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25
Feb
Council set to give greater protection to care leavers against discrimination
Young people who have been in care are set to be given greater protection against discrimination in North Yorkshire.
North Yorkshire Council will tomorrow decide whether to treat care experience as a protected characteristic.
The move would mean the authority applying the same principles to someone who had spent time in care as those with other protected characteristics, including age, disability and sexual orientation.
Councillors will vote on the proposal tomorrow (February 26) at a full council meeting in Northallerton.
Council officials say people with have been in care face barriers and discrimination throughout their lives.
In a report recommending the proposal is approved, an example given of this discrimination is a letting agent advert for a property which read: “No history of substance misuse, no care leavers, no criminal convictions”.
The report said:
There was outrage about the advert but this is not an isolated example.
Care experienced people face discrimination and stigma in areas across housing, health, education, relationships, employment and the criminal justice system.
The report added that care leavers are “underrepresented in all of the areas we would want your children to be in and overrepresented in all of the areas we wouldn’t”.
According to statistics from the Department for Education in 2024, a care leaver in England aged 17 to 21 is more likely to be a prisoner than an apprentice.
Around 13% of care leavers go to university compared with 43% of the general population, while a study in 2018 found that if you were care experienced you were 70% more likely to die prematurely than someone who had not been in care.
The report said North Yorkshire Council worked hard to achieve the best outcomes for its care leavers, but the outcomes were still far behind those of the general population.
Officers said making care experience a protected characteristic would mean the authority needing to widen its understanding of the change in all areas, including planning, the delivery of adult social care, GDPR and data collection, public health, commissioning and procurement.
The report added:
Recognising care experience as a protected characteristic in North Yorkshire would mean that we would apply the same principles as we currently do with the other protected characteristics.
We would need to undertake and amend our equalities impact assessment and would need to amend some of the council policies to reflect that we are considering care experience as a protected characteristic.
We would also need to develop training for the workforce to help them understand care experience, the discrimination this community faces and ways they could consider minimising this.
Consultation with groups of care leavers found the change would be welcomed by the young people.
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