Campaigners prepare to march to mark Care Experienced Week

It is the second year the charity has hosted the event, which sees care experienced people of all ages – and their supporters – march through the city’s streets to demonstrate a commitment to making sure all children in care are loved.

Despite substantial, well-established evidence that loving relationships are fundamental to healthy development in childhood, the charity claims that there are structural issues which act as barriers to love in the care system.

The majority of looked after children will have three or more placement moves, with many moving repeatedly between different forms of care including foster families and children’s homes.

There is often an assumption that foster families, social workers and other carers should not keep in touch with children after they have moved on – yet love cannot flourish where there are time bars, the charity argues.

As well as regular moves, siblings are routinely separated – 70% of those in care with brothers and sisters are not placed together.

The Scottish Government announced in its programme of government last month that it will create a new statutory provision in favour of brothers and sisters who are taken into care being placed together “where it is in their best interests” but it has not yet been implemented.

Others claim that better support given for families at risk could prevent some children coming into care at all. A total of 14,738 children were looked after on July 31 2018, a slight decrease on the previous year. About a quarter are looked after at home with the support of the state. Just over a third are in foster placements and 10% are in residential care.

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Kevin Browne-MacLeod, director of care experienced membership at Who Cares? Scotland, said both his personal and professional experience had convinced him of the need for urgent change. Browne-MacLeod was in care between the ages of 3-18 and moved at least eight times. The number may be higher but though he has requested his records, he is still contesting redacted sections and withheld information.

Browne-MacLeod said the regular moves – which make it difficult for children to form trust bonds with the adults charged with caring for them were one of a number of structural problems that should be addressed.

“The care system has struggled with love,” he said. “My experience of care was very fragmented because of the frequency of moves and it didn’t allow me to build stable relationships. By the time I was eight or nine I knew that care was not a place where I would find love.

“I think the real impact is probably in adulthood. When you grow up without love it’s very difficult to navigate adult relationships and there have been challenges finding reference points in marriage and as a father. It wasn’t a space I was familiar with.”

He claimed records show members of Who Cares had been raising the importance and need for love as far back as the 1970s in meetings and in the membership magazine.

“That was what inspired us to launch our Love Rally for the first time last year,” he added. “The Love Rally is so important. It’s not just about talking to the care sector. It’s about talking to ordinary Scots. We want them to open their hearts and homes.

“We need a huge cultural change and like many oppressed groups the power comes when we [care experienced people] come together as a collective. We’re helping them to drive change. Next week will be a real experience of unity and we expect to see people of all walks of life walking with us.

“It’s important that we talk about the real issues – separation and placements and all the rest – but also that we clearly say we need Scots to help ensure all childhoods are based in love.

“It’s a call for help to Scots to firstly understand care, to see us not as a different species but as the same as their own children. And we also want them to get alongside us and help change things.”

Amy-Beth Miah (above), 24, from Ayrshire, will be marching on Saturday “in remembrance of the friends for whom this conversation has come too late”, and to show her baby son “the kind of world I want to live in”. Young people who grow up in care are more to suffer from mental health issues and are likely to die young.

She said that looking back at her years in care as a child and teenager she felt like the adults in her life were ‘‘competing with and contradicting each other’’.

“Some thought I needed discipline, some thought I needed exclusion, some thought I needed a cuddle and some thought I needed to learn to stand on my own two feet. Love, and how it was shown to me, was always conditional.

“In one children’s home I stayed in, the disciplinarian manager lined us up and personally put cereal in our bowl at breakfast. The amount we got depended in our how we were deemed to have behaved.

“On days when I received a single Rice Krispie from him, another staff member would sneak tea and toast into my room.” She was 11 years old at the time.

“I think it’s understandable then that I struggled, and still do, to settle and trust other people,” she added. “I had a breakthrough when I found a foster family who did everything they could to prove to me that their home and hearts would be open to me for as long as I wanted. I had been let down so many times by this point, however, that I tested their commitment in unhealthy ways.”

She was eventually moved to another placement despite their appeals for her to stay. They were told not to stay in touch.

“They have proven true to their word though,” added Miah. “They are still in my life and they are who I turn to when I have a challenge I need support to overcome. Love is a genuine action. It’s not something that can simply be added to a job description or a project plan. The idea of making a childhood loving seems like the least controversial thing in the world to me.”

In October 2016 the Scottish Government launched the Independent Care Review, which is currently looking at how to transform the care

system and is due to report next year. Inspired by the feedback of care experienced young people it has also launched a love work group, which is looking at the how to embed love in the system.

Rosie Moore, co-chair of the Independent Care Review’s Love work group, said: “The Independent Care Review has heard many times from children and young people about how important it is to feel loved, just like any other child.

“Unfortunately, too many people who go through the ‘care system’ in Scotland are denied the stability and consistency in their lives to build meaningful relationships. It’s incredibly difficult for a young person to build trust if they are moved from place to place multiple times.”

The group has heard from young people who have been moved more than 50 times while in care.

“Professionals working in the care sector sometimes feel that the system and its rigid structures prevents them from being able to show love for children and young people, which is incredibly sad,” she added.

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“The benefits of love in Scotland’s care system are endless. Care experienced children and young people who are loved flourish and reach their potential. If young people in care grow up with support and love around them, we are going to have adults who have a sense of worth and well-being, who can build relationships and thrive like they are supposed to.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “All children and young people in Scotland should be able to grow up safe and respected, and succeed in life – and most importantly they should feel loved and supported at all stages of their life.

“It is clearly unacceptable that some of our most vulnerable children and young people living in, or leaving, the care system face barriers to achieving this, which is why we set up the Independent Care Review which has the voice of children and young people with experience of care at its heart.

“We agree, however, that there is a need for urgent action. That’s why we recently announced a package of measures, including a legislative presumption that siblings entering care will be placed together, where this is in their best interest.

“This is part of a wider package of measures and follows on from a commitment to develop a national anti-stigma initiative in partnership with a range of organisations. That work is well underway.

“We are working with the Care Review and others on further actions that can be taken as soon as possible to help deliver the First Minister’s commitment that love should be at the heart of the care system.”