CARE AND LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION The Department for Education should undertake a campaign to raise awareness and sign ups to the covenant. As well as institutions, this should include charities, funders, commercial suppliers, graduate employers and local authorities. Recommendation eight – Direct Higher Education institutions to sign up to the Care Leaver Covenant, ahead of any consideration of corporate parenting of care experienced and estranged young people Higher Education institutions should sign up to the Care Leaver Covenant whilst government takes forward consideration of higher education institutions as corporate parents of care experienced and estranged young people, formalising a role for them to support these students. Eligible groups: Care experienced, defined as those who have had experience with the care system at any point in their childhood, identified through local authority data; Estranged, identified through Student Finance. Support provided by local authorities should be expanded and standardised, to address the ‘postcode lottery’ and ‘cliff-edge’ drop off of support Throughout this report it has been clear that issues of support level and consistency is not confined to the education sector, but is also a major issue for young people accessing local authority support. This is often due to confusion around whose responsibility it is to support different groups at different stages, leading to many who fall through the gaps and end up in a camp where no one takes responsibility, and support is lacking. Local authorities have statutory duties to support care leavers, which includes providing a personal advisor, creating a pathway plan, and supporting with housing and financial needs up until the age of 18. Some local authorities also have excellent initiatives to help support care leavers into and through higher education, such as supporting with term time rent costs. However, when local authority budgets are stretched we can see a disparity in the level of support offered. Care leavers we interviewed commonly reported difficulties knowing what they were entitled to and what their local authority offered. There was a sense that there was a ‘postcode lottery’ for local authority support, and that this was especially challenging when care leavers were moving into a different local authority for university. The issue of financial and housing support ending at age 18 was also a common challenge, particularly in accessing higher education. As we’ve explored, care leavers are more likely to go into higher education later in life, and will likely need similar levels of support progressing into higher education as a care leaver applying straight out of compulsory schooling. This ‘cliff-edge’ drop off of support can be devastating for care leavers: a report in 2023 found that 1 in 10 care leavers were homeless or threatened with homelessness after the end of the local authority statutory duty at 18.99 This is an issue that the government has acknowledged: the 65