Applicants from a care background are 179 per cent more likely to apply for health and social care than non-care-experienced students. There is a lot to unpack here.
The figure jumped out at me from the UCAS Next Steps report, which looked at the experiences of care-experienced people (CEPs) when applying to higher education, but UCAS did not seem to investigate them further.
The Care-Experienced Graduates’ Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project published a report last week which examined the experiences of CEPs at the other end of the student lifecycle: graduation. It went a little into explaining the large numbers of CEP applying for care and social work degrees. It found that family histories in care were a key influence for CEP investment in altruism; the accessibility of these courses through Access to Higher Education Diplomas is important – many CEPs do not apply to university straight from school and often have complex lives to navigate before they do so. The fact that these courses often have certainty of employment afterwards, which is vital when you do not have the safety net of a family, could be another factor.
