Baroness Lola Young: ‘Just surviving shouldn’t be our best hope for children in care’

When I meet Baroness (Lola) Young, she is serving as a judge for children's charity Coram Voice’s annual writing competition for children in care and young care leavers.

Young has worn many hats over the years: as one of the first black women to join the House of Lords in 2004, a former actress, author, lecturer, public speaker and campaigner against modern slavery.

She was also in care. Born in 1951 to Nigerian immigrant students, she entered care at just eight weeks old, moving between foster care and various children’s homes until she turned 18. A lifelong lover of the arts and literature – her refuge during childhood – she is also a passionate advocate for writing as a tool of expression for children in care.

“For [care experienced] young people, very often there's a feeling that you're voiceless, you're invisible.  [People] don't pay attention to what you're trying to express, and they don't understand what it's like to be in that predicament,” she says.

“Writing is a good way of getting those feelings out on paper. From reading the entries, there's clearly a lot that people have to say, in very moving ways too.”

'You feel abandoned - that you're not loved'

Now an influential crossbench peer, Young still remembers what it feels like to be voiceless.

Until the age of 14, she was unofficially fostered by an older widow, Daisy Vince, in a cramped one-bedroom flat where Young and two other foster children huddled together at night. Vince was one of only two women in the area willing to take on black children in Islington, then a predominantly white community.

When Vince died, Young briefly stayed with an aunt and uncle, but when that broke down, she moved to a children’s home in Hertfordshire.

Spend only a short time with her, and you witness Young’s eloquence; her words unfurl with depth, precision and emotion. The only time she chooses brevity is when I ask about those years in children’s homes. “It was horrible”, she says, simply.

Often the only black child, she was racially targeted and emotionally and physically abused, experiences that compounded her growing feelings of abandonment and otherness.

“Going from North London to a little village in Hertfordshire as a black child in the 1960s was not a happy experience,” she says.

“There’s also a lot of trauma that comes from being physically beaten. You feel abandoned, that you’re not loved – that you can’t be loved because you’re unlovable, you don’t fit in anywhere. I read all of these negative attributes into the way people treated me and where I was.”

Loss of identity

In the background were her parents, who were alive and well but living with their own families in Nigeria. Young never truly knew them and has seen each of them only a handful of times. But the knowledge that they were out there, absent out of choice, only sharpened the pain.

“It fed into the feeling of worthlessness and low self-esteem,” she says.

With no Nigerian relatives around her and surrounded almost entirely by white adults, Young grew up with little connection to her heritage. She declines to call herself a Nigerian today. Like many other care experienced black children, she has lost the connection to her culture.

“It would feel fraudulent [to describe myself as Nigerian] given how I was rejected and how that identity was shaped for me. People expect you to slot into neat categories, and that expectation [when you’re in care] is complicated and often uncomfortable.

“I usually say, 'my identity is a black, care experienced Londoner’.”

The need for cultural recognition

Decades on from Young’s childhood, the issues she describes, of a black child struggling to hold on to and form a cultural identity while also navigating racism, remain starkly present.

Children’s  charity Barnardo’s has argued that black, Asian and ethnic minority children should, wherever possible, be placed with foster carers from the same cultural background to help them “reflect and promote their own ethnic, cultural and religious identities”.

However, while 19% of approved foster carers in England came from minority backgrounds as of March 2024, black, Asian and ethnic minority children made up 28% of the care population at the same time.

The biggest disparity concerns people of mixed or multiple ethnic groups, who made up 11% of the care population but just 1.5% of foster carers. And though black representation in the care system (7%) was similar to that among foster carers (9%), black children in care still often grow up without carers who share their background.

Young says the issue is not just around culture, but recognition.

“As a child, you can't make sense of it when somebody strokes your skin to or grabs your hair and says, ‘Ooh, feels funny, doesn't it?’,” she says.

“I could have done with somebody saying, ‘Look, unfortunately, this is the way it is, and maybe a way of dealing with it is this, that or the other.’”

The need for more black and minority foster carers

It is why she strongly supports cultural competence training for social workers and foster carers. A lack of cultural literacy, Young says, can have consequences that ripple through even the most practical aspects of raising a child, like how to care for a black child’s skin and hair.

“My notes actually said: ‘Baby’s skin is dry. Mother used olive oil’. People will see dry flakes and they might try 100 different things, but the answer might be olive oil,” she says.

“This might seem trivial, but particularly when it comes to hair, it is not. For black people, the significance of having an afro, dreads or plaits is huge. But who knows how to do that? Just because I'm black doesn't mean I would know.”

This was once pointed out to her by a black foster mother. Over the years, Young has met many black and minority ethnic foster parents, bearing witness to stories of fostering being consistently described as deeply rewarding. It has led to her strong advocacy for more black and minority ethnic candidates entering the fostering world.

“We need more to come forward because it can be hugely rewarding. I know a black mother who’s fostered loads of children, and they all come back to her and are doing well. Just think, what a contribution you've made to those children's lives.”

The ‘care cliff’

Yet, while Young acknowledges there is now “at least some awareness” around the importance of history and heritage for black and ethnic minority children, one aspect of care has remained largely unchanged: the so-called ‘care cliff’.

This is the abrupt transition when, on their 18th birthday, young people's placements end and they are expected, often with little to no support, to become independent overnight.

Young recalls a moment of startling clarity shortly after leaving care that brought home the reality of being on her own. While backpacking across Europe with a friend, a frightening experience made her realise there was no one back home worrying whether she would return safely.

“[Things aren't] that different from when I was in the system, and when you consider that it's literally over half a century ago, that's a pretty damning indictment,” she says now.

Encouraging young people’s dreams

Another defining point of the care cliff for Young involved her social worker.

Although her grades at the time weren’t strong enough for university, she still yearned to go into publishing. But when she shared this with her social worker, the response was blunt: “Oh, no, that’s not for people like you”.

Directed at her as a black girl with care experience, those words have stayed with her. For many care leavers, they also echo a wider truth: the care cliff is not only about the absence of a safety net, but also the absence of belief, encouragement and support to pursue their dreams.

Nurturing young people’s dreams should be a core part of social workers’ duties, Young says. She believes leaving care should be made into an “exciting event”, where practitioners encourage young people to think about their future and help them find opportunities to make the most of it.

“What are we trying to achieve here? Just to keep them safe and secure? Just surviving shouldn't be the best we hope for them. It should be more than that,” she says.

“What we don't want to be saying to 16- and 18-year-olds is: ‘Well, good luck, because you're most likely going to end up in prison or with mental health issues or you won't go to university. And if you do, you'll drop out and be poor.'”

As a published author who has sat on the judging panels of prestigious literary awards, what would Young tell her social worker now?

“See, I've proved you wrong, but you could have helped me get there earlier,” she says.

A care-leaving backpack

Her experiences of leaving care - along with the many similar stories she has heard since - have fuelled her advocacy of practical, dignified support for care leavers.

She envisions a future where young people step out of care not with plastic bags, but with lasting connections and a backpack – literally - full of tools to launch the next chapter of their lives.

The backpack, Young says, would be filled with essentials and opportunities, like vouchers for household basics, fresh towels and sheets, mentor contacts, free sessions for courses and a list of employers ready to consider them. It would say: “We care."

“And when all that is used up, you've still got a lovely backpack," she adds. "It's practical, but it means everything, doesn't it?

“That way we help them see there are people who care about them, that they deserve to have this leg up. That's what is lacking, something that says, ‘We care about you and we want you to do well’.”

‘Help young people feel they’re not invisible’

Social work, she stresses, is vital to building a system where children feel truly cared for. This is evident in Young’s own experience with her second social worker, who broadened her horizons as a young teen by taking her to the West End and art-house cinemas.

“Our relationship wasn’t just about official visits; we wrote letters to each other, as hardly anyone had a phone at the time. I still remember her telling me I sounded tired and might be taking on too much with sports, arts, and academic work. That personal touch made it feel more empathetic.”

It is that feeling of being seen and heard, of being exposed to new experiences and passions, that encapsulates her advice to social workers. The most important thing, she says, is to listen.

“It's about helping those young people to feel that they're not invisible, that they're not shouting into the wind, that they've got something to say and that you will listen to them,” she says.

“I would like to hear children coming out of the system say, ‘I had this wonderful social worker who listened and understood. And even if she wasn't always able to do something, at least I know that I was heard.'”