By Suzanne Briscoe, Specialist Advisor at Concrete Rose

 

As a care-experienced adult, a clinician, a researcher and a social worker in children’s services, I carry a dual perspective—one shaped by both lived experience and years of frontline practice. That combination has given me a deep understanding not just of the systems we work in, but of the unspoken challenges care-experienced adults carry long after they’ve left the care system.

One of the most profound of those challenges is the absence of what I call relational and practical safety.

This isn’t just about whether a person has a support worker, a home, or a job. It’s about whether they have people in their corner—those steady, dependable relationships and resources that catch you when you fall, guide you when you’re lost, and hold space for you when you’re struggling. It’s about having someone to call when the boiler breaks, when the baby won’t sleep, or when you’re questioning a life decision. It’s the knowing that help, encouragement, and backup exist beyond the professional sphere. At its heart, it’s about belonging—knowing you matter to someone, that your presence is missed, and your life is held in mind.

Relational and practical safety refers to the consistent emotional, financial, and social support that most people receive through enduring family relationships or informal networks. It includes emotional reassurance, help with money or housing in a crisis, the ability to return home when things go wrong, guidance during life transitions, and a sense of belonging rooted in connection.

For care-experienced adults, that kind of support is often absent, inconsistent, or conditional—and the impact of that absence is lifelong.

This isn’t a theoretical gap—it’s deeply personal. I’ve felt it in my own life, and I’ve seen it in the lives of the care-experienced young people and adults I’ve worked with. It affects how we make decisions, how we form relationships, how we cope, and how we imagine our futures.

What follows is a reflection on what that absence means—not just in one moment, but across a lifetime. It is both personal and professional. It is a call to rethink what support really means, and what true care looks like beyond a statutory threshold.

While deeply personal, this piece is also intended as a resource for those working with or designing services for care-experienced people. It invites reflection, challenge, and change.

Because care, if it’s to be meaningful, must extend beyond the leaving care date. And safety must be something more than survival—it must include connection, continuity, and hope.

Education and Employment: When Failure Isn’t an Option

Education and career progression are often presented as linear journeys, filled with milestones and celebration. But when you’re care-experienced, those pathways are full of invisible barriers. I’ve worked with young people who have withdrawn from courses they loved—not because they weren’t capable, but because they couldn’t afford accommodation during summer, or had no one to help with a last-minute move, or couldn’t concentrate through waves of instability. One young person told me they dropped out of their degree because the university closed its halls over the holidays, and they had nowhere safe to go. They left quietly, not because they weren’t succeeding, but because they couldn’t risk instability.

I’ve made many decisions in my own life not based on ambition, but on risk. I’ve chosen stability over opportunity, and security over aspiration, because I knew I didn’t have a backup plan. There was no one to pick up the pieces if it didn’t work out. Even things like taking a short-term contract felt too uncertain.

I’ve also noticed the emotional toll this takes: when others around you are talking about “dream jobs” or “career development,” and you’re just trying to stay afloat. Sometimes, being able to keep going is a success in itself—but it’s rarely recognised as such.

• Recommendation: We need to rethink what support looks like for care-experienced adults in education and work. Beyond bursaries and job schemes, we need people—consistent, skilled professionals who understand the emotional impact of walking these paths alone. Support must be flexible, long-term, and embedded with relational safety so that ambition can be safely explored, not suppressed.

Housing and Instability: No Room to Fall Back

Housing is a cornerstone of stability, but for care-experienced adults, it’s often a fragile foundation. I’ve supported people through homelessness and insecure housing, not because they made poor choices, but because one thing went wrong and there was no safety net—no spare room at a parent’s house, no one to co-sign a lease, no family to lend a deposit.

The housing system is often rigid and difficult to navigate, and it rarely accounts for the emotional impact of moving frequently, of living in temporary accommodation, or of being in a flat alone with no one to check in. For many, the fear of eviction or loss of housing never really goes away—even years after being “settled.”

Personally, I’ve always been financially cautious when it comes to housing. I underspend, over-insure, and constantly plan ahead—because housing has never felt secure. This vigilance doesn’t come from preference—it comes from lived experience. From knowing that if you fall, no one is there to catch you.

• Recommendation: Stable housing must be more than just a roof—it needs to be a place of safety and belonging. Care-experienced adults need access to long-term, emotionally and practically supported housing. This includes transitional support, trauma-informed tenancy services, and a recognition that housing is relational, not just transactional.

Financial Pressure: Living Without a Cushion

Financial resilience is often taken for granted—built over time, passed down through family, quietly there when needed. But for care-experienced adults, that cushion rarely exists. I’ve supported people forced to take out high-interest loans or miss out on opportunities because they couldn’t front the cost. I’ve experienced that pressure myself—the constant calculations, the fear of a single unexpected bill.

Over time, I’ve developed survival-based habits: avoiding unnecessary spending, saving “just in case,” and always trying to anticipate worst-case scenarios. These behaviours can look responsible from the outside—but they’re also about fear. Fear of being caught short, fear of not coping, fear of slipping through the cracks again.

What we often overlook is the emotional energy this takes. When every financial decision carries a risk you can’t afford to take, it’s exhausting. It makes long-term planning difficult, and it can limit the confidence to take positive risks.

• Recommendation: Financial support for care-experienced adults must go beyond budgeting advice. We need trauma-informed financial advocacy, emergency grants, savings schemes, and systems that recognise how the absence of intergenerational support creates long-term structural inequality.

Mental Health: The Weight of Doing It Alone

Mental health challenges are common among care-experienced adults—but they are often misunderstood. I’ve worked with people whose distress has been labelled as “complex” or “hard to engage,” when really, they are tired. Tired of being strong. Tired of managing alone. Tired of hoping someone will stay.

In my own experience, the reluctance to rely on others often runs deep. It’s not just about independence—it’s about history. When you’ve been let down, abandoned, or betrayed early in life, relying on someone doesn’t feel safe. It feels risky. So even when help is offered, the instinct is to protect yourself.

This creates a cycle of self-reliance, where burnout is common and support is rarely trusted. And yet we’re often praised for being “resilient,” without acknowledging that this resilience comes at a cost.

• Recommendation: Mental health services for care-experienced adults must move beyond traditional models. We need relational, consistent, emotionally safe support—not revolving doors of therapists or short-term interventions. Healing happens in relationships, and for care-experienced people, those relationships need to be especially trustworthy, stable, and long-term.

Relationships and Parenting: Building Without a Blueprint

Supporting care-experienced parents has shown me the huge pressure of raising children without extended networks. I’ve watched people doing everything they can with extraordinary love—but also extraordinary stress. There’s no one to step in when they’re unwell, no one to babysit while they attend an appointment, no one to offer advice when things feel overwhelming.

I’ve also seen the fear that asking for help will lead to judgment or intervention, especially from professionals. Many care-experienced parents are deeply protective—not just of their children, but of their right to raise them without being over-scrutinised. And too often, that fear is justified.

As a care-experienced adult myself, I’ve felt the pressure of building support from scratch. There’s no ready-made family to lean on. No long-standing friendships shaped from childhood. Every connection takes time, effort, and trust—and trust doesn’t always come easily when your early experiences have taught you that people leave, break promises, or cause harm.

Relationships take energy, and energy isn’t always in abundant supply when you’re holding everything else together. Even when support is available, allowing yourself to rely on others can feel unfamiliar—or unsafe.

What’s often overlooked is how deeply this impacts identity. Without stable, loving connections, it can be harder to know who you are, what you deserve, or where you belong. This isn’t just about romantic relationships or parenting—it’s about friendship, community, and being known.

Belonging and love are not luxuries. They are human needs that shape our identity, our capacity to nurture others, and our ability to believe we are worth loving. This is the emotional labour of connection—quiet, unseen, and essential.

• Recommendation: We must invest in consistent, long-term relationship-based support that recognises the emotional labour of connection.

Communities and informal networks can all play a role in bridging the gap of relational poverty. From peer-led groups to intergenerational support from older adults, we need to normalise “being there” for one another—beyond roles, contracts, and time-limited interventions.

This includes mentoring, peer networks, trauma-informed community-building, and adult keyworkers who remain a point of stability. Relationships must be treated as protective factors—not “extras”—in the lives of care-experienced adults.

Ambition and Risk: When Dreaming Feels Dangerous

Ambition is often seen as a good thing. But for care-experienced adults, it’s complicated. I’ve seen people with huge potential hold back—not because they didn’t want more, but because the cost of failure felt too high.

I’ve felt that myself. There have been times when I didn’t apply for promotions—not because I lacked the skills, but because I couldn’t afford the risk of not being good enough. I’ve over-prepared, overworked, and pushed myself to the point of exhaustion—not to get ahead, but to feel safe. Because when you grow up without a safety net, proving yourself becomes a survival tactic.

It’s not just about work. It’s about identity. When no one’s cheering you on or helping you back up, you become your own critic, coach, and crisis team. And that takes a toll.

The services designed to support us often inadvertently reinforce this fear. Risk-aversion in the care system—born from understandable safeguarding concerns—can end up stifling opportunity. It can prevent young people from forming lasting relationships, from staying with host families longer, or from receiving support past rigid age cut-offs.

We must ask whether we are supporting care-experienced people to thrive—or simply protecting them from failing.

• Recommendation: Ambition needs nurturing—not just permission. Services must build in emotional and structural scaffolding that allows care-experienced adults to take risks, explore growth, and recover from failure. That means relational encouragement, opportunities tailored to real-life responsibilities, and the freedom to succeed on their own terms.

Final Reflections

Being care-experienced doesn’t end at 18. Or 21. Or 25. And the role of the corporate parent shouldn’t end either—just as the role of a parent doesn’t end when their child reaches adulthood.

Through both my personal and professional lens, I’ve seen what happens when care-experienced adults are supported with genuine relational and practical safety—and I’ve seen what happens when they are left to cope alone.

Relational and practical safety is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. It is the foundation for recovery, growth, and long-term wellbeing.

More organisations, employers, and public bodies are beginning to recognise care experience as a characteristic warranting protection equivalent to those in the Equality Act—an acknowledgement of the systemic disadvantage and discrimination care-experienced people face throughout their lives. This shift is important, but it must be matched by meaningful action, investment, and cultural change—especially when it comes to how we support care-experienced adults after they’ve left the system.

Practitioners, service leaders, and policymakers must ask: Are we building systems that mirror the continuity and connection of family? Or are we asking people to navigate adulthood alone with only transactional support? This piece is offered as a contribution to those conversations—as a prompt for learning, co-production, and reimagining relational practice with and alongside care-experienced adults.

We also need to widen the circle of belonging—inviting communities, neighbours, and peers to take up space in that journey. People often care, but don’t know how to connect with the need. Our task is to join the dots and make that care visible and possible.

One area we rarely explore is the absence of intergenerational support—not just in our pasts, but in our present and future. Many care-experienced adults are now parents themselves, navigating the immense responsibility of raising children without the presence of grandparents, older relatives, or generational wisdom to guide or validate them. There may be value in exploring intergenerational relationships not as services or mentorships, but as genuine, trusted presences—elders who offer affirmation, emotional grounding, and perspective. Perhaps our systems could make space for this kind of connection, rooted in belonging, not bureaucracy.

We need to stop asking care-experienced people to leave care and get on with it.

We need to commit to staying in relationship with them.