These behind the Free Loaves on Fridays anthology hope to create systematic change by sharing the tales of 100 individuals with expertise of the UK care system
When Rebekah Pierre was first requested to edit Free Loaves on Fridays she nearly declined. “Genuinely, my first intuition was completely not,” she tells Optimistic Information. “There’s a lot rejection within the care system already, I didn’t wish to add to that.”
However, as she started to craft a well mannered ‘no thanks’ e mail she had an thought – an anthology with a no-rejections coverage, so everybody who submitted work could be included. The end result, revealed lately through Unbound, brings collectively greater than 100 care-experienced voices, spanning poetry, tales, essays and open letters.
Authors, aged from youthful than 13 to nearly 70, paint a nuanced image: from recollections of faculty stories being discarded as misplaced property by native authority employees, to the enjoyment of discovering an adoptive household. The anthology offers voice to various experiences together with foster care, adoption, kinship care and semi-independent residing, amongst others. Contributors embody well-known figures reminiscent of Lemn Sissay together with beforehand unpublished writers.
“Headlines written about care typically entrench destructive stereotypes and dominate the narrative, leaving care-experienced individuals with nothing however crumbs,” reads an outline of the gathering.
“This anthology is a chance to redirect the dialogue and current a window right into a world that has been missed for too lengthy.”
Pierre’s personal contributions stem from requesting her case information. Whereas she went into the method with “very low expectations”, she describes what she discovered as “heartbreaking, disrespectful, and inaccurate”.
Within the notes, her identify was misspelled greater than 100 occasions. She found that professionals had dismissed a rely of home abuse as “an altercation” and that they’d ticked a field indicating “no additional motion” wanted to be taken after she attended A&E. Within the e book, Pierre shares an open letter to the social employee who wrote her notes, which was additionally revealed on-line.
We’re so typically written about, however we very hardly ever have our personal voice. No longer are we simply passive topics
“I believe it went viral as a result of, actually, it was one of many first occasions a care-experienced individual had the chance of getting the ultimate say,” she tells Optimistic Information. “We’re so typically written about, however we very hardly ever have our personal voice. My hope for Free Loaves on Fridays is that it turns that narrative on its head; not are we simply passive topics, however we’re those to regulate the narrative.”
It’s additionally the message behind the e book’s title. When Pierre lived in an unregulated hostel, she and people residing along with her acquired donations from a bread manufacturing facility each Friday, a thick sliced white, with ‘toastie’ stamped throughout the entrance. “Grateful as we have been,” she writes within the e book, “no one had bothered to ask what kind of bread we wish. As a substitute, we got no matter society was prepared to dole out.”
For creator Kirsty Capes, who additionally wrote an essay for the e book, these types of limiting beliefs and narratives have a major affect. “We get to a degree the place individuals anticipate care-experienced individuals to fail. Subsequently, there’s nothing for care-experienced individuals to do besides fail, as a result of nobody is anticipating extra of them. All of that’s tied up within the language that we use.”
Free Loaves on Fridays editor Rebekah Pierre on the assortment’s launch with Lemn Sissay, whose personal bestselling memoir My Identify Is Why was a mirrored image on his personal childhood in care. Picture: equipped
In actuality, says Capes, “no two individuals undergo the care system in the identical manner. It’s not potential to have one by line by all these tales, as a result of no two tales are the identical.”
Each hope the e book will give a voice to a group that’s typically erased, driving systematic change throughout public coverage and the social work occupation. Because of sponsorship from John Lewis, a duplicate can be despatched to each MP on the care choose committee, in addition to the kids’s commissioner and the kids’s minister.
It comes within the wake of the UK authorities asserting a reform of kids’s social care in 2023. Whereas it features a ban on unregulated hostels for 16-18-year-olds, many say it lacks ambition, with hundreds of kids nonetheless despatched miles from dwelling or dealing with a “cliff-edge” when help involves an finish on their 18th birthday.
Capes hopes that the e book reaches a large viewers. Of the anthology she says: “It’s lengthy overdue. There’s a lot advocacy work and activism taking place in all completely different corners of the group, one thing like this can be a nice cornerstone to convey every little thing collectively.”
Most important picture: FG Commerce
Assist options in 2024
Optimistic Information helps extra individuals than ever to get a balanced and uplifting view of the world. Whereas doom and gloom dominates different information shops, our options journalism exists to help your wellbeing and empower you to make a distinction in direction of a greater future.
However our reporting has a value and, as an unbiased, not-for-profit media organisation, we depend on the monetary backing of our readers. In case you worth what we do and may afford to, please get behind our workforce with an everyday or one-off contribution.
Give as soon as from simply £1, or be part of 1,400+ others who contribute a median of £3 or extra per 30 days. You’ll be immediately funding the manufacturing and sharing of our tales – serving to our options journalism to profit many extra individuals.
Be a part of our group immediately, and collectively, we’ll change the information for good.
