{"id":478033,"date":"2026-03-16T03:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/478033\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T03:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:59:07","slug":"one-off-2000-cash-grant-gives-care-leavers-head-start-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/478033\/","title":{"rendered":"One-off \u00a32,000 cash grant gives care leavers head start, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hill says she was “speechless for a good 10 minutes” after finding out that she had been chosen to receive the money.<\/p>\n

“These things don’t often happen to me, I’m not a very lucky person.” <\/p>\n

The 22-year-old from the West Midlands spent two years in care as a teenager, living with foster parents, which she describes as a “very mentally taxing experience”.<\/p>\n

She says she has autism and “other issues” which weren’t appreciated or supported at the time.<\/p>\n

“It just felt like the only person I had was myself, which really sucks.” <\/p>\n

Despite the challenges, she managed to go to university and is currently studying forensic investigations. <\/p>\n

Hill used the money to buy a PC for her studies and to take her partner on holiday, for a week to Liverpool. <\/p>\n

“I was working on a laptop that was slow and it kept crashing. I’d been saving for a new PC but when I got the money, it meant I could finally get the thing I really needed to help with uni,” she says.<\/p>\n

A parliamentary inquiry last year, external<\/a> highlighted that care leavers faced substantial challenges. <\/p>\n

A third become homeless within two years of leaving care, while about a quarter of the prison population have spent time in care. <\/p>\n

Care leavers are much less likely to go to university or to be in any education, training or employment at age 19.<\/p>\n

Direct cash transfers have been shown to help tackle poverty in several other countries. <\/p>\n

Researchers from King’s College have already started another project examining whether giving homeless people a \u00a32,000 no strings attached cash grant can tackle homelessness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hill says she was “speechless for a good 10 minutes” after finding out that she had been chosen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-478033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}