Throughout November, Hartlepool Borough Council’s Care Leavers campaign will celebrate the achievements of care-experienced children and adults, while also shining a light on the challenges they continue to face.

Hartlepool Borough Council is acting as Corporate Parents for children in their care and care-experienced adults in Hartlepool, and it’s a responsibility they take wholeheartedly.

Being a good Corporate Parent means doing what any good parent would do: believing in the children and young people, championing their aspirations, celebrating their achievements and continuing to care about their future as they move into adulthood.

The Leaving Care Team and Participation Team strive to ensure that their care-experienced adults have opportunities to thrive, and they want community organisations of Hartlepool to adopt a corporate parenting role too.

Hartlepool Borough Council want the campaign to celebrate care-experienced adults for who they are and what they have achieved, while also challenging stigma and encouraging organisations and communities to recognise the additional barriers that care experience can create.

The initiative is about moving away from labels, stereotypes and assumptions and recognising strength, resilience, talent, ambition and potential.

Care-experienced people should have the same opportunities to dream, achieve and succeed as everyone else. Their aspirations matter. Their voices matter. Their experiences matter.

Care experience is not currently one of the nine legally protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. However, many councils have chosen to treat care experience as if it were a protected characteristic locally.

Being care-experienced is a part of someone’s life story, but it should never determine their potential, their aspirations or how they are seen by others.

Care-experienced adults have different stories and different journeys. Some have faced instability, trauma, loss, stigma and challenges that many other people may never experience. Yet across our communities, care-experienced people are building careers, raising families, studying, volunteering, leading the way for change, supporting others and achieving goals they once may have thought were out of reach.

The campaign is about changing the narrative around care experience and celebrating care leavers during Care Leavers Month this November.