As Care Experienced Week 2026 ends, it gives us a moment to reflect. The week provides a valuable opportunity to educate others and put a spotlight on the Care Experienced community. However, a genuine question remains: why don’t we see this same level of commitment, energy, and visibility during the other 51 weeks of the year?
If conversations about the futures of Care Experienced people only happen for seven days in the year, we risk turning Care Experienced Week into a tokenistic social media exercise.
Too often, organisations, governmental bodies, and corporate parents use this week to appear as though they are doing everything in their power to keep The Promise. We see a flurry of social media posts, pledges and awards recognising institutions for how well they are supporting our most vulnerable.
Yet on the ground, when policies are treated as a box-ticking exercise rather than a real shift in culture, those statutory promises stay on paper rather than becoming a lived reality. Worse still, when organisations put forward pastoral support staff who aren’t properly equipped to support Care Experienced people, young or old, it leads to fractured relationships and leaves individuals feeling displaced, meanwhile the institutions themselves are being recognised and awarded.
Creating the Conditions to Thrive
For Corporate Parents, organisations, and decision-makers to create environments where Care Experienced people genuinely thrive, three things need to happen:
- Real Accountability and Mindful Language: People in positions of power must be held accountable for the outcomes they are supposed to deliver, not just the policies they write. That starts with being deeply mindful of the language used in boardrooms, classrooms, and communities. Careless or institutional language only deepens stigma. Everyday practices, like pulling a child out of class for a Team Around the Child meeting during school hours, can broadcast their private life to peers, stripping away their agency and creating unnecessary shame or not knowing the difference between Looked After and Care Experienced, can lead to creating a feeling of isolation and not belonging to any one group or getting the support that they are entitled too.
- Visible Role Models: Young people need to see people who have walked their path and gone on to succeed. Representation shows Care Experienced people that they have real options and that their background does not define their ceiling.
- Moving Beyond Box-Ticking: Keeping The Promise means ensuring that every corporate parent fundamentally understands the lifelong impact of their decisions. Over fifty years of policy changes in the UK have shown that top-down administrative tweaks create an illusion of progress while leaving the same systemic barriers, like disrupted schooling and fractured networks, intact. True inclusion isn’t just physically placing someone in a room; it is creating a genuine sense of psychological safety and belonging.
A Message to Every Care Experienced Young Person
If I could make sure every Care Experienced young person knew two things about their future and potential, it would be this:
First, you are more than capable of achieving whatever you set your mind to. The barriers you face are the result of systems that need to do better, not a reflection of your ability or worth.
Second, you are not alone. Navigating care can feel deeply isolating, especially when it seems like no one around you understands what you are carrying. I promise you that there are so many other Care Experienced people out there going through similar situations, and there is a whole community of people ready to stand in your corner and help.
Looking Ahead: Relationships and Resources
When I picture a Scotland where every Care Experienced person can achieve their goals, it comes down to something that should be common sense: putting relationships at the heart of education and support.
Every child needs secure attachment and relationships to thrive, and in education, the “One Good Adult” approach proves how powerful one consistent, reliable, and emotionally stable adult can be. Imagine being a Care Experienced young person waking up, struggling to get through the morning, and still making the effort to head to school. When you walk through those doors having a hard time, the last thing you need is an adult who judges you solely on your marks, takes their own bad day out on you, or gets annoyed because you turned up five minutes late. When a young person is in survival mode, navigating grief, instability, or fear, trauma responses often get mislabelled as defiance.
What changes a life is the adult who respects you, shows up for you consistently, and is always in your corner unconditionally. That non-judgmental safety is what gives a young person the confidence to push themselves and go for their dreams, even when those dreams feel a little too ambitious.
However, goodwill alone isn’t enough. Alongside relationships, we urgently need resources and more training for staff who work with our most vulnerable. Right now, the baseline knowledge, trauma-informed training, and practical awareness around supporting Care Experienced children and adults are at a bare minimum. Until we back up our national ambitions with proper training, funding, and everyday relational care, we have to ask ourselves: are we really Getting It Right For Every Child?
