A new Children’s Social Care Blog post has highlighted a difficult but important issue for everyone supporting young people in and leaving care: the transition towards independence can also become a transition into loneliness and isolation.

Published on 25 August 2026, Tackling the loneliness of leaving care is written by Clare Chamberlain, co-chair of the Independent Review into the Deaths of Care Leavers. The article reflects on the findings of the review and the experiences of some of the most vulnerable young adults who have left care.

The review examined care leaver death notifications made during 2025 and explored the circumstances of six young people aged between 18 and 24 in greater depth.

It identified three key learning themes:

• being alone and readiness for adulthood
• the drop in levels of support
• the workforce available to help young people make the transition to adulthood

It also identified five broad areas where change is needed, including supported accommodation for young people leaving care and the development of the workforce supporting young adults.

For providers of supported accommodation, children’s homes and fostering services, the findings raise an important question:

What do we really mean when we say that a young person is ready for independence?

When support falls away

One of the most powerful messages from the review concerns what happens when young people reach adulthood.

While a child is looked after, there can be considerable professional involvement in their life. Their health, education, emotional wellbeing, relationships, placement and safety may be regularly discussed, assessed and reviewed. Then adulthood arrives.

As Clare Chamberlain describes, much of that infrastructure can suddenly fall away. What may initially feel like greater freedom can develop into isolation and a feeling of belonging to nobody.

The review heard about young people experiencing extreme vulnerability and acute loneliness, sometimes without a trusted adult available to help them navigate significant difficulties.

This should challenge the way we think about preparation for adulthood.

Independence is not simply a collection of practical skills

When we talk about independence in children’s social care, it is easy to focus on things that can be observed and measured.

• Can the young person cook?
• Can they manage their money?
• Can they clean their accommodation?
• Can they make appointments?
• Can they use public transport?
• Can they understand a tenancy?
• All of these are important.

But a young person could demonstrate every one of these abilities and still be profoundly unprepared for adulthood. They may be able to prepare dinner but have nobody to eat with. They may be able to budget but have nobody they trust enough to ask for help when the money runs out. They may be able to travel independently but have nowhere they feel they belong. They may successfully maintain their accommodation while becoming increasingly isolated within it.

Practical competence and readiness for adulthood are not necessarily the same thing.

Perhaps we should be thinking about interdependence

Most adults are not completely independent. We rely on other people.

We ask family members for advice. We telephone friends when something goes wrong. We depend on colleagues, neighbours and communities. We borrow things, ask for lifts, seek reassurance and need somebody to listen when life becomes difficult.

Yet young people leaving care can sometimes be expected to achieve a level of self-sufficiency that we would rarely expect from other young adults. Preparation for adulthood should therefore not simply be about reducing dependency.

It should also be about developing healthy interdependence: knowing how to build relationships, how to maintain them, when to seek support and where that support can come from.

What does this mean for assessing independence?

The findings also highlight an important issue about how providers assess young people’s readiness for adulthood. An independence assessment should not simply ask: “What can this young person do?”

It should also help us understand: “What does this young person need in order to live a safe, fulfilling and connected adult life?”

That requires us to look much more widely.

Relationships, emotional wellbeing, communication, personal safety, education and employment, confidence, community participation and the ability to seek help can be just as important as cooking, cleaning and budgeting.

It is also unlikely that every young person will need the same support at the same time.

One young person may be confident with practical living skills but struggle significantly with relationships and emotional regulation while another may have a strong family and social network but need intensive support around budgeting, employment or maintaining accommodation. Another may appear highly independent precisely because they have learned not to rely on adults at all.

The starting point therefore needs to be the individual young person.

Using the Learning Pathway Assessment to identify what matters

This is one of the reasons Social Care Skills developed the Learning Pathway Assessment (LPA). [see page]

The LPA is designed to help professionals move beyond a general independence checklist and identify a young person’s individual strengths, development needs and priorities for preparing for adulthood.

It contains more than 100 structured assessment statements across a broad range of areas, including:

• personal development
• practical life skills
• education and employment
• health and wellbeing
• relationships
• personal safety
• social and civic responsibilities

The purpose is not simply to generate a score.

Instead, the LPA supports a structured process:

Assess → Identify Priorities → Agree the Pathway → Deliver Support → Review Progress

This distinction is particularly relevant in light of the findings from the Independent Review.

If an assessment concentrates predominantly on practical tasks, we risk concluding that a young person is becoming increasingly independent while overlooking significant vulnerabilities elsewhere in their life.

A broader assessment can help practitioners identify that a young person who is capable of cooking, budgeting and travelling independently may still need considerable support around relationships, emotional wellbeing, personal safety, confidence or participation in their community.

From assessment to purposeful key work

Assessment should also lead somewhere. Identifying 20 things that a young person cannot yet do is not particularly useful if practitioners do not know which ones should be addressed first. The LPA therefore helps practitioners establish priorities rather than attempting to address every area simultaneously.

Those priorities can then inform care planning, support planning and purposeful key work.

For providers using the Supported Learning Independence Programme, the LPA can also help identify where structured independence learning should be focused, creating a clearer connection between assessment and the support subsequently delivered.

This creates a more purposeful cycle: Understand the young person → identify priorities → provide targeted support → review progress → adapt the pathway.

And although reviews might commonly take place every three months, providers can determine a different timeframe where this better reflects the young person’s circumstances, progress and needs.

What does this mean for supported accommodation?

The findings are particularly significant for supported accommodation providers working with 16 and 17 year-olds. Supported accommodation has an important role in helping young people develop independence. But independence cannot become reduced to completing key-work sessions or demonstrating practical tasks.

Providers should consider whether their assessments and support plans sufficiently explore:

• relationships and trusted adults
• loneliness and social isolation
• emotional wellbeing
• confidence in seeking help
• family relationships where appropriate
• friendships and positive peer relationships
• community connections
• education, training and employment
• personal safety
• identity and belonging
• what support will remain when the placement ends

A particularly important question may be:

“Who will still be there for this young person when we are no longer there?”

What does this mean for children’s homes?

For children’s homes, preparation for adulthood should begin well before a young person approaches 18.

The relationships young people develop with staff can be enormously significant, particularly where they have experienced disrupted attachments, rejection, abuse or multiple placement moves.

Homes should therefore consider preparation for adulthood as part of the young person’s wider development rather than something introduced shortly before they leave.

The LPA can support this by helping homes identify areas for development earlier and track progress over time.

Importantly, it can also highlight strengths.

Preparation for adulthood should not become a deficit exercise in which professionals continuously identify everything a young person cannot do. Recognising existing abilities, relationships, achievements and resilience provides a foundation on which further development can be built.

What does this mean for fostering?

The same principles apply within foster care.

One of the strengths of fostering can be the opportunity for young people to develop relationships that extend beyond formal care arrangements.

Where appropriate and wanted by the young person, maintaining meaningful relationships with foster carers and their wider networks can provide continuity and belonging during adulthood.

Preparation for leaving foster care should therefore consider not only what the young person needs to learn before leaving but also which relationships and sources of support can continue afterwards.

An assessment of readiness for adulthood should capture this relational dimension alongside practical skills.

A challenge for the workforce

The review also raises questions about the workforce supporting care leavers.

Clare Chamberlain describes Personal Advisers as valued workers but argues that some young people require a wider and more sophisticated network of support. This may include practitioners capable of developing trusting relationships, understanding systemic practice, supporting family relationships, responding to mental health needs and helping young people develop confidence and emotional resilience.

For providers, there is an important message here. Supporting independence is skilled work.

It requires much more than delivering a programme of practical activities.

Staff need to understand trauma, relationships, safeguarding, professional boundaries, adolescent development, emotional wellbeing and the individual experiences that influence how a young person approaches adulthood.

The questions that may matter most

Perhaps the findings of the review should encourage all of us to ask some different questions when assessing readiness for adulthood.

We may know whether a young person can prepare a meal. But who will they eat with?

We may know whether they can create a budget. But who will they ask for advice when something unexpected happens?

We may know whether they can use public transport. But where are the places where they feel they belong?

We may know whether they can make an appointment. But will they tell somebody when they are struggling?

And perhaps most importantly: Who will notice when something is wrong?

These questions are more difficult to measure than whether somebody can operate a washing machine or prepare a meal.

But they may tell us considerably more about whether a young person is genuinely prepared for adulthood.

From independence to a meaningful adult life

The Independent Review into the Deaths of Care Leavers provides difficult but important learning for the whole children’s social care sector.

For Social Care Skills, it also reinforces the thinking behind the Learning Pathway Assessment and Supported Learning Independence Programme.

Assessment should identify the individual young person’s starting point. The LPA can help identify their strengths, needs and priorities.

Purposeful support and programmes such our Supported Learning Independence Programme can then help practitioners work alongside the young person to develop those areas.

Progress should be reviewed and the pathway adapted as the young person develops. But throughout that process, we should remember what we are ultimately trying to achieve.

The objective is not to produce a young person who needs nobody. It is to help a young person enter adulthood with the skills to manage their life, the confidence to seek support, the relationships that give them belonging and the resilience to navigate difficulties when they arise.

Leaving care should mean moving forward. It should not mean being left alone.

Further reading

Tackling the loneliness of leaving care – Children’s Social Care Blog

Review of early deaths of care leavers – GOV.UK