This resource is designed to help businesses understand how they can support care leavers into employment in the UK workforce.
Explore this guide
Why support care leavers into employment?
Care leavers are a group of young people who often face significant disadvantage when entering the labour market, despite having strong potential, resilience and transferable skills. Supporting care leavers into employment helps to address inequalities in access to work, improves long term life outcomes, and contributes to inclusive economic growth.
Employers who support care leavers play an important role in social value delivery, corporate parenting responsibilities (for public bodies), and community wealth building. Employment is one of the most effective protective factors for care leavers, improving financial stability, wellbeing, and independence.
Explainer: What are care leavers?
The legal definition care leaver is a young person aged 16–25 who has spent at least 13 weeks in local authority care, with some of that time occurring after their 16th birthday. Care experience may include foster care, residential care, kinship care or other looked after arrangements.
It is worth noting that the Care Leavers’ Association have adopted a more inclusive definition as anyone who has spent time in care. Such care could be in foster care, residential care or other arrangements outside the immediate or extended family. The care could have been provided directly by the state (mainly through local authority social services departments) or by the voluntary or private sector.
Many care leavers transition to adulthood earlier than their peers and often without the family networks that others rely on for financial, emotional or practical support.
How your organisation could benefit from supporting care leavers into employment
Retention: When employers invest in care leavers through supportive onboarding, mentoring and clear progression routes, they often see strong loyalty and commitment. For care leavers, employment can represent stability and independence, which can translate into higher retention and reduced recruitment and training costs over time.
Resilience: Care leavers frequently bring high levels of adaptability, independence, problem solving and resilience developed through lived experience. These qualities can be valuable in fast changing or high pressure working environments and can strengthen team performance when recognised and supported.
Social value and responsibility: Supporting care leavers into employment helps you contribute to your company’s social responsibility and diversity and inclusion activity. Employment reduces the risk of homelessness, poor health outcomes and long term unemployment, contributing to stronger local economies and communities.
Reputation: By employing care leavers, organisations contribute to improved long term outcomes for young people leaving care. This can strengthen relationships with local authorities, voluntary organisations and communities and enhance organisational reputation.
How your organisation can support refugees into employment
Challenges care leavers face when seeking work
Care leavers may experience barriers such as:
- Limited access to informal networks and references
- Gaps in education or work experience
- Financial instability - for example, for travel costs or work clothing
- Lack of confidence in recruitment settings
- Anxiety linked to past trauma or instability
- Difficulty navigating complex application processes
Understanding these challenges helps employers design fairer, more effective recruitment and retention approaches.
Getting started
You may not be ready to hire a care leaver. Nonetheless, there are many ways you can support care leavers into employment:
Work shadowing
Mentoring
Volunteering opportunities
Raising internal awareness of care experience and inclusion: This can be achieved through identifying a named contact or champion for care leaver recruitment.
Signing up to the Care Leaver Covenant
Creating inclusive recruitment processes
Allow additional time during interviews and assessments, recognising that care leavers may feel anxious in formal settings or need more time to process questions and give their best responses.
Provide training for hiring managers on care experience, trauma informed practice and unconscious bias, helping them to understand how early life experiences, placement instability or disrupted education can affect confidence, communication and presentation.
Adapt recruitment and interview formats to reduce unnecessary pressure. This may include offering alternatives to traditional panel interviews, such as practical or task based assessments, sharing interview questions in advance, explaining the process clearly beforehand, or allowing candidates to bring a support person if appropriate.
These approaches help ensure that recruitment focuses on potential and ability, rather than disadvantage or lack of familiarity with recruitment processes.
Useful resources
Browse the library of useful local and national resources below. They can offer different services and support to your organisation as you begin to explore recruiting refugees.
OXME – Leaving Care Information Hub
A local information platform signposting care leavers in Oxfordshire to support around work, training, housing and wellbeing.
Oxfordshire House Project
Provides housing, life‑skills support and community for young people leaving care in Oxfordshire, helping create the stability needed to enter and sustain employment.
Advocacy 1st – Care Leavers Service
Provides advocacy and volunteer mentoring for Oxfordshire care leavers, helping them navigate services, employment and independence.
Oxfordshire Virtual School – Post 16 and Care Leavers Team
Supports care leavers aged 16–25 to access education, training and employment. Works directly with employers to remove barriers, support applications and sustain outcomes.
Oxfordshire County Council – Leaving Care Service
The statutory Leaving Care Team that supports care experienced young people into adulthood, including pathways into education, employment and training. Employers can work with the team to offer opportunities.
Case studies
Civil Service Care Leavers Internship Scheme, UK
A cross government programme offering paid 18 month internships for care leavers, with potential for permanency. More than 880 roles have been offered across departments and around 80% of interns are made permanent after 12 months, subject to performance and vacancies.
Find out more
John Lewis Partnership – Building Happier Futures, UKStarbucks – Refugee Employment Initiative
A retailer led employability and hiring programme for care experienced people. In its first three years it engaged 1,300+ people through welcome tours, delivered 850+ work experience placements and hired 300+ care experienced people into roles across the business.Starbucks pledged to employ 10,000 refugees worldwide, including 500 in the UK. Participants receive tailored training, employability support, and guaranteed interviews. Sam from Syria joined the programme in 2017 and is now a supervisor and “coffee master.”
Find out more
Barnardo’s – JOBS Project (with Amazon), UK
A national employability pathway for care experienced young people providing coaching, interview preparation and direct routes into employment, including roles at Amazon fulfilment centres and wider apprenticeships. Participants report increased independence and sustained work.
Find out more
related actions
.png){kind=small}