The fund helping young people who grew up in care to thrive at university

A charity in Birmingham is changing lives by providing access to higher education. Jon Bloomfield reports

Playwright David Edgar with some of the teenagers who were helped by the fund (Birmingham Post & Mail)

Katie was abused by a close family member when she was 12. The police investigated, her mum backed the abuser and life went downhill from there. No foster placement worked out; she had 28 in all. A spell in a children’s mental health institution followed before she found some stability in a private children’s home. She was shunted from school to school but found that it offered a bolt-hole from the chaos at home, so she managed a decent set of GCSEs and then four good A-levels: “I saw education and going on to university as a way out, a chance to find myself.”

University was hard at first. “I felt so different from the others. They didn’t know how to cook; they had family to go back to. At Christmas I stayed in the hall of residence and cried a lot.”

Things improved as she made new friends, however, and gained the confidence to join student societies. She got her degree and then decided that she wanted to be a social worker. “I felt angry and bitter about how some social workers had treated me. I feel many years later how bad they were. I still have the reports under my bed. I was let down. I felt from my experience I could do better.”