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One in four teenagers in care have attempted to end their own life, and are four times more likely to do so than their peers with no care experience, according to a landmark study.
The research analysed data from the millennium cohort study, which follows the lives of 19,000 people born in the UK between 2000 and 2002, and considered how out of home care, including foster, residential and kinship care, affected the social and mental health outcomes of the participants.
More than one in four (26%) 17-year-olds who have lived in foster or residential care have attempted to end their own lives, the analysis found, compared with only one in 14 (7%) of teenagers with no experience of being in care.
Although previous research has found that about 7% of UK children have attempted suicide by the age of 17, this study, conducted by academics from the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, is the first to calculate the elevated suicide risk teenagers with care experience have.
Lisa Harker, the director of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, said the fact that one in four care-experienced children had attempted suicide was a “national emergency”.
She added: “This study also shows that the difficulties that young people have are not inevitable or insurmountable. We can – and must – do much more to give care-experienced young people the intensive support they need. It is not only morally right that we should do so, it will also pay dividends in reducing lifelong inequalities.”
Alongside teenagers with care experience having a higher likelihood of attempting to end their own life, the study also found this group to have other, multiple negative mental health outcomes in comparison with their peers.
Almost six in 10 (56%) teenagers who had experience of foster care had self-harmed, the analysis found, compared with just under a quarter (24%) of teenagers with no care experience. Furthermore, almost four in 10 (39%) teenagers with foster care experience reported a high levels of depression, according to the Kessler scale, in comparison with only 16% of teenagers with no care experience.
The findings also suggest that, in comparison with their peers, teenagers with care experience were also more likely to have had sex, and if they had, to have had underage sex and to have either been or made someone pregnant.
Almost one in five (18%) of teenagers who had been in foster or residential care, and one in six who had been in kinship care, had either been or made someone pregnant, compared with just one in 25 (4%) of teenagers with no care experience.
Dr Ingrid Schoon of the UCL Social Research Institute and co-author of the study, said that it was “alarming” that adolescents who had been in care face high rates of mental ill health.
“These realities call for a family-focused approach, ensuring support remains available throughout a young person’s life course. The current ‘cliff edge’ where support abruptly ends must be removed,” Schoon said. “While it may seem obvious that early adversity can have long-term effects, our study provides hard evidence of how deeply this disadvantage persists – not just for individuals with care experience, but for their children too. This underscores the urgent need for systemic change.”
Gemma Byrne, the policy and influencing manager at Mind, said: “All children and young people deserve timely, equitable access to mental health care at an early stage, no matter where they live or what their home background looks like. We know this is especially important for teenagers with care experience, which is why these findings are so worrying.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “This research is deeply troubling, and the scale of harm faced by care-experienced young people is not acceptable. We are committed to understanding and addressing the shockingly high number of early deaths among care-experienced young people.
“That’s why change has to come earlier. As part of our Plan for Change, the government is taking action to help children in care access mental health support sooner, bringing together social workers and NHS professionals to provide joined-up support when it is needed most.”
