Care Experienced as a protected characteristic

Last week the council’s Cabinet agreed that care experienced should be treated as a protected characteristic.

Currently, the Public Sector Equality Duty requires public bodies such as councils/Trusts to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation of people under the nine protected characteristics, but there is no requirement nationally to include experience of care as part of this.

However, treating care experienced as a protected characteristic was a recommendation in the 2022 independent review of children’s social care led by Josh MacAlister and we have now joined more than 100 other Trusts/councils who have made local decisions to do this.

We currently have 389 care experienced young people. Thank you to Jevon Levy, Chair of our Forum for Independent Young Adults (FIYA), who spoke powerfully and shared his own personal experience at Cabinet about what it means for care experience to become a protected characteristic and what these changes mean for care experienced people going forward.