National Care Leavers Week 2023

27 Oct 2023

Raising awareness of support available to care-experienced individuals

National Care Leavers Week (25 October - 1 November) gives an opportunity to reflect on the experiences of care-experienced individuals and raise awareness of support on offer.

Our University offers enhanced support to care experienced students.  A care leaver is generally someone who has been in the care of their local authority for a period of 13 weeks or more around their 16th birthday. Whereas care experienced refers to anyone who has been in care at any stage of their life, no matter how short a period.

This enhanced support includes a £1,000 bursary via the Undergraduate Access Scholarship (if certain criteria are met) and having named contacts. Emma Lewis-Kalubowila from Access and Success offers pre-entry support and Jabeen Akram from the central student support and wellbeing team offers support to care experienced students during their studies. There will soon be a vacant position for another named contact for current care experienced students.

It’s important that if a student discloses to you that they are care experienced, you can liaise with our team who can provide support. 

Students may self-identify as being care experienced to staff members they know well and feel comfortable with. If a student discloses to you that they care experienced, please ask them if they are already receiving support from us. If they are not, the student can contact us themselves by emailing us on Independentstudents@manchester.ac.uk, or you can ask for consent from the student for us to contact them instead.

We recognise that some care experienced students may face different and/or multiple hurdles during their time at university and we want to offer them to have access to the enhanced support package and opportunities that they are entitled to, such as the option to meet with other care experienced students from across the University. 

You can check what support is on offer through our dedicated webpage. Please try to avoid confirming whether or not a student will receive the £1,000 bursary as there is a verification process by us that must be followed. Thank you for all of your support.

More information 

If you have any questions, please contact Independentstudents@manchester.ac.uk