultimately, we need to make sure nobody is forgotten about and that we take a whole-environment approach.

It has been two years since the launch of The Promise and almost five years since the First Minister announced a root and branch review of the care system. There’s lots of conversations happening about accountability, pace of change and depth of change.

For me, I’ll know that The Promise is being kept and that care is changing when those with experience of care aren’t having to pick up the pieces of their life in adulthood. If no other person has to teach themselves to shave by watching Sweet Sixteen, at least something will have changed.