The Care Cliff Is Real—but the Story Begins Long Before 18

I was struggling long before I left care

I am care experienced.

I also lived with depression and suicidal thoughts from around the age of seven until well into my thirties.

That is not something I generally tell people.

I started self-harming when I was very young because I believed it might be a way to end my life.

As I got slightly older, I took an overdose of prescription medication. I do not even know what the medication was.

By fifteen, I had tried to jump from a bridge more than once, usually when I was intoxicated. There were other attempts too. Too many for me to give you a neat or reliable timeline.

Around that age, I remember being told that one ecstasy tablet could kill you. I think the intention was to deter us from taking the drug.

For me, it sounded like an invitation.

It sounded like exactly what I needed.

Until then, drugs had never appealed to me. I associated them with my mum and with a lifestyle I wanted nothing to do with.

But when I was about fifteen or sixteen, living in a bed and breakfast, a friend offered me an ecstasy tablet.

I took it hoping it might end my life.

Things did not go as planned.

What happened next is difficult to explain without making it sound as though I am delivering a sermon in favour of ecstasy.

I am absolutely not recommending ecstasy.

But, for the first time in my life, I saw the world as beautiful.

Everything looked brighter. Happier. I felt good.

I felt really good.

I understood why they called it ecstasy because I had never felt that happy before. I had not even known it was possible for me to feel that happy.

For a little while, I saw that life could be more than pain.

In that sense, the experience did change something in me. It showed me that another way of feeling existed, even if I did not yet know how to reach it without drugs.

But it also gave my suicidal mind a new kind of determination.

I thought I had found a way to leave life while feeling happy. To go out on an actual high rather than in pain.

The suicidal thoughts were still there, but now they had attached themselves to this new idea. I saved up a large number of tablets and took them all at once.

It did not work.

It was a frightening and chaotic experience, but somehow, I made it through.

I want to be really careful not to romanticise any of this.

My uncle died after taking ecstasy. His death was painful, excruciating and devastating. It broke a family that was already carrying more than enough fractures.

Drugs bought on the street are unpredictable. You cannot know with certainty what they contain or what they will do to your body. My experience is not evidence that ecstasy is safe, and it is not something I would encourage anybody else to do.

Something that briefly showed me beauty also brought devastation into my family.

Both things are true.

Neither cancels out the other.

The depression and suicidal thoughts continued.

Even now, there is so much fear, shame and discomfort surrounding suicide that many people learn to keep those thoughts hidden.

We worry that people will judge us. That they will call us dramatic or accuse us of seeking attention. Or that they will panic before they have really listened.

The truth is that most people do not know what to do when somebody tells them they do not want to be alive.

They may care deeply and still feel frightened, helpless or completely out of their depth.

So those of us carrying the thoughts become very good at appearing fine.

Sometimes frighteningly good.

When I became pregnant with my daughter, the thoughts absolutely did not disappear.

They still came almost every day.

But I knew I would never act on them because now I had a reason for living that felt bigger than me.

I had her.

That did not suddenly make life easy. It did not heal the depression or take away the pain. But it gave me something to hold on to when I could not hold on for myself.

Until a few years ago, the thoughts remained persistent.

They visited me most evenings, almost as though I owed them something. As though I had to sit with them and give them my time.

For a long time, I believed depression was simply something I would have to learn to live with. I did not imagine a life in which my mind could genuinely feel different.

But over the last few years, something has changed.

The suicidal thoughts became less frequent.

Daily became weekly.

Weekly became monthly.

And now, honestly, I cannot remember the last time I had one.

There was a time I never thought I would be able to say this, but I am grateful to still be alive.

One quote that helped me was:

Do not make a permanent decision based on temporary emotions.

I know that sounds quite simple when you are sitting inside pain that feels anything but simple.

At the time, my problems did not feel temporary. They felt like my entire life because, in many ways, they were. They were woven through my childhood, my relationships, my circumstances and how I saw myself.

But I began reminding myself that feelings move.

Circumstances change.

Life changes.

Slowly, I began changing my mind—or perhaps changing how I saw my circumstances.

I did not need to solve the rest of my life that evening.

I just needed to survive that moment.

Something else shifted during my spiritual awakening, which, if I am honest, felt quite a lot like a nervous breakdown at times.

Through that experience, I developed a deep knowing that death would not be the end of me.

Other people might call it a belief.

I call it a knowing.

I came to know that my physical body could die, but my soul or spirit would not. I had a deep sense that this was not my first time moving through life and that, if I left this one early, I would eventually return and meet the same lessons and experiences all over again.

I cannot prove that to anybody.

I cannot fully explain how I knew.

I just knew.

And I was already tired enough without the thought of having to come back and repeat the whole thing.

So I thought, you know what?

I might as well ride out this life and try to make something meaningful from it.

For me, suicide was no longer a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I had to live this life.

I know that idea will not comfort everybody. If you already feel exhausted by this world, the suggestion that you might have to return is possibly the last thing you want to hear.

But it helped me.

It reminded me that this life is temporary too.

Sometimes it feels overwhelming. Sometimes it feels painfully long. But no feeling, season or experience remains exactly as it is forever.

That became part of how I learned to stay.

If you are in a dark place and reading this, I know it can feel as though nothing will ever get better.

Sometimes the emotional pain—and even the physical pain that comes with it—can feel so intense that you do not necessarily want life to end.

You just desperately want the pain to stop.

But things can change.

I am not pretending difficult thoughts could never return. Healing is rarely that tidy.

But I am no longer living in the same place internally.

That matters because pain like this must never be treated as an inevitable life sentence for care-experienced people.

Trauma may help explain what we carry.

It does not have to determine how the story ends.

At 18, I thought I was supposed to have life figured out

On my eighteenth birthday, I was living in semi-independent accommodation.

I spent much of that day crying.

Apparently, I was now an adult.

I had no idea what I was going to do with the next stage of my life. My attendance at college was very poor and, around that period, they were trying to remove me from the course. That is probably a whole other story. But at the time, it added to the feeling that I was failing before adulthood had even properly begun.

I was living away from my family. I was preparing to move into my own flat. I felt deeply lonely, but I also felt as though I should already know what I was doing.

Eighteen felt incredibly old to me.

Obviously, I had never been that old before.

One day I had been a child. The next day the world called me an adult, and that word carried a weight I was not prepared to hold.

There is no magic wand that appears between 17 and 18.

An eighteenth birthday does not suddenly provide emotional regulation, a secure identity, financial confidence, healthy relationships, cooking skills, somewhere safe to live and a reliable person to call when everything goes wrong.

Sorry to any 18-year-olds who feel deeply offended by this, but most 18-year-olds are still very young people.

Their brains are still developing. Their identities are still forming. They are learning how to manage relationships, emotions, money, work, disappointment and uncertainty.

Many young people who live with their parents continue receiving practical and emotional support well into their twenties. They may receive help with food, washing, money, transport, appointments and the occasional minor disaster that feels like the end of the world at 19.

We do not call that dependence.

We call it family.

Yet some of the most vulnerable young people in our society are expected to manage adulthood with far less support than their peers—and often while carrying far more.

Some good people stood beside me

I do not want to tell my story as though nobody supported me.

Some people did.

I had a good relationship with my social worker. He was an older white man and, on paper, we may not have appeared to have very much in common. But we got on well.

I could not tell him everything. There were still parts of myself I kept hidden. But I could tell him some things, and that mattered.

Now that I have spent more than 20 years working with children, young people and families, I sometimes think I would have hated having me on my caseload. Every conversation probably required another report, another form and several pieces of paperwork nobody had time to complete.

I also had a key worker in my semi-independent accommodation who paid attention to me and made me feel that I mattered.

Then there was my young person's adviser.

She encouraged—or, if I am completely honest, practically forced—me to apply to university. She also convinced me to apply for three jobs.

I got all three.

So there I was: attending university and working three jobs.

From the outside, it might have looked like a success story.

In many ways, it was.

Those people helped alter the direction of my life. Their belief in me created opportunities I may not have created for myself.

But achievement did not make the suicidal thoughts disappear.

Going to university did not heal the depression. Working hard did not resolve what I had experienced as a child. If anything, being extremely busy gave me another way to avoid what was underneath it all.

That is why this conversation cannot become an argument between relationships and therapeutic support.

We need both.

A consistent adult can change the direction of a young person's life. But we should not expect one good social worker, key worker or personal adviser to heal years of trauma while also managing an enormous caseload and completing enough paperwork to frighten a small forest.

Relationships matter. Practical opportunities matter. Safe housing matters.

But emotional and psychological support matter too.

Independence should not mean abandonment

We absolutely need better leaving-care services.

Young people need suitable housing, properly trained personal advisers, financial support, help with education and employment, accessible mental-health care and people who remain consistent.

Not another professional who disappears when a service ends.

Not another telephone number handed over during a crisis.

A person.

Someone who knows them. Someone who notices when they stop replying. Someone who does not give up because the young person missed an appointment, became angry or said they did not need help.

Sometimes “I don't need anyone” really means, “I have learned not to expect anyone to stay.”

But improving transition services is still only part of the solution.

If we wait until 17 or 18 to address a young person's emotional pain, we may already have missed years in which they were silently trying to survive it.

We must become proactive, not only reactive

When a young person dies by suicide at 18, we see the final moment.

We do not necessarily see the years that came before it.

We do not see every thought they kept to themselves, every night they struggled alone or every occasion when they tried to communicate their pain through behaviour because they did not yet have the words.

We cannot assume that every person followed the same path. But we must become better at recognising that suicidal distress can develop over time—and that someone can appear capable, attend university, hold down a job, make people laugh and still be struggling to stay alive.

The final crisis may be intensified by leaving care, losing support, unsafe housing or profound loneliness. It may be the point at which everything becomes unbearable.

But if we focus only on what happened at 18, we risk overlooking the opportunities we had to help at seven, ten, thirteen or sixteen.

We need to stop waiting until a child reaches crisis before offering tools they should have been learning all along.

• Emotional awareness and language for difficult feelings.
• Safe, consistent adults.
• Trauma-informed mental-health support.
• Practical regulation tools.
• A safety plan created with them—not simply handed to them.
• Places where they can talk without being called dramatic, difficult or attention-seeking.
• Support that does not disappear because they missed an appointment, rejected help the first time or reached a particular birthday.

We need to be brave enough to ask children how they are really feeling.

And then we need systems strong enough to hold the answer.

Behaviour often tells a story

We already know that adverse childhood experiences can affect mental health, relationships, education, physical health, substance use and contact with the criminal justice system.

That does not mean every child who experiences adversity is destined for poor outcomes.

It means the behaviour we see may have a history.

The child who is angry may also be frightened.

The child who keeps running away may be searching for safety, belonging or control.

The child who says they do not care may care so deeply that disconnecting feels safer.

The young person using alcohol or drugs may be trying to silence something they do not yet have the words—or the safety—to express.

If we respond only to the behaviour, we miss the child underneath it.

And if we punish adaptations without understanding what shaped them, we can reinforce the very shame and isolation the child is already carrying.

Kinship care needs healing support too

This conversation must also include kinship families.

Placing a child with a relative may preserve important connections, identity and belonging. But moving a child into kinship care does not automatically remove the trauma surrounding the family.

Addiction, bereavement, mental-health difficulties, poverty, domestic abuse and unresolved trauma can move through generations.

The experiences affecting a parent may also have affected grandparents, siblings and other relatives.

That does not mean families are broken.

It means families need support.

If a relative takes responsibility for a child who has experienced significant trauma, we cannot simply place the child and hope love will sort everything out.

Love matters enormously.

But love may also need therapeutic support, respite, financial stability, trauma education, community and somewhere safe for the carer to talk honestly about how difficult things can be.

Caring for a traumatised child can involve enormous emotional and practical responsibility. Supporting the carer is part of supporting the child.

Healing needs to include the family system wherever it is safe and appropriate to do so.

We need braver conversations with children

We need to help children develop emotional language from an early age.

Not only “good” or “bad.”

Not only “fine.”

Children need to be able to say:

I feel sad.
I feel scared.
I feel angry.
I feel hopeless.
I do not think I have a future.
I am worried about where I will live.
I am frightened that nobody will stay.
I have been thinking about hurting myself.

Adults also need the confidence and training to hear those answers.

When a child's mood changes, we need to be able to ask gentle but direct questions.

How have you been feeling about yourself?
Have you felt like hurting yourself?
Have you thought about not wanting to be here?
What helps when those feelings come?
Who could you contact?
Where could you go?
What would make tonight feel safer?

A safety plan cannot replace proper mental-health care. But honest conversations, trusted adults and a clear plan can create another pathway when a young person feels trapped inside their own thoughts.

We should not wait for children to find the perfect words.

We should not expect someone in psychological distress to calmly locate a telephone number, explain a lifetime of pain to a stranger and advocate for the correct service.

Crisis lines matter. But support must begin before the crisis.

Mental-health support cannot end because someone missed an appointment

Services must also understand that trauma affects how people engage.

A young person may miss an appointment because they are anxious.

They may ignore a call because speaking feels overwhelming.

They may appear rude because they are frightened.

They may reject help before it has the chance to reject them.

This does not mean professionals should have no boundaries. It means services designed for traumatised young people need to understand trauma.

Support should be persistent without being punitive.

Flexible without becoming vague.

Relational rather than purely administrative.

Children and care leavers need spaces where they can speak without immediately feeling judged, dismissed or treated like a problem to be managed.

They need to know that asking for help will not automatically lead to punishment, panic or another loss of control.

We need to look at the whole puzzle

The care cliff is real.

No young person should lose essential relationships, housing support or mental-health care because they have reached a particular birthday.

But the answer cannot begin and end with transition services.

We need earlier trauma support. Emotional education. Support for birth and kinship families. Stable relationships that do not disappear with a change of placement or service. Safe housing. Accessible mental-health care. Practical preparation for adulthood. Communities where young people belong. And honest conversations about suicide that do not shame people into silence.

The recent figures should disturb us.

But they should also move us beyond asking why care leavers are struggling after 18.

We need to ask what happened before 18.

Who noticed?

Who asked?

Who stayed?

What support did the child receive to understand what they had lived through?

And what might become possible if healing support began before they reached the edge?

Care-experienced children do not need lower expectations.

They need stronger foundations.

They do not need to be treated as permanently damaged.

They need safety, support, opportunity and people who recognise that many of their behaviours began as ways of surviving.

Leaving care should be a supported transition into a wider life.
It should never feel like being left behind.