ARU Final Report

40 Care leavers’ experiences of support during the Covid-19 pandemic or going on maternity leave, which left themwith no one to contact and feeling let down by services. For others, the support they received was inadequate, often due to the restrictions put in place because of the pandemic, such as health appointments being moved online or living outside of the local authority area and not being able to return to receive support: “Absolute nightmare. Well, my normal PA the one I had a year ago, she was great, if I needed anything she was always there for us, anything I needed. But she went on maternity leave and I got a new PA. I was moving house and I needed help setting up my exemption for council tax. I was trying to get in touch for 2weeks and couldn’t get in touch with anyone. [named person] got someone to phone us back. The woman on the phone said the PA had left the job and I hadn’t been informed, and the new PA hadn’t introduced herself. She did eventually contact us, not to say who she was or see how I was. She did call yesterday to ask how I was but up until that point I’d had nothing. Therewas no one even on the end of the phone not even in the general office... This experience – for me that was a difficult position, but before the lockdown, [the] leaving care the services have been amazing, I’ve never had a problem before.” (FG: Female, 20) “I haven’t reached out for much support mainly just financial. Classic struggle to get hold of them, when you get hold of them there’s not always a great answer… I haven’t been in a position where I’m really vulnerable but it just makes me think if I was vulnerable there’s not a lot of support out there.” (FG: Male, 19) “If I was at home, I’d be alright. Not being at home has had a massive impact because there’s nothing to access out here.” (FG: Male, 21) A survey conducted of social workers in England by Turner (2020) showed that 77% of respondents thought that the restrictions of the pandemic had considerably impacted on the ability of the service they worked for to carry out its role. In addition, 90% suggested these restrictions had a negative impact on their service users. Some young people concur with these findings and reported further feelings of stigmatisation as a result of virtual contact. For example, Roberts et al. (2020) found that some care leavers felt embarrassed about their surroundings when speaking to support workers virtuallywith their cameras on. Furthermore, although many young people received additional support with finances and access to technology, the extent to which these supports responded to young people’s needs varied (Roberts et al., 2020). An example of this is reflected in our findings where a young person told us: “I was given some vouchers for a free bus pass. This was helpful but also unhelpful as I was unable to use them when I came home for Christmas and am unable to use them where I live currently” (Q: Male, 21) Some care leavers in our research suggested that more contact from their personal advisor/social worker would be useful; again demonstrating that the support that some care leavers received needs to be extended to all care leavers. Just having someone to talk to was frequently reported as something that was needed. Care leavers wanted someone checking-in to see if they were okay and whether their situation had changed, rather than – as one respondent put it – waiting for “someone to reach crisis to seek help”: “The leaving care worker barely has called me to check on me this whole year.” (Q: Female, 19) “People asking if I was okay.” (Q: Female, 20) “It would have been helpful to not be signed off, right in the middle of a pandemic.” (Q: Female, 23) “Again, social care as always did nothing to facilitate help. I was left to be independent. This is a double edge sword as yes I am a