"Writing is the one place I've never had to earn permission to exist. I hope every care-experienced person who finds this space discovers they never needed permission either."
When I was a child, I put myself into care.
People knew something was wrong. Teachers noticed. Professionals were involved. Neighbours watched. But times were different then, and too often children like me were expected to survive what no child should have to survive.
For years, other people wrote about my life. Reports, assessments and case files tried to explain who I was, while the parts that mattered most remained unheard.
So I wrote.
When no one believed in me, I believed in the quiet act of putting one word after another. Writing became the place where I could imagine a future larger than the file that followed me.
The Aftercare Project grew from that belief.
It exists so that care-experienced children and adults can create without permission, explore who they are beyond survival, and discover that the arts belong to them too.
My dream is to build the UK's largest living archive of care-experienced voices—not as a record of what happened to us, but as a celebration of who we become.
A place where every poem, painting, story, song and conversation reminds someone else that their voice matters, and that they belong.
I started The Aftercare Project because I know what it feels like to leave care carrying stories that were never truly heard.
For too many care-experienced people, identity becomes something written by others—reports, assessments, case files and records that rarely capture the whole person. I wanted to create somewhere people could write back.
As a care-experienced writer, teacher, foster panel member and creative practitioner, I've seen extraordinary creativity hidden behind survival.
I've met young people who never imagined they belonged in literature, the arts or higher education because no one had ever suggested they could. The Aftercare Project exists to change that.
Together, we're building more than workshops or publications. We're building a creative community where care-experienced people can write, make art, perform, collaborate and discover that their voices have value.
My hope is that this becomes the UK's largest living archive of care-experienced creativity—not an archive of trauma, but of imagination, resistance, humour, love, memory and possibility. A place that continues to grow as new voices join it, ensuring no one has to believe they are the only one.
Alongside, this work, I completed an MA in Creative Writing at Kingston University, where my practice explores memoir, identity and institutional narratives.
In 2026 I was awarded Kingston University's Race and Equality PhD Scholarship, where I will continue researching how creative practice can reshape the stories we tell about care, belonging and identity.Everything I create begins with one belief:
Care-experienced people deserve to see themselves not only as survivors, but as artists, writers, thinkers, leaders and dreamers.
Because every story shared creates space for another.