Written by Liana Buchanan and Jackie, a Youth Council Member
Liana: As the new year starts, many students are setting intentions for the future, including further education, training and employment. It’s also a time of reflection – about the highs and lows, the pressures of exams, and, vitally, the supports that schools, families and communities have provided that have got them to this stage.
As Victoria’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, however, I’m acutely aware that these supports are too often denied children and young people in out-of-home care – not just in VCE and when results arrive, but through all the years of their education. Without action, the impact is cumulative and can be lifelong.
Jackie: As a young person who lived through this experience, I agree. Every year around this time, I’m drawn back to when I too, was doing VCE. Unlike most students, during that time, I was leaving care, so my major focus was finding a place to live. Then, in my final year, I was told I had to move to transitional housing, and then into homelessness. That left me feeling hopeless – like I had no chance of graduating or achieving my dream of becoming a nurse.
That path began many years before when, like far too many children, my siblings and I faced family violence, physical and sexual abuse and neglect, financial hardship, parental mental health issues, and suicide in my family.
From the age of two, I entered the child protection system, moving back and forth from my parent’s care, foster homes, kinship care, residential care, and emergency respite – often denied basic supports, and having them disrupted even when they were available.
I was separated from my siblings, with little family contact or visitation, and no effort by child protection to help my family re-unite, which I wanted more than anything.
In primary school, I changed schools almost yearly, and once it was three times in one year.
I enjoyed school, loved learning and seeing my friends, but sometimes home was so chaotic, I couldn’t go. No-one did anything, including child protection, until grade 5, when my then social worker and school principal would pick me up. Other times I wasn’t enrolled because I’d been moved across the state.
While I had some education supports in my later years of high school, be it tutoring or help to re-engage, they’d often end when I re-engaged in school or moved placements. What I needed was consistent support outside the classroom, regardless of whether I was attending school or not. This would have helped me stay up to speed, but, instead, my education fell between the cracks.
My friendships never lasted being moved to different homes and schools in various states. I was never able to say goodbye or explain where I was going to my friends – I was just gone. And it happened a lot.
Years of interrupted schooling and poor attendance made it hard to attend consistently. My friends moved on, I didn’t understand what we were being taught, and I struggled to catch up on schoolwork. Education was left on the backburner.
Things were slightly more stable in high school, and it became my escape from some of the residential units I was living in. But by then, I was also spending more time in the mental health unit at hospital.
And I had nothing.
By the time I moved to residential care, everything I owned fit in a rubbish bag, including my one school dress that I lived in. No-one thought to buy me new clothes, except the hospital nurses.
The ‘therapeutic’ residential unit I lived in was anything but therapeutic, and after numerous attempts to run away and moving between the unit and hospital, it was decided that I would stay in hospital until I fully recovered. It took three years. My education was again severely disrupted.
In VCE, I stayed at the same school where they prioritised my learning and took a flexible approach that enabled me to stay engaged, learn and finish years 11 and 12 over four years. But my home life remained a struggle, moving between placements and then facing homelessness as I aged out of care, all while completing my VCE.
Liana: While Jackie got there in the end, so many children and young people in the care of the state don’t make it so far. In 2022, there were just 12 young people in residential care enrolled in year 12, and none of them doing VCE. Completion rates for children and young people in care are substantially lower than their peers outside of care. Far from a reflection on them, it is a reflection on a system that claims to protect and support children and young people, but too often fails.
Jackie: The media is always looking for happy endings and perhaps they’d see my story as one. Having got through VCE, I am about to complete my nursing degree. That I have got this far, however, is despite the system; not because of it. The cards were heavily stacked against me and continue to be, as they are for many children and young people in care. And that’s the way it is from the start, the disadvantage building throughout the school years.
As I write, I think of all the young people going into VCE. I also think how school could be made so much better for those in state care if the government listened to and acted on the experiences of people like me.
Liana: Just a year ago, the Commission took an important step in that direction, when we released the Let us learn report, with 40 findings and 47 recommendations to government on improving how the child protection, out-of-home care and education systems can better meet the education needs of children and young people in care – including by addressing many of the challenges Jackie has written about here.
Back then, I commented, ‘I trust this report will drive reform to make Victoria “the education state” for all children and young people, including those in the out-of-home care…’.
A year on, we have had a positive high-level response from government, but we’re still waiting for a comprehensive plan showing how and when these important changes will happen – including the steps towards trauma-informed care in schools, and an increase in the allowance for carers that would help them better support children and young people.
Surely we can all agree that every child and young person deserves to be a good news story – including those in the state’s care.