Government urged not to ignore call to make care experience a protected characterstic

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 25 January, 2023

A children’s campaigner has urged the government to adopt a recommendation in England’s review of children’s social care to make care experience a protected characteristic.

Ministers are due to respond to the review’s 80 recommendations imminently. Among them is a call for the UK to be the first in the world to give people who have been in care the same protection against discrimination under the 2010 Equality Act as for race, religion, disability, age and five other characteristics.

Campaigner Terry Galloway, who was in care himself as a child, believes the recommendation must be included in the government’s response and any subsequent consultation.

Since the review's recommendations, he has worked with numerous local authorities to encourage them to adopt protected characteristic for care leavers.

This would mean they must conduct an impact assessment of all their policies to ensure they do not discriminate against care experienced people.

Galloway believes the only way to meaningfully tackle discrimination is for the protection to be mandated nationally across all organisations and government agencies.

“It is just one element of the care review’s recommendations but for care experienced people it is an important one,” he said.

“It is the glue that holds it all together because it is the thing that gets society being accountable.

“The whole recommendations of the review bank on everyone taking responsibility in every corner of society – this is what makes them do it in law.”

Last week Nottingham became the tenth local authority in England to make care experience a protected characteristic.

However, during a full council meeting on 19 January, its Conservative leader indicated his – and the government’s - lack of support for the move.

Cllr Ben Bradley said: “By adding care leaver to the Equality Act, you open the whole range of life experiences to that legislation. You bring into the scope of the bill every experience under the sun.

“That is the government’s view and my view.”

But Galloway responded: “The difference is that these people have had the state as their parent growing up. The government appear to have made up their mind on this and already dismissed it on ideology which is nonsense.

"Care experienced people are the only group that have the state as their parents. The state said their parents can’t look after them anymore, so took on that responsibility. No other group has the state as it’s parent. That is the characteristic - the fact children did not ask to come into care, nor did they want the state to be their parent. It is something they can’t change.

He added “The government needs to act like a parent. Good parents think about their children in everything they do across their whole lifetime. They make decisions as part of the whole family. That’s all we are asking for. That the state and whole community think about us and who we are."

Lambeth became the 11th council to adopt protected characteristic for care leavers on Wednesday, January 25, with Plymouth expected to follow next week.

Galloway now intends to work with the 12 authorities to research discrimination that young people in care face in order to build an evidence base for adopting the policy.

He said: “If people said there is no need for it, then I would drop it. The point is the government seems to have reached a position on protected characteristic which is biased.

“This will take three to six months and the government should be listening the voice of care experienced people.”

Galloway plans to do a similar exercise with other organisations including prisons, schools, colleges, universities and the health sector.

“What will happen is that the act of doing this will open their eyes and get them thinking about us. We will then have a whole load of organisations ang agencies aware which will embed our voice within their cultures.

“But at the end of that we will still have discrimination and a broken care system. The reason for that is because protected charactersitic needs to be legislation. That embeds it in society.”