Kerrie Portman, 27, is a Care Experienced campaigner living in Cambridgeshire. During her recent stay in hospital, she has realised more needs to be done to support Care Leavers – some of her experiences are outlined in today’s blog.
I was recently admitted to the hospital after an incident, where I ended up staying for ten days. While I was in the hospital, there was a lot of talk about internal bleeding and emergency surgery, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.
This was a very frightening and overwhelming experience in itself, which was made worse by how alone I felt. As someone who is care experienced, I don’t have that fundamental foundation of family to turn to in my lowest moments. Like many care leavers, I struggle with forming and maintaining relationships, and despite sending multiple desperate messages to those in my life begging them to come visit, sadly, I only had one person come.
Research by Coram Voice shows that six per cent of care leavers reported having no one who provided them with emotional support, while one in eight care leavers said they had no one who believed in them – this is almost one in five for care leavers with a disability. Care leavers also reported feeling lonely, with one in five feeling this way ‘often’ or ‘always’ – with higher numbers for those with long term conditions.
This crushing loneliness I experienced was aggravated by hospital staff repeatedly asking me if I had any family, sometimes multiple times a day, or asking me “when” my family were visiting, as though I automatically had people who would. There should still be a code on my medical notes indicating I was a looked after child, and even if I were asked once, I should not be repeatedly asked multiple times.
Every single time I answered “no, I was in Care. I don’t have any family.”
Every time I had to repeat this, I was met with confusion by staff who didn’t know what being in care meant, or discomfort from staff who didn’t know what to say. Every time it reminded me how desperately alone I felt, of my ignored texts, the insurmountable realisation of how few people cared about me in my lowest moments, and more than once, this line of questioning brought me to tears.
Whilst the NHS cannot change the fact that I was in care, and the task of supporting care leavers to form stable support networks is a much bigger project, there must be more understanding towards care experienced patients, so we are not constantly forced to repeat these distressing and even traumatising realities during already difficult times.
This isn’t the first time I have experienced this in hospitals across the country, so it highlights that more needs to be done to support care leavers.
Two years ago, I was admitted to the hospital after having initially been told I only had a few weeks left to live. I had nobody in my life to call or message, and despite the hospital seeing nobody come to visit me the whole time, they continued regularly asking me if I had family.
On another occasion, I had to explain to paramedics in the back of an ambulance the difference between looked after children, care leavers and care experienced people, as they’d only heard of looked after children, and didn’t know what ‘care leaver’ meant. I’d like to see this change.
Especially with the new Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act expanding corporate parenting responsibilities to include NHS England, NHS Trusts and NHS Foundation Trusts, there is an important opportunity to improve how care experienced people are supported in hospital settings.
With this in mind, I’d like to see all NHS Trusts:
Both being Care Experienced and being admitted to the hospital inherently carry their own difficulties and emotional weight. Repeatedly forcing patients who are care experienced to repeat their loneliness only worsens this.
As the government has now included parts of the NHS among our legal corporate parents, I’d love to see them make simple changes to better support care leavers.
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