Being taken into care when you’re young can make the world a confusing place – from trying to understand what’s happened to you, what you’ve just experienced and witnessed, to working out who you really are and where you belong.
For one of our Reading care leavers, this journey took place during their teenage years.
Already facing the various challenges that come from transitioning from childhood to adolescence; making new friends, being exposed to different people from various backgrounds, on top of dealing with the experience they’d just encountered, they then had the courage to take on an even harder journey.
Instead of going through life living with something that didn’t feel right, they recognised who they were and who they wanted to be and made the brave decision to transition to the opposite gender.
This is a difficult decision and journey for anyone to go through, never mind when there is limited support around you.
Alongside managing this transition, our care leaver continued to do well at school, achieving brilliant GSCE grades and A-levels and is now studying hard at university.
We’re immensely proud of how this care leaver conducted themselves through the journey of change, being true to themselves and following what they felt was right, even with the knowledge that not everyone may agree or understand their decision.
They made important life choices, had the courage and determination to stick with them and through all this, headed off to university to start a new life.
They should be incredibly proud of themselves and we wish them all the best in their fantastic future ahead!