Care Experienced History Month 2021

From an idea over coffee to a globally recognised campaign

The first Care Experienced History Month has come and passed. April 2021 — a month of dedicated activity that brought together people worldwide to remember and understand the history of Care Experienced people across centuries and throughout the world.

I am a Care Experienced young woman. I have spent much of my adult life exploring my ‘identity’ and understanding where I came from — my heritage and history. This has been a challenge, particularly when I have tried to understand the Care Experienced community and our history, as much of our history has remained unspoken and unremembered, until now.

The journey of understanding the history of people like me has completely hooked me. I’ve spent much of my career in recent years researching specific moments in the past that shaped our community and reflecting on how my own experiences of care are similar to the life histories of Care Experienced people that walked the Earth long before I was even born.

Up until a few years ago, I knew very little about our history. I looked at other communities with which I identify and I wondered why this was because I could learn about why things are the way they are now for these parts of my identity. As a working-class person, I understand and deeply resonate with the struggles, inequality and the lack of opportunity working-class people have faced in this country throughout history. As a bisexual young woman, I felt, and still feel, extremely connected to the heritage of the LGBTQI+ community and remain thankful that many before me fought for the equal rights that I have now. So when the opportunity arose to spend some dedicated time exploring the history of Care Experienced people in Scotland, I grasped it as tightly as I could.

Ahead of the launch of Who Cares? Scotland’s ‘We Don’t Have To Wait’ report, I was tasked with researching Scotland’s care system to provide context to a section of the report. I didn’t know where to begin, so I started by Googling away and hoped for the best. I had no idea then how much of a rabbit hole I would be sucked into.

One of the first things I came across was an article by the Scotsman titled, ‘The Dundee ship which housed and educated city’s destitute boys.’ This article told the story of the HMS Mars, a former Royal Navy warship turned floating Industrial School which was home to around 6,000 boys from all over Scotland. It was the first time I had come across anything like it and I was angry that I had never heard of those boys that I felt an immediate connection to. Angry that their lives had been, in my eyes, forgotten. This felt like a complete injustice. It was from then on I had to learn everything I could about the history of Care Experienced people.

The HMS Mars at Woodhaven Harbour, Tayport.

My manager, Jamie and teammate, Kenny supported this newfound passion at every opportunity. They always had the time to listen to me when I shared another moment in our history that I had never come across before and they too, expressed equal horror at the fact none of us was aware how far back our history went or how far-reaching it was, as this was something that had never be discussed before. It was with this support that I realised that Care Experienced History was my ‘thing’ and I wanted to do something about it — a realisation that led me to decide that I did in fact want to go to university and I wanted to earn my degree in history.

Conversations like this continued to happen until one day over coffee with Jamie, I expressed I wanted to take all this knowledge I was learning and share it with Care Experienced people, our allies and the people who make decisions about our lives. I had come to this point because I felt strongly that we cannot learn and seek to make changes in the lives of Care Experienced people today, without looking back at the past and asking, ‘why were things this way?’.

Drawing on inspiration from other liberation campaign movements, we talked about bringing together Care Experienced people from across the world to celebrate our rich and diverse history.

The idea of a dedicated month for sharing and exploring the Care Experienced people was something that made me extremely excited. At this point, I felt determined to make the first-ever Care Experienced history month happen.

The work to make this idea a reality started with Care Day 2020. At this event, Jemma Kerr, Kenny Murray and Callum Lynch shared with the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon and Richard Leonard an insight into the history, heritage, and culture of Care Experienced people in Scotland. The First Minister said at this event that she’d never heard our history in this way before, and she asked us to write about it and publish it. I’m proud to say we have done this, and then some.

A few months later, my colleagues Melissa, Jemma, Kenny, and I were invited along to give the same presentation to the International Federation of Social Workers Conference. The feedback from this conference was key to my recognition that the history of Care Experienced people is a global history that stretches across centuries and states, reaching all countries in all corners of the world, with Care Experienced people being present for as long as records have been held. The announcement of Care Experienced History Month happened in September 2020. From then on, Melissa and I have worked behind the scenes to pull everything together in time. We secured sponsorship from 7 organisations; worked across different time zones to speak with people across the world; pulled together an entire month of content and events and launched our official Care Experienced History Month website — which Melissa made from nothing in the space of a few weeks.

We created 3 steering groups — Scotland, global and the 5 Nations 1 Voice partnership steering groups to achieve all of this. The Scotland and Global group members were appointed following an application process led and created by us as a team. We met with each steering group once a month to discuss our progress and as a result, Care Experienced History Month was celebrated in many countries across the world.

I sit writing this blog today filled with immense joy and pride as I reflect on the success of the first-ever Care Experienced History Month.

We created something that had never existed before. A month of dedicated celebration and reflection on the history of our community. An accessible bank of resources that will continue to grow as Care Experienced History Month continues to develop long into the future. A day, International Care Experienced Day of Remembrance, to pause and remember the legacy of Care Experienced people throughout history who are longer with us.

To get to this point took so much collective effort. It would not be possible without the absolute shift put in by everyone who supported my passion and believed in making all of this happen.

Watching it all come together and finally taking place is one of my proudest achievements in life.

It feels incredible to know Care Experienced History Month will take place on an annual basis and I have no doubt in my mind that each year more and more countries will come with us on this journey of understanding the past and join our global movement, so we can learn, grown and remember the history of Care Experienced people.

I hope that each person who joins us finds it as intriguing, thought-provoking, infuriating, joyful, inspiring and all the other emotions that I have found myself feeling when I look back at the history of my community.

And I cannot wait to see what Care Experienced History Month 2022 has in store.