Trabajos individuales 2

Although there were selective HEIs within the sample that were very proactive in their support of care leavers and marketing HEIs who had not really

considered care leavers as a target for support, the interview data does provide overall support to the hypothesis that type of institution affects the way support is provided to care leavers. The newer institutions within the sample described a more hands on approach to support, building

relationships between staff and students and maintaining that contact. There was a greater expectation amongst newer HEIs in the sample that staff

beyond the student support department should have some awareness of care leavers and of the possible implications of coming from a care background.

The remainder of the chapter focuses on the provision of support in practice and the issues faced by staff developing and delivering this support.

8 Provision of support in practice

Definition of a care leaver

HEIs need to decide upon their definition of the term ‘care leaver’ in order to identify those individuals eligible to receive support. The parameters of this definition have obvious implications for the number of students receiving support. Whereas local authorities are required to comply with the definition set out in the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, which was discussed in Chapter 1, HEIs have discretion to decide on the breadth of their definition.

The student support staff interviewed valued this flexibility and felt it allowed them to be more responsive to the individual needs of students and to direct support to where, in their experience, they thought it would be of greatest benefit.

90

“We didn’t want to say ‘you have to spend x amount of time in public care’. We’ve not been as straight as that… but we’re very comfortable with doing that. We said we’d review it if loads of students came, but for now we’re very comfortable with keeping it like that.” (S8, Russell Group HEI)

Most of the support staff interviewed described being able to consider each individual’s eligibility for support on a case by case basis, in part because of the small number of care leavers currently disclosing their backgrounds. For the purposes of financial support, the majority of HEIs used a definition of care leaver roughly based on that in the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000.

However, even where an individual fell outside of these criteria, most HEIs would still try to offer some form of support if they deemed it appropriate.

Student support staff described their HEIs having very clear needs led support strategies, rather than focusing on a specific age range or period of time spent in care as the basis for eligibility.

“We’re not very strict about what we classify as a care leaver. It’s not a label. It’s about what sort of support we need to provide for these people. I don’t think we’ll be going down a local authority model… like so many weeks before their sixteenth birthday…” (S15, pre 1992 HEI)

This approach permitted staff to consider the cases of other students including those with care backgrounds who may have aged out of the

Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 definition, but who still faced obstacles such as debt, as a direct result of their care backgrounds. Students who had

become estranged from their families, or had been cared for by extended family members, for example by grandparents, without coming to the attention of children’s services were also mentioned by support staff as specific

examples of those benefiting from a flexible definition of the term ‘care leaver’.

The significance of this approach from the perspective of care leavers will be considered in Chapter 6.

91 Some student support staff described having significant discretion to award financial support, allowing them to offer funding to older students with care backgrounds, again reflecting a needs led approach.

“They are still going to be… not having the family support that other mature students, those who have delayed going into university would get, so I think there’s still a need to provide them with a tailored service.”

(S2, post 1992 HEI)

The discretion enjoyed by student support staff to address students’ needs as opposed to following rigid formulae for establishing support eligibility therefore enables HEIs to provide a safety net to students who do not have the support of their birth parents and may otherwise lack the economic, social or cultural capital of their peers.

Overall, a strength of the HEI approach is its ability to operate a combination of support. This could include care leaver support available to anyone falling within the institution’s definition of care leaver, and support available to individuals who may fall outside of the definition, but have been assessed as having support needs. However, once again in light of the changes currently being made to higher education funding this flexibility may no longer be possible. It is conceivable that in future, even support for those falling squarely within the care leaver definition will be subject to some form of means testing if budgets become restricted. For example, where care leavers are receiving generous support packages from their local authorities, HEIs may direct their support towards other care leavers receiving less

comprehensive packages. However, such a development would undermine the notion that local authorities should do everything within their power to support care leavers and provide them with economic, social or cultural capital, just as a good parent would. It would create a situation where care leavers were penalised for the efforts of their local authorities to provide levels of support emulating the normative experience of higher education. In effect, HEIs would be placing a cap on the level of support available to care leavers when no such cap is placed upon support provided by birth parents. In terms

92 of the ability of care leavers to acquire forms of capital and improve their position in society, it would create a barrier limiting the distance care leavers could deviate from the expected life course trajectory of individuals from their social background.

Identifying care leavers for pre-arrival and on course support

Before student support staff can provide care leavers with support that will help them to build up their levels of capital and prepare them for the

potentially unfamiliar field of higher education, they have to overcome the problem of identifying those students with care backgrounds.

One care leaver interviewed in this study talked about “a massive stigma attached to [being in care]”.

“I never discussed my home life at university. Nobody knew my home life at university…. even when I was at college.” (Elliot, aged 28, post 1992 HEI)

Care leavers may be reluctant to disclose their backgrounds because of this stigma (McMurray and colleagues 2010). For example, research evidence suggests there exists an assumption that looked after children are of inferior intelligence, and that they are in care, “because of personal deficit of

character or behaviour” (Martin and Jackson 2002, p126). Going to university may be one of the first times in young peoples' lives they can choose to keep this information private.

Unless a care leaver becomes known to an HEI through participation in outreach or widening participation schemes and subsequently chooses to apply to that institution, HEI staff are entirely reliant upon students disclosing their care backgrounds. If a care leaver does not have the necessary social capital in the form of relationships, for example, with supportive carers or teachers who encourage and explain the implications of disclosure, they may fail to disclose and miss out on an opportunity to access support and build up

93 their capital. Their habitus, or disposition formed through life experience, makes it unlikely that they will expect support to be available, or feel entitled to ask for it. Until recently, the likelihood was that support staff would only become aware of a care leaver if they had a specific issue that made disclosing their background necessary, and once that issue had become sufficiently serious that the student could not deal with it alone. As one student support staff member noted, this is, “normally later in the year when things start to get tricky, rather than at the beginning” (S18, pre 1992 HEI).

This leaves student support staff in the position of reacting to students’

problems, rather than helping to prevent them in the first place. The

introduction of the care leaver tick box on the UCAS application form in 2008, gave care leavers a new opportunity to disclose their care backgrounds to HEIs during the university application process. The tick box, which was discussed in Chapter 1, alerts university admissions teams to students with care backgrounds prior to their arrival on campus. The majority of HEI’s involved in this study described having established systems where

admissions teams alert student support that an applicant is a care leaver.

Other HEIs were actively looking at introducing such a mechanism.

Following the introduction of the UCAS tick box, the decision to disclose a care background still rests with the care leaver, but where they do disclose, student support staff can make them aware of the range of support available from the outset.

“[People ticking the UACS box] are identified by the Admissions Office and that automatically triggers a letter. That letter is sent from

Admissions, but is actually written by the Welfare Officer. It gives detail about the bursary and invites people to contact her so that she can look at getting the wheels in motion.” (S18, pre 1992 HEI)

This approach provides an opportunity for care leavers to immediately start accessing and building up capital.

94 The HEIs interviewed reported being at varying stages in using the UCAS tick box information and assessing its value to their admissions and support processes.

“[It has] enabled us to have a starting point which we… we’ve never had before and it’s enabled us to be proactive in contacting students at an early point in their transition to university, and I think timeliness is one of the main issues.” (S1, post 1992 HEI)

The overwhelming view was that the tick box was a positive addition to the UCAS application form and helped pre-identify at least a proportion of care leavers attending each HEI. The anticipated problem of large numbers of applicants ticking the UCAS box in error and the practical implications of identifying eligible care leavers had not materialised for those HEIs interviewed. Although every institution experienced a proportion of these errors, for many these amounted to single figures. HEI staff identified those who most frequently misunderstood the tick box as international students, students who were carers themselves and mature students with care

backgrounds. Since amendment of the tick box in its second year to include a specified period of time in care, HEIs reported fewer mistakes being made.

However, several HEI staff argued that the definition of care leaver should remain moderately wide as it allowed HEIs to establish their own parameters of eligibility for support. The potential importance of flexibility over who HEIs support has already been discussed in this chapter.

Making initial contact with care leavers and building supportive relationships

Students from all backgrounds need some form of network whilst in higher education to help them cope both academically and socially. This is

particularly so if they are living away from home, or do not have family

support. A support network, as a form of social capital, provides students with contacts to draw upon to help them overcome difficulties and make the most of their time in higher education.

95 The relationship formed between student support staff and care leavers will potentially be one of the most important in their support networks. This is particularly true early on in their time at university when they have yet to establish a circle of close friends to turn to for support. The process described by student support staff of identifying and making contact with care leavers therefore marks the beginning of a support relationship that could in theory continue until graduation. Once established, the relationship provides a doorway to access additional capital such as financial support, or being put in touch with others who can provide support such as counsellors.

Those students identified as having care backgrounds, either through the UCAS tick box or through participation in outreach activities, were generally contacted by HEIs before they arrived at the start of term. This contact, either by letter or telephone, provided student support staff with an opportunity to introduce themselves and to begin letting students know about available support. It was described by one HEI staff member as a,”...pivotal point in the support that we offer” (S1, post 1992 HEI). Some HEIs additionally forwarded students a questionnaire to assess their support needs and to encourage students themselves to consider any issues they had. Making contact before care leavers arrived on campus was key as it provided an opportunity to ask questions and allay any fears and anxieties.

“The idea is that [the staff] want to provide as much support as possible in advance to reassure the person in the process of application,

confirmation and arriving.” (S11, pre 1992 HEI)

Care leavers who lack social capital in the form of a close relationship with a carer or social worker, may not have had an opportunity up until this point to discuss their concerns about funding, accommodation or their studies. This illustrates one of the major disadvantages faced by students who do not have the support of birth parents during this unsettling period of their lives. A

number of HEIs invited care leavers to make contact with them, often using a bursary or other financial support as a form of ‘carrot’ to help set up a face to

96 face meeting. This meeting enabled staff to discuss possible support, begin to make arrangements where the student wanted assistance, and agree what level of ongoing contact would be maintained. At this initial stage, HEIs also addressed the issue of confidentiality, which will be considered later in this chapter.

Inviting care leavers to attend pre-arrival preparation programmes, or to make contact about support far in advance of the start of term resulted in limited success, perhaps because the immediacy of issues was a key motivating factor for young people. This is significant as care leavers may be missing out on an opportunity to gain capital in the form of information and contacts.

Where care leavers were reluctance to make contact, several HEI staff spoke in terms of multiple stages in the contact process over the pre and post arrival periods, giving care leavers several opportunities to come forward. This allowed care leavers more than one chance to access the support which could help them build up their levels of capital and enable them to make the most of the opportunities at university.

It was apparent from the interviews with HEI staff that considerable effort and staff time was involved in trying to engage with care leavers to inform them of the support options available. One way of reducing this may be through utilizing an existing relationship within care leavers’ support networks: the relationship between a care leaver and their local authority. It is possible that this relationship has been historically difficult, but if local authority staff can be given the necessary information to start talking to care leavers about the support available from HEIs, and the benefits and implications of disclosing their care backgrounds, they will be better prepared to make decisions about support once at university. Even without having detailed information on the support package available at the care leaver’s preferred HEI, local authorities could begin to reassure care leavers that disclosure does not mean being labelled, or being constantly singled out for preferential treatment by staff, and that by making contact with student support, they could at least see what would be available to them. This type of preparation for university to an extent reflects that received by students being supported by their birth families. It will

97 help make the higher education field, or environment feel more familiar. It will also positively influence the individual’s habitus, making them more likely to make decisions and take actions that will benefit them. For example, it may help to foster increased feelings of entitlement to support, making care

leavers more inclined to find out about the provision available and to access it from the outset. The relationship between care leaver and carer also provides a similar opportunity to prepare care leavers for higher education.

The role of named contact

Named contacts were one of the most common forms of support offered to care leavers by the HEIs participating in this study. In themselves, they provide a key source of social capital for care leavers. They also provide an easily identifiable route to accessing or building further capital. Nearly all of the student support staff interviewed stated that they provided known care leavers with a named contact, mainly from within student support, but in a small number of cases, a personal or faculty tutor from within the academic staff. The intention was that students used these staff members as a first point of contact to discuss any issues they had.

“Instead of passing them from pillar to post, to have one person so they didn’t have to disclose their status every time they contacted a different bit of the University for a different bit of support, and initially they could go through one person who they could just ring up and ask for by name.”

(S18, pre 1992 HEI)

The concept of a named contact was intended to give a human face to institutions, someone with whom care leavers could build a relationship of trust, so they did not feel apprehensive about asking for help or guidance.

“A named member of staff who is basically their problem solving person.”

(S16, pre 1992 HEI)

98 It also removed the practical difficulty of knowing who to turn to within an institution. Support staff hoped that students would seek help or guidance before small issues grew and started to affect their academic progress.

Chapter 6 will consider how much value care leavers placed on having named contacts.

Maintaining an appropriate level of ongoing contact and support with care leavers

Once initial links were established with care leavers, the approach to

maintaining ongoing contact differed between HEIs. It was clear that staff had given a great deal of consideration to the extent of their roles in the lives of care leavers who lacked the support of their birth families. At a number of HEIs, staff described maintaining regular contact with care leavers, in some cases building up close supportive relationships.

“I contact each of my students on a regular basis. Maybe two weekly.

Some of them want it monthly. Some of them don’t want it at all, but I do say to those, ‘Look, I know you don’t want it, but I’ll contact you once per term as a minimum if that’s ok, just to check that everything is

Some of them want it monthly. Some of them don’t want it at all, but I do say to those, ‘Look, I know you don’t want it, but I’ll contact you once per term as a minimum if that’s ok, just to check that everything is