THE First Minister has endorsed calls for a public education initiative designed to help transform the lives of young people in care across Scotland who are fighting against stigma and discrimination.

Speaking at a Who Cares? Scotland event on Friday’s Care Day, Nicola Sturgeon – who referred to herself as “your chief corporate parent” – heard from young people who had experienced the sharp end of discrimination and gone on to forge successful lives.

Care-experienced young people told her how it felt to lose friends and siblings through suicide or drug addiction due to inadequate support. Some had experienced angry public protests against children’s homes being built in their area.

She heard about 16-year-olds made homeless and vulnerable because leaving care as a child without adult help had become normalised. Others spoke of teachers who didn’t understand the challenges of their lives, of facing direct discrimination in getting employment, or of social workers who didn’t step in to offer desperately needed protection.

Young people said they had been labelled as having mental health problems by professionals who overlooked the abuse and stress they were living with, or had been criminalised when unable to cope with understandable anger and frustration. It is estimated that there are 250,000 people in Scotland who are care-experienced.

In response to the call for a public education campaign, Sturgeon said: “I want to endorse the principle of that absolutely. I think we need to up our action and up what we do to change public attitudes. Let me commit to work with Who Cares? to shape and design that so that we get it right and it can make a real difference.”

She also paid tribute to the hard work of the care-experienced young people in the organisation who she said were helping her understand “what it looks and feels like to grow-up in care”, adding that they had “got under my skin, and into my heart”.

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“Stigma compounds injustice and prejudice and unfairness,” she added. “It takes the difficulties people are facing and adds to that by somehow suggesting that it is their fault. Stigma is absolutely something that we should be determined to tackle together every single day.”

Kevin Browne-MacLeod, the first care-experienced director to be appointed at Who Cares? Scotland in its 40-year history, said: “We want a Scotland where care is understood. Care-experienced young people want their voices to be heard and listened to when they have been stigmatised and discriminated against.”

He said that much had been done within the care sector to improve the system. Currently, Scotland is undertaking the independent care review, a historic abuse enquiry and a national confidential forum, which aims to ensure the voices of those in care are heard.

“But it’s time to move beyond that sphere,” he added. Public support was also vital, he claimed, with a lack of understanding leading to all sorts of structural discrimination. He gave examples of Who Cares? members unable to get flats because they had no parent to act as a guarantor, or young pregnant women asked if they had been in care as part of a “risk factor check”, which also included questions about drug abuse and sex work.

Browne-MacLeod also has personal experience of the hard realities of care, which can include loneliness and isolation. Research shows those who have experienced care are more likely to die young. Both Browne-MacLeod brothers, who left care at 18, are both now dead. “We don’t leave care – care leaves us,” he said.

“We want to drive real sustainable change. We believe that if we can connect the public to the care experience we can create a Scotland that is much more understanding.”

Bruce Adamson, Scotland’s Children and Young People’s Commissioner, also gave his full backing to the “important call” to reduce stigma, which he said he encountered “time and time again” in his work with care-experienced young people.

He said he was hugely inspired by the hard work done by care-experienced young people to tackle stigma head-on.

But he claimed it was also essential that children and young people’s rights were written into Scots law, allowing routine human rights abuses suffered by care-experienced young people to be addressed.

In particular, he wants to see the age of criminal responsibility – currently eight – raised far higher than 12, as currently proposed by the Scottish Government, as it disproportionately effects children in care, who can find that a criminal justice approach is taken when a welfare one is needed.

The National: Bruce Adamson, Scotland’s Children and Young People’s CommissionerBruce Adamson, Scotland’s Children and Young People’s Commissioner (Image: PA)

“We need to make [children and young people’s human rights] enforceable so that we can take action if we are failing young people. My view is that changes to the legal process can also help bring about changes to attitudes.”

Olivia McMahon, 18, has been in and out of care for most of her life. “Kindship care, care at home, children’s units – you name it, I’ve experienced it,” she said. Aged just 16 she ended up in a homeless unit and a year later was moved to a residential home. But it was far from homely.

“I was not allowed to be hugged by those that cared for me, there were cameras everywhere except the staff office because that was their work space and I was reminded daily when I had to see staff coming and going through shift patterns, that I was someone’s job,” she said. “For me that was demoralising.”

BUT she is not someone to allow discrimination go unchecked. “I’ve been a campaigner since I could understand there were inequalities in the world”, she said. “When I came out as gay in 2013, I was in second year at school, and soon vicious gossip and rumours were spread about me. I was laughed at, gossiped about, had things thrown at me and was socially excluded.

“Things changed though as my confidence began to grow, so did my voice. I felt alone but I knew I was part of a wider community.” She later joined the successful TIE (Time for Inclusive Education) campaign, which recently passed legislation through the Scottish Parliament to make LGBT-inclusive education mandatory in all Scottish state schools.

Olivia explained: “I feel my rights as a gay woman are recognised but there are times I feel my rights as a care-experienced person are not. People knew I had problems at home but they didn’t know I was in care so I was never discriminated against by my peers.

“The stigma I felt was from the people working in the system. Teachers treated me differently, they made assumptions that I wouldn’t amount to much or that I would be disruptive. Then when I went to live in a residential unit, I felt like a number, a form or someone to be processed.”

She added: “People don’t realise the effect the system has in its bureaucratic discrimination, it’s a sign that the public need to be educated on who care-experienced people are, how we feel and why we deserve to be free from discrimination.”

Harry O’Neill, now 25, grew up in a residential children’s home. He was part of a system, a child looked after by the state from the age of 12 onwards. Before that, he was in kinship care and looked after by his gran. Helping people is just in his nature, he says. But perhaps, he suggests, it’s also a desire influenced by his childhood experiences.

“I’ve just accepted that what makes me feel complete is knowing that I’m being useful to people,” he says. “I think that’s why I became a nurse. By its very nature, it is a job that is about helping.

“When I was going through university, I spent time in an intensive care unit. I learned so much there. I saw people’s lives being taken out of their control and watch colleagues make decisions for them on their behalf for what they thought would be the right. I watched people push through their own fears and worries to focus entirely on the person in front of them.

It’s also had another unexpected effect. “Telling people I’m a nurse gives me status,” he said. “It makes them think that I’m kind, warm and approachable. Telling people I grew up in care, however, is a different story.

“I’ve experienced an entire community get together to reject a children’s home. I attended the meeting, getting ready to talk to them about my experience in care, only to be told to save my ‘sob story.’”

Instead they told him about how people like him living in the area would make them nervous about their own children’s safety and their fears that their house prices would go down. “In moments like that, other people have used stereotypes and clichés to define what they think of me,” said Harry. “That isn’t fair and it needs to change.”

The National: Robert Dorrian has to juggle a law degree with three jobsRobert Dorrian has to juggle a law degree with three jobs

Robert Dorrian, 30 and now studying law, was just four when he was placed in care. He was separated from several of his siblings, and then adopted at six along with one of his sisters. But just three years later the adoptive parents he was matched with decided it wasn’t working out. “I was placed back into care when I was nine,” he said.

“They held on to my sister. It took a long time, and many decisions that I question now, for the adults around me to decide where I should live. I had no control.”

IT is unsurprising, then, that the laws that affect children and families and determine what decisions the state can make about people’s lives interest him.

“My life has shown me how powerful the law is. It has changed who my parents are, what information about my own life I’m entitled to and what kind of protection I’m entitled to. I think that’s why I’ve spent my adult life trying to understand it.”

But studying law takes hard work and is expensive. “In class I’m getting to grips with employment law, criminal law, conveyancing and representation. I’m writing about Scotland’s unique legal system, the legislative process and our future relationship with the EU.

“Outside of class, I’m working three paid jobs and contributing time to three voluntary organisations.”

The paid jobs mean he can eat and pay the rent – the voluntary ones help him build a network of contacts that adult family members might otherwise help provide.

“Other people, whilst facing their own challenges, can take those things for granted,” he said. “I find it sad that societal attitudes, the powerful stigma and stereotypes that care-experienced people face can undermine that contribution. We are just the same as everyone else.”