Rebekah Pierre
Loading …‘My Care Story’ is a new series dedicated to amplifying the stories of care-experienced individuals and providing social workers with vital insights to improve the support they offer.
Rebekah Pierre, deputy director at children’s rights charity Article 39, has dedicated her career to championing the rights of children in the social care system.
Formerly a professional officer for the British Association for Social Workers, she has consistently used her platform to challenge the use of unregulated accommodation for children in care and the language used by practitioners in children’s case notes.
This included sharing her own experience of reading her case files in a widely shared open letter to her former social worker. In it, she criticised the practitioner’s “cold and formal” language and multiple writing errors, including over 100 misspellings of her name.
In 2024, she published Free Loaves on Fridays, an anthology of letters, stories and poems from 100 individuals, aged 13 to 68, with experience in care – offering a powerful reflection on the system.
Rebekah’s advocacy is deeply rooted in her own time in care and, speaking to Community Care, she shed light on what she wished her social workers had done differently.
How would you describe your time in care?
My experience of care (if one can even call it that) was incredibly unstable.
I was always fearful of settling after my first placement ended unexpectedly, when four days before Christmas, my foster carer left me a note on the kitchen table informing me that I had four days to find ‘somewhere else to live’.
It was completely out of the blue, and with no apparent reason, which led me to anticipate rejection wherever I went. From this point on, I bounced between sofa surfing, informal fostering arrangements and unregulated accommodation.
Whilst it would be clichéd to say this was character building – because I certainly could have done without these experiences at such a young age – I am full of gratitude for the few caring and committed adults who carried me through this time.
My experiences with social workers were mixed. While I received genuine care and dedication from a residential social worker, who believed in me far more than I believed in myself (and was a large part of the reason I applied to university), the same cannot be said for others.
I was ghosted by one, victim-blamed by another and cheerily told to return to an unsafe environment by two more.
But what applied across the board was that each social worker, regardless of their treatment toward me, appeared always to be in a rush. They were not fully present, and were always racing to the next call or appointment.
It’s why I feel so passionate about campaigning for more manageable workloads.
What is something that has stayed with you from your time in care?
Without a shadow of a doubt, my tendency to use writing as a coping mechanism.
Between placement breakdowns and the revolving door of professionals, my diary was a rare constant in my life. It was a sounding board whereby I could pour my heart out without fear of being labelled or judged.
I published some extracts back in 2021 to demonstrate the harms associated with unregulated placements.
Keeping a diary fostered a love for language, which has stayed with me ever since and helped my editing process for Free Loaves on Fridays.
It felt wonderful to be able to pass on the baton to up-and-coming writers of all ages, given that the book featured dozens of care-experienced people who had never seen their names in print before, alongside seasoned authors such as Lemn Sissay and Kirsty Capes.
Can you give an example of a time you received good support from a care professional?
A wonderful woman named Debbie, my sixth-form pastoral worker, springs to mind.
While she technically wasn’t a ‘care professional’, she certainly cared. It was the combination of emotional and practical support that made her so effective.
Firstly, she had an open-door policy, which meant I could seek support no matter the mood I was in (or whatever lesson I had escaped from!).
It sounds so simple now, but she was one of the first people who ever really validated me – who told me that I didn’t deserve what I had gone through. The impact of this cannot be overstated.
This was coupled with what I like to call street smarts – the knowledge that no amount of emotional support alone could overcome poverty.
While I was living in unregulated placements and struggling to make ends meet, she made sure I had basics, such as a bus pass, free meals and train tickets to visit university open days.
Without these things, I would have needed to drop out of school.
Can you give an example of a time you received bad support from a care professional?
A few years ago, I wrote an ‘open letter to the social worker who wrote my case notes’, which went viral on the app X at the time.
The letter speaks to poor support, including a culture of disbelief, adultification and poor record-making.
What would you have wanted to be done differently?
Firstly, to have been believed.
As a child, it takes an incredible amount of courage to make a disclosure of any sort. To have made such a leap, only to be vilified and written about as if I was complicit in what had happened to me, was painful in the extreme.
Secondly, how professionals write about children holds up a mirror to the way in which they think, feel, speak and act toward them.
Therefore, my care records speak volumes about the lack of respect underscoring my social worker’s whole approach to me as a young person.
Reading them made me feel powerless and invisible – my voice was completely absent.
It’s why I advocate for children to contribute to their records in their own way (whether through words, pictures, art or even voice notes), rather than have their wishes and feelings being shoehorned in at the end of a report or assessment.
The key takeaway is to imagine how you would want to be written about, and to write accordingly.
What would you tell social workers today?
Use your voice to stand up for children in care at every opportunity, and don’t make the mistake of assuming that somebody else will.
Forget about any imagined hierarchies or pecking orders. There is no guarantee the other professionals in the room or your service have, or ever will have, access to the child’s world in the way that you do.
You’re in a unique position to do immeasurable good, which often involves challenging the status quo.
Oh, and get a copy of Free Loaves on Fridays.
My experience does not represent the masses and I can’t speak for anyone else past or present. But in this book – proceeds of which go to Article 39 and fellow children’s charity The Together Trust – you’ll find 100 accounts from diverse backgrounds, written by care-experienced people aged 13 to 68!
