I left care just before I turned sixteen. With no real follow-up or support, the consequences shaped my life for years: I left school without qualifications, became a teenage parent, faced homelessness, and carried ongoing struggles with my mental health.

But writing gave me a way through. It became the place where I could make sense of the silence, reclaim my story, and imagine a future that wasn’t defined by my file.

My second memoir, The Girl Who Walked Out of the File, reimagines my own case files and turns them into poetry, fragments, and stories. It’s a book about survival, voice, and the right to rewrite your own story.

That’s why I created The Aftercare Project — because leaving care shouldn’t mean being left behind. This is a space for poetry, zines, creativity, and truth. A place to turn files into voices, and to imagine what comes next.

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