On Identity & Being Raised In Care of the State

I wouldn’t need a large abacus to count the number of times my experience as someone raised in care of the state has been well represented in a film. One fleeting moment in Robert Altman’s 2001 murder mystery Gosford Park, an elegant pre-cursor to Dowton Abbey, nailed it.

During a large and free-flowing dinner table conversation about family, Mr Stockbridge (played by Clive Owen) stunned fellow diners when he answered a question with a simple “because I grew up in an orphanage“. The ensuing silence told more of our story than any scripted dialogue ever could.

Anyone from state care who had to describe their background following a routine question about childhood in a polite conversation knows that silence. Until very recently and in middle age I still grimaced when such discussions arose at the diplomatic functions I attend with my job. If I am honest about it, at different stages of my life I have felt intrinsic shame, stigma and especially guilt for the discomfort it may cause to others and this has often fed into a deep, internal narrative that I am not really good enough to be here . I also felt compelled never to hide who I am or where I come from. Being from state care is as important for my identity as being a Belgan or being a Hindu may be to someone else. It is where I spent my formative years, it is what shaped me and I want to be a good role model for kids in care today. It is at my core . I just would rather not talk about it.

6% of UK 18 year olds from state care go to university compared to around 27% of the general population. When I was 18 ( a very long time ago) it felt more like 0%. We were from a minority that was more likely than any other to end up in prison, a gang, trafficked, addicted or die early and very very unlikely to go to university. Unlike other marginalised minorities, we had no underpinning culture, flags or narrative to carry a sense of pride in our identity. I am so proud of the 6% of 18 year olds from care who attend university today. It is a testimony to resilience, the odds are still stacked against them, they make it through anyway.

Like many of my generation, I left a children’s home aged 16 with a €200 leaving care allowance, a modest bag of life possessions and a complete absence of any form of love or belonging at all.

I have never complained about where I come from. This was the way my life was, it was normal to me. Coming from the bottom 1% of a society where identity was shaped by class and family, and then trying to advance though university & career etc often left me feeling unsteady on my feet and like an outsider or an imposter. I still feel like an outsider today to be honest, but I wouldn’t want to go back and change anything.

There are also things I am proud of. Because I had no parental support at all, I woke up at 4 am on weekends, when the other students were coming back from parties, to run a market stall in Camden Town. I drove a mini-cab around London late at night and did shifts in an old peoples home and a college kitchen to pay my way through university. I believed that completing a university education would help me escape the legacy of my childhood and would do anything to reach that goal. I remember going to my first day of university, buying my own pens and books with money I had earned. I couldn’t quite believe how lucky I was just to be there. It seemed that most took it all for granted. How much luckier I was to see going to university as a massive blessing. I still feel blessed and privileged today.

What about love? in state care, one often grows up with this internalised sense of being unloveable, not even by one’s parents. Biologically all children are programmed to seek loving protection and nurture from parents, when it is absent they interpret it as danger. Those from care backgrounds often have low self esteem, insecure attachment, post-traumatic stress and over-active fight or flight systems. This has a profound impact on your identity and sense of self.

You can strive to be a success on the outside as a young care leaver, inside there are all these jagged edges and broken parts that, if you are aware of them, you would like to put together again. But when you are trying to escape severe poverty without any support networks, you are just thinking about survival. Profound emotional insecurity can be a barrier to the relationships that the research now tells us are the single most important determinant of both healing from trauma and building the resilience to overcome barriers and get on in life. Often the strategy the subconscious gives us is to separate the left and the right side of the brain-to run on the gas of the cognitive: job and education and forget the oil of love, emotion and belonging. Just like a car, you will break down in the end.

Nobody politically can articulate this. The main political discourses in our society don’t do emotional. They only do economic and power.

The left often argues that a care leaver is a victim of discrimination and poverty. As Nimco Ali wrote recently about race & gender & being a refugee “The left wants to frame my life experience via the prism of helplessness and victimhood. I am meant to be consumed by all that has happened to me — to long for all that I have lost and wait to be rescued, but I have always refused to do that“. For me, it has taken me most of my adult life to feel really comfortable talking about being from care. I can be shut down in a moment if someone tries to frame my narrative as a victim, and that often comes from the left.

Economic models from the right squeeze and further disadvantage marginalised care leavers. I know this from the rock face because I left care during Thatcherism. And then they argue that if an individual care leaver (actually a tiny fraction) can progress through hard work, then anyone can. Evidently they cannot and do not because the impact of trauma and neglect is very individual and complex and based upon the interaction of experience, resilience & biology. In 2019, policy makers should really know this, we shouldn’t have to explain it. And anyway, as Colin Powell once said, “how can you ask someone to pull themselves up by the bootstraps when they don’t have boots“. Care leavers badly need support networks.

Discrimination, poverty and hard work are high stakes challenges for any care leaver. The main issue remains love, or the lack of it. There is a broader need for a politics that can talk about love, wellbeing, trauma, violence and hope. The social and emotional drivers of all of our behaviour and decisions. And this makes democratic sense because care leavers are not alone.

Until recently there was a common public perception that childhood trauma, neglect & violence were marginal issues addressed through the care, social work and juvenile justice systems dealing with maybe 1 or 2 % of a given child population. The World Health Organisation and other bodies have undertaken surveys in multiple countries on general populations which reveal that on average, around 60% of adults were affected be one serious adverse childhood experience (ACEs) and around 15% by 4 or more. The 15% with 4 or more ACEs, like care leavers are much more likely to have really bad life outcomes in health, crime, education and all aspects of wellbeing. In psychology research, 42% of adults across countries are said to have insecure attachment due to absence or inconsistency of parental love in the first two years of life. Insecure attachment severely affects their ability to have quality relationships. The common perception about the marginality of trauma must have ran counter to people’s lived experience and their ability to articulate it. That is now changing.

I was raised in care of the state. I am neither proud of it or ashamed of it. I would like to live in a world where future care leavers don’t suffer long silences & superficial victim or bootstraps narratives. Where investments are made to ensure those from public care & others affected by adversity everywhere-can reconnect, build and heal free from shame and public stigma. This would be socially just, fiscally prudent and frankly just plain easier and better for the whole of society.

NB: This is the first in a Triology. The second part can be found here and the second here. Benjamin perks can be followed on twitter