The Early History of the Care Experienced Movement — a documentary

Directed by Sean Geoghegan, co-founder and first Development Officer of NAYPIC. Not a film made from the outside looking in.

I was in my early twenties, studying for a BA in media, when I saw a thin, bespectacled young man on a community television spot saying he wanted to set up a group for people who had been in care. My time in care had not been a good one so I went along to seek change. It turned out to be just me and him, in his flat in Old Street. His name was Leon Parker.

I found us a London Office (at the Children’s Legal Centre) and working with our main Bradford Office we then built local groups across the country and a national organisation that government, social services and the media turned to for the legitimate voice of the hundred thousand people then living in the care system. I wrote Report ‘Sharing Care’ the first policy proposals by and for people in and leaving care and took them to Parliament. I ran conferences and campaigns; and produced the first videos ever made by young people from care — all without ever taking a salary or putting my name to anything publicly. The stigma of having been in care was that absolute.

The National Association of Young People in Care (NAYPIC), founded in 1979 was the first national body run by and for young people in or leaving care. This is the heritage the film focuses on — the early history of the Care Experienced Movement in England, from 1973 to the early 1990s.

Sharing Care was described by the Parliamentary Select Committee as “highly influential” — its recommendations went on to shape the Children Act 1989.

The heritage

NAYPIC grew from a volunteer force who wanted the care system to be a better one than they had experienced. Recognised by the Government, media and Social Services Departments the organisation grew over the 1980s to create its own unique constitution, a management committee made up entirely of care-experienced young people, and grassroots groups in every region.

Sharing Care (1983) is the first self-advocacy document to examine the experiences of young women in care, Black young people in care, and young people with disabilities. Its recommendations shaped specific provisions of the Children Act 1989: the duty to accommodate siblings together, improved complaints procedures, children’s access to their own files, and the principle that children’s wishes and feelings must be heard in decisions affecting them.

NAYPIC members were also the first to put racism in the care system on the record. The first mention of race within the care system appears in Hansard, in NAYPIC’s 1982 parliamentary evidence — years before academics or policymakers took up the issue. Alongside NAYPIC, the Black and In Care steering group formed in 1984 to address the experiences of Black children in institutional care.

The films

The documentary draws on unique archive footage held by the Director of these films — the earliest care-experienced self-advocacy films ever made, shot by and with young people in care. Used by training departments Social Services right across the country at the time.

Black and In Care (1983) — made with young people in care, dealt with racism in the care system and was pivotal in bringing race to the fore in social services, leading to the Black and In Care Conference.

Speak Out (1986) — filmed at a campsite, the first film of its kind to convey the diverse views of young people in care, following the NAYPIC policies that went before Parliament and shaped the Children Act 1989.

Why now

The founding generation are ageing — many now in their fifties and sixties, and some have already died. They changed the law. They gave evidence to Parliament as teenagers, organised national campaigns from bedsits and hostels, and confronted institutional racism in the care system years before it reached mainstream policy — without the professional infrastructure, social media or public sympathy that today’s advocacy organisations take for granted. Almost none of them have ever been asked to tell their story. The window to record them is closing.

What the film will do

Over 18 months the project will research, record and interpret this hidden history through an 80-minute feature documentary, supported by community screenings, archiving and public access. It will formally recognise the contribution of early care-experienced activists to national reform — people whose work shaped legislation but whose names appear in no public memorial, no museum and no broadcast archive.