ABSTRACT
Children in care, and young people who have left care, say that the general public's perception of'care' 1 is important i f not crucial to their lives. When young care leavers across England conducted their own research on leaving care in 1995, they highlighted the importance of the public's attitude to children from care, and asked other care leavers questions about it. In the research, 70 per cent of respondents said that they never or rarely told anyone they had been in care (West 1995: 24). A n open declaration of having a 'care' background has been referred to as 'coming out' by care leavers, an apparently deliberate reference to the phrase often used in an individual's public identification as gay or lesbian (see West 1998a). For young care leavers, the attitude of members of the public was found to be stigmatising at least, with individuals regarded as either a family-less foundling entitled to overly sympathetic attention or, more likely, a prostitute or criminal and therefore deserving of verbal abuse.
