Sporting legend channels care experience to change the system
Fatima Whitbread spent the first 14 years of her life in children’s homes. She was abandoned as a baby, left alone in a flat at three months old to starve to death.
Her cries alerted neighbours, who called the police. They kicked the door in and rushed her to hospital.
“Had it been hours later, it would have been fatal,” Fatima says.
She spent months in hospital recovering and was then made a ward of court by Hackney Borough Council.
“The care system back then was quite different to what it is now,” Fatima explains.
“We were in large institutions in an era where not a lot was spoken about being in care. Children were to be seen and not heard. Emotional needs were rarely met.”
Her first children’s home was a “barren mansion” housing 25 kids, where she stayed until she was five.
“There were students that came in from the village to help the matron who was very perfunctory. There was no love… apart from the students, I guess. But they were only 16-year-olds.”
One day, Fatima was told by the matron to be ready the next morning as she was being collected by her mother – not to go home, but to be taken to a new children’s home.
It seems shocking today that the council decided to reunite five-year-old Fatima with the woman who had left her to starve to death. There were other forced visits over the years, during which Fatima experienced physical and sexual abuse.
She says: “They had obviously decided it was time to reintegrate the family... but I'd had five years in the home with no visits, and so there was the trauma and neglect and abandonment issues, which most children in care suffer, because they don't have unconditional love.
“Kids need unconditional love, they need to know someone is there, that they are safe and secure."
For Fatima, that wasn't the case. Her biological mum arrived with a social worker to collect her.
"She should have had a criminal record for what she'd done, and when she came to the home her first words to me were, ‘You look after your sister, or I will cut your throat’.
"She brought my half brother and sister with her, and they spoke together in their mother tongue. Then she took them back home with her, saying she didn’t want me, and left me to go into another home. I was thinking, ‘Why am I being moved from the only place I've ever known, from the people I know?’."
Fatima didn't settle well at her new children's home.
"The house parents were not good," she remembers. "It was just a job to them, and they ruled the roost. The house uncle was like a little Hitler. He would slap the kids and tell them to sit on the back step in winter when it was freezing cold. The kids would wet the bed or rock themselves to sleep crying at night."
Fatima was always the one who would speak up, which got her into trouble. "All I got was physical, mental, and emotional abuse, but I didn't care because I saw it as my role to support and care for these children."
Then Auntie Rae arrived. She was a “72-hour lady” who came to work shifts looking after the children, and she brought light and laughter into Fatima’s life.
Fatima remembers: “She was the mum I always wanted, she understood us. She made me feel a bit more humanised.
"All I got told by the house parents was that they were going to get rid of me, that I was nothing, that I'd end up on the streets as a prostitute.
"Autie Rae just got us, she understood us, and gave me permission to feel sad sometimes whereas the other house parents would just tell me I was a nuisance.
"I wrote a book recently called My Bright Shining Star for kids in the care system. It's about Auntie Rae being that role model, that shining star.”
With Auntie Rae’s support, Fatima soon discovered sport, a passion she says saved her.
"It taught me to believe in myself and be confident."
There was no trauma informed practice in education when Fatima was growing up.
"Back then in the 60s, teachers just didn't understand, they didn't understand children's homes, and if they did, they didn't make allowances. It was just, 'You're falling behind in class,' and you were punished for that, humiliated, you were the dunce in the corner."
But in her teens, Fatima met the woman who would eventually become her adoptive mother. Margaret Whitbread was a javelin coach who nurtured her talent at the local athletics club.
“Sport was something that I always involved myself in,” she remembers.
“I loved the sense of feeling good about myself, and I earned respect of my peers.
“And then the teachers started looking more sensibly towards me. And I thought, ‘There are some rewards to this’.
“Sport taught me a lot about life skills, self-discipline, motivation, and I gained a sense of freedom, which became my saviour. And I shared all that with Auntie Rae, and she would encourage me.”
It was after several visits to the athletics club and a stay at Margaret Whitbread’s home that Fatima’s life turned a corner.
“I went with my friend Alma to the local athletics club and saw a man with a spear.
“I walked over and picked up the spear and was told off. Then I sat in the stand, and the javelin coach arrived.
“I showed talent and she would say, ‘Why don’t you get Mum and Dad to come up and we can talk about getting you a javelin and some boots?’, and I just nodded my head.
“When she found out I was in care, she bought a spear and boots up the next week. I couldn’t wait to show the kids back at the home.
“I threw the javelin and it smashed through the French windows. I got a month’s ban.
“Mrs Whitbread got a message through, and I wrote her a letter telling her I was sorry and I wanted to be the best javelin thrower in the world.
“She phoned the home and in a couple of weeks I was back at the track.
“She asked if I wanted to meet the family and then asked me if I wanted to stay for a couple of weeks… then she asked if I wanted to come and live with us.”
Fatima went on to achieve international acclaim, breaking the javelin world record and winning multiple medals including world and European Championship gold.
In later life, she was awarded an MBE for services to athletics, and the Helen Rollason award for ‘outstanding achievement in the face of adversity’ at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards, 2023.
One Voice Summit
Fatima has campaigned for many years for the rights of kids in care and care leavers, who she believes are still being let down by the system.
Through her care charity Fatima’s UK Campaign she is organising a two-day summit in London this April.
The One Voice Summit takes place at The Guildhall, on 23-24 April.
Janet Daby, minister for children and families, will be speaking, as will England’s chief social worker for children and families Isabelle Trowler. Young people with lived experience of care will also contribute.
Fatima is frustrated by the slow pace of change: “We are the fifth biggest economy in the world, and yet here we are with 30 per cent of our care leavers ending up homeless within two years.
“In the last five years there has been a 45 per cent increase in kids entering children’s homes and supported living.
“There's 110,000 children in the care system, and yet there's a 10,000 shortage of foster carers.
“A third of all local authorities are seeing a weekly increase of kids coming into the care system. “We've got least 14 million people living in poverty.
“What the hell? We've got to do more.”
The summit will present a number of key ‘asks’ to ministers, including making care leavers a protected characteristic, and creating a register of foster carers.
“The idea is to influence change at government level,” Fatima explains.
“We want to bring change to these young people's lives, so these kids are not shunted from place to place, not pushed around by privatisation and further damaged.
“It’s about holding people's feet to the fire to make sure they do what they say they're going to do.”
Tickets go online in February, and readers are invited to save the date and share the event details with colleagues. For more information visit www.fatimascampaign.com