ABSTRACT
I really thought I'd seen the worst, that I'd felt the worst I could feel and fallen as low as I could go – and then came the experience of being homeless. An inevitability of being in care in the 1980s was the enforced period of total exclusion from society. I'm sure there were the lucky ones during this time, but this was a world before the Children Act 1989 and the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000. This was a time when children left care at 16. I was taken shopping with my social worker and we bought cups, cutlery, towels, bed linen and an iron. It was such a fun trip spending all that money, but in real terms, that was it. A few shopping bags of household items, a conversation about buying food and a bed in a shared house that was doomed to fail.
