by Anastasia Tempest
‘My Care Story’ is a new series dedicated to amplifying the stories of care experienced people and providing social workers with vital insights to improve the support they offer. Anastasia wrote about her experience of the care system in a previous article for this series.
When I think back to the moment I left care at eighteen, it feels like watching a younger version of myself walk into a storm with no map, no coat and no idea what weather was coming.
I can still see myself standing there with a bin bag of my belongings - a thin, crinkling symbol of how little I had been prepared for the world I was about to enter.
That bin bag wasn’t just a container. It was a message. It told me that I was being moved on, not transitioned. It told me that I was being cleared out, not supported.
I was expected to survive adulthood with the same lack of guidance that had shaped my childhood.
‘No plan to help me step into the world’
I had cerebral palsy and additional health needs, but none of that seemed to matter when the time came.
There was no conversation about what I might need, no plan for how I would manage, no recognition that I was stepping into a world that required skills I had never been taught. I was simply told it was time to go.
Years later, when I finally saw my care notes, I learned that I was supposed to receive psychological support, financial support, and a safe place to stay. I received none of these things.
The gap between what was promised and what was delivered was not small - it was a chasm.
The kindness of a stranger
In the absence of any formal support, I ended up staying with a woman from a church who took pity on me.
She barely knew me, yet she offered more stability in those few months than the system that had been responsible for me for years.
I was grateful, but I was also deeply aware that this was not how adulthood was supposed to begin.
I was living in someone else’s spare room, trying to pretend I understood how to be an adult, when inside I felt like a child pushed onto a stage without a script.
‘I didn’t understand how adults functioned’
The truth is that I had no living skills.
I didn’t know how to manage money, how to organise my day, how to cook properly, how to navigate appointments or how to advocate for my own needs. I didn’t understand how adults functioned because I had never been shown.
I had grown up in environments where survival was the priority, not development.
My nervous system had been shaped by instability, unpredictability and neglect. I had learned to adapt, to brace, to endure - but I had never learned to live.
Not long after leaving care, everything inside me began to unravel.
What looked like a mental health crisis from the outside was, on the inside, a complete overwhelm of my nervous system. Years of accumulated stress, trauma and unmet needs collided with the sudden expectation that I should be independent.
My system simply couldn’t hold it. I ended up in a psychiatric ward, frightened and confused, believing that something was fundamentally wrong with me.
‘My nervous system had been stretched thin’
Now, with distance and understanding, I can see that my crisis was not a personal failure. It was the predictable outcome of a young person being abandoned at the exact moment she needed help the most support.
My nervous system had been stretched thin for years.
I had lived in a constant state of vigilance, always scanning, always adapting, always trying to survive environments that were unpredictable and often unsafe. When I left care, that same nervous system was suddenly expected to handle adulthood -responsibilities, decisions, relationships, finances - without any scaffolding.
The overwhelm I experienced was not weakness. It was biology. When a nervous system has been shaped by neglect, instability, and trauma, it does not have the capacity to manage sudden independence.
It needs support, co-regulation, guidance and time. I had none of these things. Instead, I had a bin bag, a borrowed room and a lifetime of survival patterns that were never meant to carry me into adulthood.
‘I had been taught to cope, not to live’
Looking back, I can see how many pieces were missing.
I didn’t know how to regulate my emotions, because no one had taught me how. I didn’t know how to ask for help, because experience showed me that help seldom came.
I didn’t know how to trust people, because trust had rarely been safe. I didn’t know how to make decisions, because they had always been made for me. I didn’t even know how to understand my own needs, because they had rarely been acknowledged.
The system expected me to function like someone who had been prepared, supported, and guided. But I had been raised in survival, not in development.
I had been taught to cope, not to live; to endure, not choose. I had been so accustomed to managing crises, that I hadn’t learned how to build a life.
Reading my case notes
When I finally read my care notes, years later, I felt a mixture of grief and validation.
There it was in black and white: the support I was supposed to receive, the plans that were supposed to be made, the responsibilities the system had towards me. None of it had happened.
The crisis I experienced had been the direct result of broken promises, ignored needs and mishandled transitions.
Today, I can name these things with clarity. I can recognise that my crisis was not a sign of personal inadequacy, but one of systemic failure.
‘I was failed’
The truth is simple: I didn’t fail. I was failed.
But I also know this: understanding my story has given me back my power. Naming what happened has allowed me to reclaim the narrative and relinquish the shame that had never belonged to me.
I can now look at that eighteen-year-old girl with compassion instead of judgment. She was doing the best she could with what she had - and what she had was nowhere near enough.
Celebrate those who've inspired you
Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can't help but gush about?
Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.
Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.
*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*
If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com
