Commemorating National Care Leaver’s Month November 2025

Motion Text

That this House notes the importance of the first National Care Leavers Month in November 2025 and celebrates that a month is dedicated to this important cause; acknowledges the difficulties and inequities that care leavers face, including a cliff edge of support and services that disappear suddenly, a postcode lottery of support, and discrimination both during education and beyond; further notes with concern that 30% of 18-year-old and 39% of 19–21-year-old care leavers were not in education, employment or training as of March 2024 compared with 15% of all 18-year-olds in England; also notes with great concern that the Government did not accept the independent Care Review’s 2022 recommendation to make care experience a protected characteristic; urges the government to pass new legislation to give care leavers the equity they deserve, including broadening corporate parenting responsibility, taking steps to reduce discrimination including making care a protected characteristic under the Equality Act; notes that Haringey Council was the first council in the country to call for care leaver to be a protected characteristic, after unanimously passing a motion proposed by Liberal Democrat councillors; and celebrates that over 90 councils including Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council in 2023 have since passed motions to acknowledge care experience as a protected characteristic and calls for more to do so.