Care leavers are dying young because the system drops them the moment they turn 18 — a “care cliff” that leaves teenagers suddenly alone, unsupported, and unsafe.
Chloe Pomfret’s story is one of those moments that stops you cold: a 16‑year‑old, suicidal and homeless, taken to A&E by her teachers — and told to go home, run a bath, and write in a journal.
It’s the kind of response that shows exactly how badly the system can fail a child in crisis. A teenager with nowhere safe to go, actively asking for help, and the advice she receives is the sort you’d give someone having a stressful day, not someone fighting for their life.
Care leavers shouldn’t be cut off at 18 — they should be supported until 25, just like any other young adult.
However, real life is messier than the neat “no parent would ever do that” line. Plenty of young people are kicked out at 18, sometimes even earlier, and the law doesn’t swoop in to protect them. That’s a brutal truth, and it deserves to be acknowledged plainly.
Care leavers aren’t just “young people”. They’re young people who’ve already been through trauma, instability, loss, and often neglect. They don’t have the fallback options that some kicked‑out teens do — no auntie’s sofa, no mate’s mum who’ll take them in, no family WhatsApp group to ask for help.
A 16‑year‑old is still a child — and with all the change and uncertainty they face, they need support and guidance, which is why care leavers should be supported until at least 21.
Most of us don’t even realise how lucky we are to have someone to call, someone who checks in, someone who notices if we disappear for a day. Care leavers don’t have that. And the fact that they’re expected to survive without it is genuinely terrible.
Most of us have someone to call — care leavers don’t, and it’s terrible; real change is needed.
Basic care for everyone has slowly disappeared — the things that used to be guaranteed now feel optional, patchy, or gone altogether.
As human beings, we no longer exist — that’s how it feels when a government stops seeing people and starts seeing only numbers, targets, and budgets.
When you’re disabled or elderly, it feels like you stop being seen as a person and start being treated like a “resource” — useful only until you’re not, and then ignored.
It sometimes feels like if you’re disabled or elderly, the government sees you as a burden rather than a person — and that’s why people fear what would happen if the law ever allowed anything as extreme as euthanasia.
This is the human condition: we live, we outlive our usefulness, and we die — and not always with the dignity every person deserves.
There’s no empathy left — everything is numbers and figures, and if you can’t work or you’re elderly, you’re treated as “not fit for purpose” and you fall through the cracks like you never existed.
This is sad but true — instead of being seen as human beings, we’re treated like statistics on a spreadsheet.
Governments get away with this because, as human beings, we fear — and fear makes us easy to manage.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 