LION Therapy CIC has a bold ambition: to change the system of how care-experienced people are treated by the society which created them. By care-experienced, we mean people who have spent time in care when they were under 16, and are struggling with the psychological difficulties these experiences have left them with. They might be pregnant or already parents themselves.

Currently, there is no nationally-provided, evidence-based, low-fee-at-the-point-of-need, expertly-delivered, longer-term psychotherapy available for this population to feel ‘sympathised with’.

By definition, care-experienced people have suffered poor and ruptured attachment relationships.  These early relationships form the basis of self-esteem; poor self-esteem is the cause of many downstream problems from abusive relationships to substance abuse to poor educational attainment. 

“I am appalled that there is so little support available for people who grew up in care. I feel very alone in the world. People go on all the time about the importance of family, and I feel like an outsider. Very few people understand the issues.” Anonymous, Care Leavers Association Report 2017

By supporting LION Therapy’s work, you can enable a care-experienced individual to change ‘their hell within’ to something more benign and, by doing so, ensure the relationships they make with their children and partners going forward can nurture others and nourish them.

The Bigger Picture

Outcomes for looked-after children in the UK are often poor, including higher rates of teenage pregnancy, poorer mental health, higher risk of criminal justice involvement, and lower educational achievement.

Cycles of deprivation and trauma repeat if looked-after children become parents who struggle to parent effectively, due to their untreated Complex PTSD, and accompanying problems such as domestic abuse and substance misuse. Then their babies and toddlers are taken into care, at vast expense to the public purse.   

Making Sense for Your Pocket

Supporting LION Therapy’s work brings down the costs of care proceedings and reduces the burden on blue-light services in the community (fire/ambulance/police) as well as Criminal Justice costs. Of the UK prison population, 25% of inmates are care-experienced, rising to 50% for those under 18 on juvenile detention orders (which cost £129,333/year per child - double the cost of Eton College!) Predominantly, care-experienced people end up being given short prison sentences for drug addiction issues, domestic violence and/or recidivism.  These spells in prison (at £60,000/year per inmate) all too often prove frequent, expensive and ineffective.

The benefit to society of care-experienced people feeling better about themselves and better able to make and maintain good relationships is a reduction in anti-social behaviour (domestic violence costs the UK government £47 billion per year), a reduction in demand for Social Services and primary care services (GPs/psychiatric support), an increase in future job prospects, and crucially, sustained and long-term improvements in their own childrens’ developmental outcomes, at school and beyond.

Seeing a care-experienced woman for 3 years of weekly psychotherapy through LION costs £6,000 in total. Taking two children from her aged 6 and 4 and fostering them until they are 18 years old can cost the taxpayer £460,000. What a difference talking can make!

What Challenges can Care-Experienced People Face?

“Into care when I was 6 after my mother had died and my father had been jailed for sexually abusing my sisters while my mum was dying of cancer... After living in four children’s homes and three foster placements (one of which was brilliant and life-changing) I had suffered so much.  My social worker was excellent but I struggled with  anger, anxiety and depression and general PTS until my mid-40s when I finally cracked and went for two years of self-funded psychotherapy costing £10,000). I met my current partner when I was 49 and the relationship works well. Two decades lost to mental health problems that could have been dealt with much earlier on.” Anonymous, Care Leavers Association Report 2017

Barnardo’s most recent study into the mental health needs of 274 care leavers showed high numbers (46%) with mental health needs (Smith, 2017) highlighting their issues with drugs, alcohol, self-harm and post-traumatic stress disorder. Less well-known is research on the long-term health experiences of adult care leavers. However, research more broadly on the survival of childhood trauma has obvious relevance to adult care leavers.

In the late 1990s, the A.C.E. (Adverse Child Experiences) Study by Felitti et. al., (1998) demonstrated the impact of childhood adversity on physical and mental health in adulthood. Since then, A.C.E.s have been recognised as a major public health issue by WHO, the US Center for Disease Control and public health bodies in the UK (PH Wales, 2023) with the chances of experiencing violence of all kinds being much higher if a person grows up in a domestically violent home.

Madigan et al (2023) found that people who experienced multiple kinds of A.C.E.s were at especially high risk of poor mental health, substance misuse, early and unplanned pregnancies, and suicidal ideation. Care leavers are highly likely to be people who have experienced at least 4+ ACES due to 1) being taken into care (family breakdown, domestic violence, physical/emotional/sexual abuse and neglect) 2) experience in care (multiple moves, disrupted attachments, rejection, isolation, stigma, lack of personal care) and 3) life after care (unemployment, lack of educational qualifications, isolation, low socio-economic status). 

A lack of stability in childhood can manifest in many negative ways as an adult. Younger care leavers have reported that they felt a degree of resignation in the fact that all their relationships were temporary, so they just didn’t try. Care-experienced people are often cautious and weary of professional input. Care leavers of all ages have described feeling that they find it difficult to trust people and, as such, they experience more isolation, which further negatively impacts their mental health.

Care-experienced people are at risk of low self-esteem due to lack of positive experiences of care and this low self-esteem interacts with poor emotion regulation to cause a range of mental health problems that most NHS service are not equipped to deal with.  These include addiction, high-conflict relationships with family and partners, and complex trauma syndromes and symptoms (Herman 1992).

What Provision Already Exists?

Care leavers need therapeutic support to help them learn how to manage their feelings safely so they can make stable and supportive relationships. However, almost a third of care leavers report that they have experienced difficulties accessing general mental health services, let alone therapy. NHS Community Mental Health Services do not provide specialised help for this population.

NHS Talk Therapies often see care leavers as having problems that are too complex for them to sort, so they are turned away.  Third Sector Counselling Services generally offer low-fee clients counsellors who are still in training and lack the experience to manage the therapeutic challenge of working with care leavers. They also usually limit session numbers to 12 or 24 weeks but LION’s pilot service has shown that the trusting relationship these women need to make the deeper changes required takes far longer to build. Specialist services which do provide longer courses of therapy have waiting lists of several years. 

People often talk about care-experienced people falling through the net.  If you support LION’s work by funding experienced therapists to offer these clients the longer-term, high-quality psychotherapy they desperately need, you will be plugging the holes in this net.

Therapy through LION costs a fraction per person (just £2,000/year per person) compared to the cost of taking a child into care (£50,000 per case), fostering (£10-30,000/year), juvenile psychiatric inpatient treatment (£129,333/year) or a year in prison (£60,000). What’s more, LION makes far more difference to someone being able to live a healthy and happy life than any of the expensive interventions of care proceedings, fostering, hospital treatment or incarceration.

If you, like us, think LION makes sense, please consider joining our Coalition of the Willing.