This Care Leavers’ Month, we reflect on how we can do more to ensure that education, and therapy education in particular, and therapy is a place of belonging for care-experienced people.

Too many young people leaving care still face barriers to opportunity, support, and stability. According to the Office for Students, only 13% of school leavers who had been looked after continuously for 12 months or more entered higher education in 2018-19, compared with 43% of other pupils.
As an educational community founded on values of inclusion, community, and responsibility, we recognise our role in helping to change that.

Looking ahead, we will continue to strengthen access pathways, build flexible learning environments, and nurture mentoring relationships that make a real difference. We know that care leavers bring invaluable perspectives, experience, and insight to the therapeutic professions; qualities that can help shape a more empathetic, understanding, and equitable society.

Our commitment is to keep asking: how can we make our spaces more inclusive, our systems more supportive, and our culture more open? Because education should not only change lives. It should open doors.