Exclusions + care experience

Lisa:

So schools should always be trying to avoid exclusions, but why is this particularly important for care experienced children and young people?

Mark:

So, you’re right, it’s important for all children and young people first of all, schools should be doing everything they can to avoid the need to exclude a child ever, because it’s well understood and recognised that that has a really big impact on young people, like they’re left out of school and it can have a big impact on their attitudes towards school and how they feel. But for care experienced children and young people, it can have even more of an impact on them. They might have experienced some early difficult life circumstances and have some trauma around that. And we know they’re more likely to maybe struggle with feeling like they have a sense of belonging at school. And excluding a care experienced young person from school only builds on that and adds on that and can make them feel ostracised, left out. And that’s really completely against everything that we’re meant to be doing to try and support these young folk.

We also know that for care experience young people relationships and building trust with adults can be quite a difficult thing. And again then making a decision to say, actually you’re not allowed to be here, can really cause them to take a number of steps backwards and to make that a more difficult relationship and a harder thing to build on again. So we know it can have a big impact excluding a child in any circumstance, but it can have even more impact for care experienced young people, so that’s why we’re trying to avoid it.