“We can let
our experiences define us, or choose to define our experiences,” says Luke
Rodgers, founder of Foster Focus, an organization that challenges the stigmas
and labels assigned to children in care in the UK.
As a
care-leaver from the UK foster system, Luke understood a lot from a young age
about a broken system. "I pledged to myself that I would dedicate my
career to finding ways to give young people more positive outcomes.”
By founding
Foster Focus, Luke transformed his experiences into valuable insights for
foster care providers and children. Foster Focus challenges the stigmas and
labels assigned to children in care that often prevent them from thriving in
foster settings. The venture’s peer-to-peer program equips youth with tools to
understand their experiences in a positive way. Through the programme,
participants develop facilitation and speaking skills, eventually designing
their own workshops to share what they’ve learned with their peers.
To address
systems-level change, Foster Focus combined theory, policy, and the personal
experiences of care-leavers to conduct trainings that help youth-serving
institutions better advocate for children’s legal rights and more proactively
include children’s voices in decision-making processes. The impact so far:
increased awareness of children’s rights among foster agencies as well as over
1,000 youth in care reached through peer-led leadership trainings.
Luke
Rodgers’ journey from foster care statistic to champion of systems change was
filmed during Generation Now, an event hosted by IYF, Laureate International
Universities, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
During the event, young social entrepreneurs from around the globe had the
opportunity to share their innovative solutions addressing education, gender
equality, youth engagement, and more.
In his
story, Luke shared a staggering statistic. "Fifty percent of the UK’s
homeless population are people who have left the foster care system." At
age 15, Luke was part of that statistic. He slept on trains at night and went
to school during the day. Today, he is a 2015 Laureate Global Fellow and
recently named Entrepreneur of Excellence by the National Diversity Awards.
Before
that, in 2013, he had already been awarded the Children's Achievement Award for
his work developing ways to engage with young people in the UK and Europe, as
well being awarded Young Social Entrepreneur of the year 2014 by Unltd.
Watch this video to hear Luke talk about Reframing the Narrative of Foster Children in the
UK.
Interestingly,
he observes : "the more I talked to social workers the
less and less I wanted to be one".
To round off with the cherry on the cake: the juxtaposition of social worker's statements on a referral form next to the real voice and perspective of the young person involved: an eye opener !
To round off with the cherry on the cake: the juxtaposition of social worker's statements on a referral form next to the real voice and perspective of the young person involved: an eye opener !
