A call for change

Rewriting the Heartbreak of Care: A Call for Change

The issue of children in care burns deeply in my soul, a wound that never fully heals.

Like I have mentioned before 💔 I lost my two nieces—my only ones at the time—to the care system when my sister, a single mother, my only sister was crushed under life’s relentless pressures.

She turned to alcohol to numb the pain, a choice that eroded her mental health and, tragically, led to her death in 2019. The grief is still raw.

I fought with everything I had to keep my nieces close. I demanded access to my medical records and pushed for kinship care, hoping to offer them the love and stability they deserved. But social services stonewalled me.

I called relentlessly, met with empty promises of callbacks that never came. Not once. My nieces, despite having me and four other devoted aunts and uncles, were taken into care and separated for adoption.

We were a family of six brothers once, until my second youngest died of hypoplastic left heart syndrome—born with half a heart. The irony isn’t lost on me.

Picture this: two little girls, just 6 and 4, coming home from school to find their lives stuffed into black bin bags. Strangers whisk them away to unfamiliar homes.

The confusion, the heartbreak—it’s unimaginable. That moment shattered me, sending me into a spiral of alcoholism that felt like a nuclear explosion in my life.

Through this darkness, I found a beacon of hope in my friend Chris Wild (@ccwild79), x formerly known as twitter whose courage and insight I’m proud to champion. His books, *Damaged* and *The State of It*, are raw, unflinching looks at the care system’s failures.

The title *The State of It* couldn’t be more fitting—it’s a system in disarray, leaving vulnerable children to navigate a world that too often fails them.

Children in care are among society’s most wounded. Some find loving foster homes, and those stories warm the heart. But just as many endure nightmares—abuse, neglect, abandonment—that scar them for life. Without robust support, these kids face a future shadowed by mental health struggles, addiction, or crime.

They’ve been betrayed by nearly every adult they’ve known. Is it any wonder trust feels like a foreign concept?

The layers of trauma run deep, often buried so far that even the children themselves don’t realize how it shapes their actions. Yet, as Chris so powerfully says, “Children in care are still children.” They deserve love, stability, and a chance to thrive.

Every year, I send supplies from Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 to London for The Care Leavers Project, a collaboration with Chris that fills me with pride. But charity alone isn’t enough.

The care system needs a complete overhaul—a structure that prepares care leavers for the world beyond. Simple skills like paying rent, grocery shopping, cleaning, or understanding banking can be lifelines, fostering independence and confidence.

As the saying goes, *we don’t need to know the beginning of a child’s story to change the ending.* With the right support, we can rewrite their futures. Let’s demand a system that doesn’t just warehouse children but empowers them to soar. For my nieces, for every child in care, we must do better.

~Joe 9/5/25 . Thanks again to @ccwild79 and @TerryGalloway ( x formerly twitter ) for their tireless work effort and dedication. The photo I have used is from Chris’s first book 📕 “Damaged”