Care Leavers Are Still Being Locked Out of Work. What Is Going Wrong?

Many employers say they want to build a more inclusive workplace. On paper, that sounds encouraging. In practice, though, young people leaving care are still far more likely to be shut out of work, education and training than their peers.

A new report highlighted by The Guardian suggests the gap remains stark. Around 40% of care-experienced 19 to 21-year-olds in England are not in employment, education or training. That is close to three times the rate seen among other young people in the same age group.

This is not just a story about individual hardship. It raises a bigger question about recruitment itself: if so many organisations claim they are open to hiring care leavers, why are outcomes still so poor?

The problem is not simply willingness

One of the more uncomfortable findings is that many businesses appear supportive in principle, but far fewer are changing the way they actually hire.

According to the employer survey cited in the report, more than 80% of organisations said they would be open to recruiting care leavers. Yet almost half had never adapted job descriptions to remove barriers, while roughly one in four offered no targeted support at all.

That gap matters. It suggests the issue is not only whether employers are sympathetic. It is whether they are prepared to rethink a recruitment process that often assumes a fairly standard early-career background.

Why care leavers face a different starting point

For many young adults, the usual path into employment is already difficult enough. For care leavers, it can be much harder.

Some may not have the same family support that helps others with transport, interview preparation, references, work experience or simply basic stability while looking for a job. Others may have had interrupted education, fewer opportunities to build confidence, or a CV that does not fit the tidy pattern many recruiters expect.

That does not mean they lack ability. It means they are often assessed through a system that rewards a more conventional route into work.

Good intentions do not remove barriers on their own

This is where the conversation often becomes too soft. Employers may genuinely want to be inclusive, but that alone does not change much if the hiring process still filters people out at the first step.

A rigid list of “essential” requirements, a demand for polished commercial experience, or an application form built around uninterrupted education and work history can all become barriers before a person has any real chance to show what they can do.

In other words, inclusion is not just about saying yes in theory. It is about making sure the door is actually open.

What would adapting recruitment look like?

It does not always require dramatic changes. In many cases, it means reviewing the basics more honestly.

That could include simplifying job descriptions, being more realistic about what counts as entry-level experience, offering clearer guidance during applications, or creating routes that recognise potential rather than expecting a fully formed work history from the outset.

It can also mean building support around the first stages of employment, not just the recruitment advert itself. If someone gets through the door but has no meaningful structure once they arrive, the opportunity may still fall apart quickly.

This matters beyond one group of young people

Although this discussion is specifically about care leavers, the wider lesson reaches further. A lot of recruitment in Britain still favours candidates who already know how to navigate the system, how to present themselves in the expected way and how to translate their background into the language employers want to hear.

Those who start from a less stable position often get judged not only on ability, but on how closely their story resembles the “ideal” applicant profile. That affects care-experienced young people particularly sharply, but it is not limited to them.

Why the labour market should care

This is not only a social issue. It is also a labour market issue.

At a time when many employers talk about shortages, retention problems and the need to widen access to talent, it makes little sense to leave a large group of young adults stuck outside the system because recruitment habits have not caught up.

If organisations are serious about broadening access, they need to move beyond warm statements and look at how their own processes work in real life.

Roles in care may offer one possible route in

For some jobseekers, care-based work can provide a more practical entry point into employment, especially where employers value empathy, reliability and willingness to learn alongside formal experience.

If you are exploring this area, you can see current care worker vacancies on Jober.uk.

That said, no sector should be treated as a catch-all answer. The point is not that care leavers should be funnelled into one line of work, but that they should have a fairer chance to access a wider range of roles in the first place.

Final thought

The latest findings do not suggest that employers are uniformly hostile. The picture is more frustrating than that. Many appear open-minded, but too few have changed the mechanics of hiring in a way that gives care leavers a genuine chance.

That is the real issue. The barrier is often not outright refusal. It is a recruitment culture that still expects young people to arrive with the sort of background that many care-experienced applicants were never given the chance to build.

Until that changes, being “open to hiring” will remain far easier to say than to prove.