28 November 2025

What young people with experience of care want social workers to know 

“Be invested. Even if you don’t see the impact straight away, it stays with us for life.” 

For National Care Leavers Month 2025, we spoke with three young people with experience of care. Each was asked one question: what is one piece of advice you would give to a social worker? 

Each answer is unique, but one message sits at the heart of all three: showing up, showing interest and listening can make a difference for children that lasts far beyond childhood. 

Aicha

When Aicha was a teenager, anxiety shaped much of her daily life. Her college attendance dropped to 12% and opening up to professionals felt nearly impossible. What helped her most was feeling understood by someone who took the time to get to know her. 

“My social worker showed a genuine interest in me. I was really anxious as a teenager and struggling with college, but she helped me with my anxiety and sent me little check-ins with memes from TV shows we both liked. 

“We bonded over Brooklyn 99 and our love for cats. I had two cats, she had two cats and we used to go and eat mango sorbet and talk about life. 

“Having something we both liked made it much easier to communicate about other things. The first time we met, we talked about Brooklyn 99 and it helped build a bond. It made it easier for me to open up about the things I was finding really hard, because I could tell she cared.” 

Those moments made the relationship feel natural and human. They helped Aicha feel at ease and made it easier to talk about the more difficult parts of her life. 

With that support, Aicha finished college and she is now studying politics and international relations at university. Her advice for social workers is clear:

Be invested. Even if you don’t see the impact straight away, it stays with us for life.”

Ohemaa

When we asked Ohemaa what advice she would give to social workers, she spoke about responsibility and the long-lasting effect of decisions made in a young person’s life. For her, the role of a social worker is inseparable from the role of a corporate parent. 

“The decisions you make in our life impact us in the long term. You might move on to a new case, a new child, but your decision sticks with us for years. 

“You are our corporate parent. That means you have responsibility for us and for the decisions you make in our lives. So, act like it. Don’t forget about us. Don’t neglect us. Be there for us, because we don’t have anyone else. 

“Sometimes social workers take things personally because of how we react. We’re dealing with trauma and they think we’re attacking them, so they attack us back. That doesn’t help. We need you to understand where it’s coming from.” 

Alongside the challenges, Ohemma also remembers the social worker who changed her path: someone who pushed her to finish education, believed in her and reminded her she was capable when she started to doubt herself. 

Those moments of belief made a lasting difference. They gave her the confidence to move forward and helped shape the direction of her life. Her advice to social workers is grounded in that experience: 

“Don’t forget about us. Show up for us. Your belief can change everything.” 

Hannah

For Hannah, it is essential that social workers remember they are not the only professionals who young people rely on. 

In her own words: 

“The most important person to a young person or a child isn’t always going to be the social worker. It might be someone else.”

“It could be a youth worker, a counsellor or someone you’re doing work with. It’s the person you connect with the most, the one who feels genuine, and who you feel is really there for you at that moment in time.” 

Hannah’s perspective reminds us that young people build trust where they feel safest and that meaningful support can come from many different professionals in their lives. 

Those relationships work best when social workers recognise them, value them and collaborate as part of a wider network that helps keep a young person safe from harm. 

Her advice for social workers: 

“Understand that we might trust someone else more than you and that’s okay. Work with the people we feel close to.”