by Linda Briheim-Crookall
Sometimes it is the things that do not happen that tell as much of a story as the things that do. In a report released last week, Coram Voice found that, during the Covid pandemic, care leavers’ wellbeing did not decline as might have been expected and, in some areas, improved slightly.While there is no single explanation for this, our work with care leavers suggests that the additional support made available at this time made a difference to young people’s lives.
This is a follow up to our ‘What Makes Life Good?’ report published in 2020, which analysed 1,800 care leavers’ views on their wellbeing, collected between 2017 and 2019 through our ‘Your Life Beyond Care’ survey. The survey was developed with care leavers as part of our ‘Bright Spots’ programme to capture what they felt made their lives good. It explored how young people felt about their relationships, where they lived, their finances, feelings and much more.
In our new report, we compare previous findings to responses from just under 2,500 care leavers who responded to the survey in the first year of the pandemic (2020-2021).
Our pre-pandemic analysis showed that care leavers did worse than young people in the general population on a range of measures. Care leavers were more likely to experience high anxiety, low life satisfaction loneliness and financial difficulties and were less likely to have friends and trusted supportive people in their lives.
Wellbeing maintained
In 2020-21, these higher levels of low wellbeing persisted but did not appear worsened by the pandemic. Levels of stress, anxiety, loneliness and life satisfaction all remained stable, and we saw a slight improvement in the proportion reporting that they were coping financially and had digital access.Our own work and research from the University of Bedfordshire have shown that many local authorities put in place additional support for care leavers during this period. There were also national initiatives that supported care leavers financially and practically, including the uplift to universal credit and free laptops and internet access. There was national guidance that emphasised the importance of focusing on wellbeing and reports of more frequent contact with young people to check in and ensure they were all right.
