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Mary-anne Hodd is a trainer, speaker and consultant, combining lived experience of the care system and psychological perspectives to support a strengths-based understanding of care experience.
On Tuesday 10 December, Mary-anne is delivering a workshop with Blue Cabin on the subject of identity (find out more and book a place here).
Here, Mary-anne shares some of her own, lived experience of growing up in foster care, how it affected her sense of identity, and the unique challenges care-experienced children and young people face.
For those growing up in the care system, navigating a sense of self and understanding where you belong can be challenging due to the lack of stable, secure caregivers. The experience of being in care can lead to a fragmented identity, shaped by family separation, frequent moves, and the potential lasting impact of early adversity. This blog explores the complexities of identity in care and highlights the need for support in helping care-experienced individuals navigate these challenges.
I write this from my own experience of growing up in foster care and the gut-wrenching feeling of loneliness and uncertainty when I left. I felt this need to be independent, to not feel vulnerable, but lacked the necessary skills and understanding of what that even really meant. I struggled to reconcile who I was, caught between my birth parents’ values and beliefs and those of my foster parents. Spending nine years with each left me with a conflict I felt deep in my bones, one that took years to untangle.
I had to discover who I was, separate from what had happened to me, and work through the pain and anger of feeling let down, while also coming to terms with my parents’ circumstances, their early adversity, and the lasting impact. At the same time, I had to process feelings of conditional worth and love, likely passed on – perhaps unknowingly – from my foster parents and circumstances surrounding being a ‘child of the system’.
Identity is multifaceted, consisting of the experiences, relationships and environments that shape who we become, where we feel we belong and what we think we’re capable of.
Some elements of identity are fixed, elements out of our control, like our race, sex, ethnicity and ancestry, while others, such as our beliefs, values, interests and hobbies may be more fluid.
The value placed on certain identity elements might change as we grow and develop, some becoming more important and prevalent at certain times. That need to understand who we are, where we come from and where we belong often becomes pressing in those teenage years, as we start to crave our need for independence, the desire to find ourselves separate from our caregivers; ‘are they my beliefs, or are they my parents/caregiver?s’; ‘is that really a boundary, what ownership do I have over these’?
For children in care, the experience of consistency with these elements of identity is a privilege we are often not afforded.
From the starting point of attachment to the potential inconsistency of caregivers, children in care often experience disruption which can harm their sense of self. Early experiences of adversity can leave children growing up in a world that they feel is not meant for their survival, where they have to fight just to stay afloat, let alone have the space to figure out who they are separate from the pain and loss.
For many care-experienced young people, frequent moves between ‘placements’ and schools contribute to a fractured identity. I remember being described as “taking things in stride,” but in reality, I felt I had no choice but to adapt. Disruptions in identity formation, combined with a loss of culture and connection to family history, only add to the feeling of being disconnected from oneself.
The aim of this blog, and the training I’m delivering in December, is to share a lived experience perspective on growing up in care, the potential impact on identity and how we can support healthy identity formation, overcoming some of the challenges.
This blog post explores some of those challenges, and the training will offer space to focus on the potential for positive change – what we can do once we connect with the realities and experiences of many young people in care. I hope to see you there.
Thank you to Mary-anne for sharing this personal insight into identity as a care-experienced person.
Learn more about the unique challenges that care-experienced children and young people face in forming their identities, in an online Live Classroom with Mary-anne. Find out more and book a place here>>
Mary-anne is a care-experienced teacher, trainer and speaker. Combining lived experience and psychology, Mary-anne works to support a deeper understanding of, and improved outcomes for, children and young people in care. Her ‘feelings-focused’ work has supported the longevity of placements, halting unplanned endings and contributed to changing narratives of what it means to be care experienced.
She is a training practitioner from Trauma Informed Consultancy Services, which offers an extensive range of training sessions related to all aspects of how we can apply a trauma informed framework to settings, services and systems. Trauma Informed Consultancy Services works with education settings, children’s services, criminal justice and adult services.
