From Abuse to Action — The Day I Sat at Redcar Beach
published on 02 April 2025
🔊 From Abuse to Action — The Day I Sat at Redcar Beach
In October 2022, I stood in Redcar & Cleveland Council Chamber, nervous but determined, as they became the 5th council in the UK to pass the motion to treat Care Experience as if it were a Protected Characteristic.
To most people in the room that day, it was another motion. Another council meeting. But to me, it was something far deeper. A moment that tied together decades of pain, trauma, and an unrelenting fight to make sure no child goes through what my family did.
It's personal
Redcar & Cleveland wasn’t just another council to me. It was the place at the centre of one of the worst social care scandals in the 1980s. A scandal that shaped my childhood. A scandal that shaped my family.
A senior director at the heart of that scandal later moved to Manchester—the city where I grew up. Where my mum was desperately trying to get help for my sister Hazel and me. Where, once again, the system failed us.
As children, both Hazel and I were abused in care. I disclosed that abuse in the early 1980s. Instead of protecting us, social services placed us right back where it was happening. I remember being given a badge by the police for speaking out, but it meant nothing. It didn't stop the abuse. It didn't stop what came next.
My sister Hazel never escaped that trauma. She lived with anorexia, self-harmed almost every day, and spent her teenage years crying out for help through addiction. We were regulars at A&E, night after night, with deep self harming wounds. I remember the disdain in the faces of the doctors and nurses in the NHS, and how they treated her so badly, and recently I experienced the exact same discrimination against a Care Experienced Mother attending A&E so I know it’s still happening.
No one wanted to see the truth, They would not accept it, the narrative had been written in our care records. They needed to know that Hazel wasn’t “troubled,” she was traumatised by a system that had broken her.
My mum fought back the only way she could. She became an activist. I remember her scaling Manchester Town Hall, throwing thousands of leaflets onto the streets, telling anyone who would listen that the very director who failed children in Cleveland was now failing us in Manchester. She fought with anger because no one else would fight for us.
But I took a different path.
I chose to channel that trauma into getting myself into a position to campaign, put that rage, into policy. Into strategy. Into systemic change.
That’s why, after that council meeting in Redcar, I sat quietly in my car by the beach. I remembered everything we’d been through. I had a good old fashioned Fish and Chips and simply cried my eyes out.
I reflected, everything my mum had done. Everything Hazel had suffered. And I knew that the motion that had just passed was more than a line on a piece of paper. It was a turning point.
Councillors had asked for advice on revamping the Corporate Parenting Board, people and organisations and were not taking it seriously, attendance was low. It was described as a box ticking exercise.
Progress in Redcar and Cleveland
But this week, reading this article about how Teesside care leavers will now receive free travel until the age of 25, I’m reminded how change starts in rooms like that council chamber.
👉 Read Article
I’m so proud how Redcar and Cleveland have come. And that policy flows directly from the motion we passed together in Redcar & Cleveland in 2022. I know they were so inspired and motivated that they published a draft motion on the LGA website and scores of councils have followed their lead.
This is what happens when councils and combined authorities look at what they can do for care-experienced people, when they stop defending broken systems and start using their power to create change.
But this free travel policy is just one example of what’s possible.
Since that day in Redcar, we are now at 113 councils have now passed this motion. We can now say officially over 50% of the UK population live in an area that treats care experience as if it is a protected characteristic. And we haven’t stopped there.
Practical tools for councils that have passed the motions
We’ve developed two practical policy tools to help councils move beyond the motion and embed meaningful change:
📄 Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) – This EIA is specifically designed to help councils review how their use of the Infrastructure Levy and Section 106 policies can better support care-experienced people, foster families, and kinship carers. It sets out how these financial mechanisms can be used not only to address housing need but to reduce social care costs and improve long-term outcomes.
🏘️ Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) – The SPD builds on the EIA’s findings and provides clear planning guidance. It shows how councils can use local planning powers to prioritise care leaver housing, employment, and tenancy sustainment. It also includes provisions to support foster carers and kinship families by increasing placement capacity and housing stability.
These are examples of what’s possible when councils choose to lead. They are intended to be adapted and built upon locally.
But these are only examples.
That’s why we’ve now established the first ever Cross-Party Group in Westminster, made up of councils and organisations that have passed this motion.
This Group will:
🔹 Share best practice
🔹 Develop new policies
🔹 Provide a space for councils, combined authorities and partners to work together
🔹 And ensure no council has to start from scratch when it comes to supporting care-experienced people
To the councils, combined authorities, and organisations who have passed this motion, I urge you: Don’t stop at the motion. Join us. Be part of this movement. The work starts now.
Crying my eyes out
When I sat at that beach in Redcar after the motion passed, I cried my eyes out. I thought about my mum. About Hazel. About how the system broke them.
And I want to be clear about that moment, because sometimes people misunderstand tears.
That night, sitting alone in my car, was like something I used to do as a child in the children’s home. I used to cry my eyes out every night, quietly, wishing my mum would come and rescue me. I had a letter she’d written me once, and I’d hide it away, and I’d make a plan to read it when no one could see me, so I could bawl my eyes out without shame.
That night on Redcar beach felt exactly like that, but this time I had as my anchor the experience of my speech, that people had listened and the motion had passed.
Crying wasn’t weakness. It was release. It was therapy. It was healing. And a good feeling.
Because crying doesn’t make you broken. It shows you’ve survived something that tried to break you. The tears are reflection.
For me, those tears were about recognising the weight that I’ve carried for years.
And they were a reminder of why this work matters so much.
Why I will keep fighting, so that care-experienced people don’t have to carry what my family carried.
And I often wonder, did my sister really need to die before people started to listen?
That question will stay with me forever.
But what I do know is this, her voice lives on in every council chamber I stand in and every key note I do.
Her voice lives on in every policy we change.
In every council chamber I stand in.
In every young person who will now have a chance, because people finally chose to act.