Care-Experienced Mothers Call on Corporate Parents to ‘Trust Us to Care’

NYAS Cymru (National Youth Advocacy Service Wales), in partnership with care-experienced young mothers from across Wales, has today launched its flagship ‘Trust Us to Care’ campaign in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament). 

More than a quarter (27%) of birth mothers, and a fifth (19%) of birth fathers with children placed for adoption were themselves care leavers.  NYAS Cymru’s research has uncovered that 3 in 5 (58.8%) of the young mothers NYAS Cymru surveyed believed social services did not want to give them the chance to keep their child because of their past experiences in care. 

At the point of their pregnancies being noted, a disproportionate number of care-experienced young women will automatically be subject to child protection proceedings and made to justify why they should keep their child. NYAS Cymru found that 3 in 4 young women who did not struggle with their mental health before their child was subjected to child protection proceedings developed mental health issues during, or shortly afterwards.

This flagship campaign, developed in partnership with care-experienced young mothers throughout Wales, demands that they be trusted to care for their own children. This is how the ‘Trust Us to Care’ campaign acquired its name, both as a challenge and a plea from care-experienced young mothers to social services to trust them to care. NYAS Cymru’s ‘Trust Us to Care’ campaign calls for Welsh Government and local authorities to:

1. Publish data: Publish annual data on young women in care and care-experienced young women’s interaction with child protection proceedings.
2. Strengthen corporate parenting: Make the role of the corporate parent mandatory beyond children’s services.  
3. Offer Project Unity: Enact an ‘active offer’ of support from Project Unity should take place as soon as the pregnancy is noted.  
4. End discrimination: Conduct an independent review on the processes in place for when a child (born or unborn) is subject to child protection proceedings.  

Project Unity Worker and care-experienced mother Dominique Drummond said: “The recommendations from this campaign are exactly what the sector needs. There needs to be an emphasis on support for care experienced parents, not at the point of crisis, but at the start of pregnancy. Project Unity was instrumental in helping me and my son get to a place where we were settled, and I know it can do the same for so many others. We can be empowered to change our lives, with the right support, and this is what Project Unity offers.”

NYAS Cymru has remained steadfast in its support of care-experienced young mothers and mission to keep families together through its ‘Project Unity’ service, which has been providing vital support to care-experienced young mothers and expectant mothers since 2018. Funded by the Welsh Government via its Sustainable Social Services Third Sector Grant (SSG) and delivered by NYAS Cymru, Project Unity provides emotional and practical support, help in navigating complex child protection proceedings, and wrap around holistic and intensive support including emotional health, housing, managing finances and domestic violence. Since April 2020,Project Unity has supported 447 care-experienced mothers in Wales. 

Sharon Lovell, CEO of NYAS Cymru stated, “NYAS Cymru is proud to launch its ‘Trust Us to Care’ campaign today in the Senedd. Our campaign calls on all Welsh local authorities, third sector providers, Welsh Government and other key stakeholders to remove barriers and stigmatisation that young women can face from the systems around them because of their care experience. Embedded within each of our campaign recommendations is our calls for equality for care-experienced young women, which we are committed to working together to achieve.”

To advance the campaign recommendations, NYAS Cymru is launching its Trust Us to Care Committee, which will be made up of a wide range of stakeholders working in Wales to make sure that the rights of care-experienced young women who become mothers are advanced. The group will meet every three months to drive forward campaign recommendations.