I dreaded turning 18 as a care leaver. There is a cliff-edge which leaves us without support

For many young people, home is a place of warmth, safety and family. But my first home after leaving care aged 18 was none of those things. It was cold, silent, and overwhelming. Turning 18 filled me with dread as support drained away and I was left to fend for myself in extremely difficult circumstances.

But I am far from alone in experiencing this. A new report, on the wellbeing of children in care and care leavers, published by Coram Voice as part of the Bright Spots programme, found that young people’s wellbeing drops sharply when they turn 18 and leave care. One in three young care leavers report low wellbeing, with wellbeing rates declining in recent years. When I read the report, I didn’t see a list of statistics; I saw the chapters of my own life unfolding.

For me this decline in wellbeing wasn’t gradual. It was instant. My wellbeing didn’t just drop. It was shaken to the core. We call this the ‘care cliff’, but some young people use the visual image of ‘fireworks’ because you have this big build up and then bang… gone. You’re on your own. Those first 365 days taught me that your wellbeing can collapse when support disappears.

Read more:

• Care leavers face a ‘postcode lottery’ for support: ‘It can be incredibly lonely at Christmas’
• Why care leavers need better access to childhood records: ‘A stranger knew more about me than I did’
• Shocking number of children in care live without consistent love and support of an adult

The Bright Spots report highlights that a third of care leavers don’t feel safe at home. This is something I understand deeply. After many, many placements in care, instability wasn’t new to me but facing it without any meaningful support for the first time was something else entirely. You can’t build adulthood on foundations that keep shifting beneath your feet. It is hard for young people to grow when their environment is built on fear and instability.

Young people highlighted that trusted relationships are vital to wellbeing, but many young people lose these when they leave care. Those relationships are often the only consistent threads we have in a system built on constant change. And when you leave care, those threads snap far too quickly. I lost relationships I depended on, people who understood my triggers, my history, and the small things that helped me feel grounded. Losing that safety net at 18, it’s more than just ‘becoming independent’, it is losing the people who kept us afloat.

Children and young people in family-based homes reported higher wellbeing than those in supported accommodation. Most of my childhood was spent moving between residential units and temporary placements. I entered care around the age of four, and by the time I was a teenager, I had already lived in more places than most people live in over a lifetime. Constant upheaval takes a toll, emotionally, mentally, physically, and when you spend years being moved it becomes harder to trust, harder to feel secure, harder to believe that wellbeing is something you’re entitled to rather than something other people get.

Feeling stressed about finances can have a huge impact on wellbeing and the number of care leavers struggling to cope financially has gone up from 18% in 2017-20 to 22% in 2021-24. There is no safety net when you’re a care leaver, no family to fall back on, no one to teach you the basics of getting by and no one to call when you’re choosing between heating and food. Financial stress chips away at wellbeing until you don’t even realise how much stress you’re carrying.  

What the Bright Spot report does is reflect something I’ve known for years, that wellbeing isn’t a luxury for care leavers – it’s a lifeline. You cannot expect young people to thrive if you remove their support, their safety, their relationships and then hand them a set of keys and a ‘good luck’. Wellbeing is built through stability, trust, connection, and safety. And sadly, those things don’t magically appear at 18.

My story isn’t unique. That’s the point. Care leavers like me walk into adulthood carrying more than people realise, trauma that hasn’t been processed, relationships that never lasted long enough to heal us, and ‘independence’ that arrives far too early. We are expected to go out into the world like our childhoods never happened.

While these findings don’t surprise me, they validate something important. Reading this report was like stepping back in time and giving my younger self validation to feel upset, angry, confused and scared.

My hope in writing this is simple. I want to remind people that wellbeing isn’t optional for children in care and care leavers. Support cannot end at 18. When wellbeing is ignored, young people fall through the cracks. If we want care-experienced young people to not only survive but to genuinely thrive then we must treat wellbeing as the foundation, not the afterthought. Care doesn’t stop when we leave the system, it stops when we no longer get the support we deserve.

Alfie-James Waring is a care-experienced consultant at Coram Voice. Coram’s current Christmas campaign, ‘Home is where the start is’, focuses on the importance of safe loving homes for all children and young people.

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