12m
3 Sep 2018

‘Lost Childhood’: tragic killing of a care leaver

When a child in care reaches the age of 18, the local authority is still responsible for their well-being. Many care leavers are placed in shared houses with other young people in a similar situation. But there’s little regulation and supervision in these places, with councils relying on outside companies to operate them.

There’s concern that this system is failing many. In the case of one 18 year old, it cost him his life, as Ben Ferguson investigates – in the first in our series ‘Lost Childhood’, which examines the way we look after our most vulnerable young people.