policy & reform
social welfare system in Australia, so we
should really be, by all rights, doing much,
much better than they are.
The encouraging part is that all of this
stuff is working. So in the UK, they began
introducing support to encourage young
people in care to go into university in
2003, and the percentage increased from
1 per cent to I think about 14 per cent.
Those numbers are obviously still below
Universities in some ways
are best placed to do things
like supporting young people in
education, doing outreach.
that of the mainstream population, but
they’re improving: these interventions are
making the difference.
In the US, in California, 50 per cent of
kids in care are now going to a two or
four-year college. In every state where
they have introduced support for university
study for young people in care, it has
made a very noticeable difference.
Did this research motivate you to found the
Why Not You project?
I actually founded Why Not You a couple
of years before I undertook the Churchill
Fellowship. It was the other way around: it
was me having done some advocacy work
in Australia, across a number of different
states, that caused me to go, “Okay, what
is happening overseas?”
To get across what Australia is doing in
supporting kids coming out of care going
to uni doesn’t take that long, depressingly.
I’d exhausted the limits of what Australia
was doing pretty quickly, and so the
Churchill Fellowship enabled me to go
overseas and look at what they were doing
and if it was working.
With the Why Not You program, I work
with universities primarily to try and get
them to implement support services to
enable more young people to access
university education.
I’m a big believer that the government
shouldn’t be doing everything, and I think
universities in some ways are best placed
to do things like supporting young people
in education, doing outreach.
I talk to universities about things like,
when young people in care turn 18, they
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have nowhere to live. Only 20 per cent
of kids in care are able to stay where they
are living, so they effectively become
homeless the moment they turn 18 – and
you cannot expect them to succeed if
they’re homeless.
As their university, you might want
to think about supporting them with
accommodation options – whether that’s
subsidising on-campus accommodation
or providing them with a loan to help them
pay their bond. That’s as basic as it can
be a lot of the time. If you don’t have any
money to cover the bond, and if you’re
going to uni and all that, that could mean
it’s very prohibitive.
I talk to universities about the need to
do things like that, about the need to make
sure that the mental health services they
provide – very generously most of the
time – are packaged in such a way that
if you’re a care leaver and you’re literally
putting into Google, “University of Sydney
Mental Health Services care leaver”, you
can find information that points you in the
right direction.
One of the main things I try to get
universities to do is to work on the
outreach part of it. So, starting the
conversations with young people while
they’re still in care, making sure that
teenagers in foster care know university
is a live option for them. practical: there was nobody to look after
me and my brother in Australia.
It was a lonely time – it’s grim being in
care. I’ve had some really lovely carers
though, particularly the last family I lived
with – they were incredibly generous and
kind, and I really wouldn’t have ended up
at uni if not for their financial support.
Have you found universities on the whole
to be responsive? University has significantly broadened my
horizons in terms of what is achievable and
what I can do with my life.
It has given me a great sense of personal
confidence and self-worth that is, I think,
quite rare.
Some people never derive the thing
they’re good at, they never come to
understand it. University really gave me
that: a clear understanding that this is the
stuff you’re good at, this is the stuff you
should pursue. That’s been invaluable.
It’s given me everything, really. It gave
me an opportunity to travel the world. I
was able to go on exchange to Canada
during my undergrad years. It made me
believe I could live my life in a similar way
to that of a child born to a barrister or a
surgeon. I could carve that out for myself.
I recognise university’s not for everyone
– it shouldn’t be for everyone, that’s not
how the world works. But I really hope
that more young people in care are able to
realise the benefits that university provides
for them. ■
Hugely. Something that I’ve been very
moved by actually is the extent to which
people who work with equity and diversity
in universities are genuinely passionate
about improving university access to their
institutions. I find they’re much more
passionate than policymakers.
On the minus side, I guess universities
are very bureaucratic institutions, so it
takes a long time for things to happen –
a very long time to translate that genuine
desire to improve access to the actual
programs. But we’re getting there, and
that’s really positive.
When you were 12 years old and you had
your first placement, how did school and
home life change for you after that?
I came to Australia as a refugee [from
Kazakhstan], and shortly after I arrived in
Australia my mum died, and so the reason
I ended up in care wasn’t because I was
neglected or anything like that. It was very
Did your academic performance suffer in
any way?
It definitely does in most cases. It definitely
did for my brother. He was hugely
impacted academically. I wasn’t, and that
was probably because I was always very
driven academically. I always wanted to
do really well. My academic abilities were
always something I derived my sense of
self and self-confidence from.
For me, I always knew I would go to
university. I think that’s partly being a
refugee, and having that thing that a lot
of new migrants and children of new
migrants have, which is that you absolutely
must grab it with both hands: the
opportunity that you have in this country
and everything that you’ve been given.
I was quite anxious about where I would
live. My foster parents were very generous
in lending me money to enable me to pay
my accommodation fees upfront.
How did your time at ANU and then later at
Oxford change you as a person?