1. Thanks to @lemnsissay for reminding me of something that oddly I never forgot. I watched his programme on BBC last night from the position of an insider, knowing more about the ravages of care than most. I am care experienced & a social worker. I know Lemn's story well >

2. I have seen first hand how the care system can reduce living breathing children to a commodity, a file, a problem to be solved, an emergency to be placed, - something that is no longer a child>

3. I have a black brother was grew up in care with me in the 50's/60's. Incredibly, they called him 'Chalky' too, although it was long before Jim Davidson. Like Lemn, he rolled with it all his childhood & did well in later life. >

4. My care was appalling with the sole exception of my last foster parents to whom I owe everything. The children's homes I knew were merely abusive "sausage machine" institutions where kids were processed, as Lemn puts it so well. I mourn none of them >

5. In the early 70's, my pain & outrage took me into social work "to make a difference". I wanted to ensure other kids didn't have to know the life in care that my brother I knew. In the 90's, Lemn knew it & more. Kids still know it today. >

6. Over the years I must have known hundreds, possibly thousands, of kids in care. Thousands of Lemns, thousands of my brother - and me. All totally different stories, all with the one common theme. >

7. I have struggled away to make a difference & argued with those who block the way. I have tried to make the anonymous suits in offices aware of the impact of their choices. If I couldn't do that, at least I might make them feel uncomfortable. >

8. In my daily arguments, I too would start to see the kids in care as a single "them", not thousands of me's" as I should have done & did at the dawn of the 70's when I walked into social services as an angry young man in Manchester & told them I want to be a social worker >

9. Lemn's programme reminded me of the personal anger & pain I knew that was real to me. Not a sense of injustice for others, but an outrage that I should have been treated so badly. That outrage had become overgrown with the weeds of professional veneer. It needed stripping>

http://10.It  is outrageous that a child in care should not be loved. In the 50's, in the 90's - & today. It is outrageous that strangers should have so much say in children's lives, then walk away & leave them to struggle. It is outrageous that children... so much. >

11. Still today men in suits make decisions about kids, safely removed from reality. Today a huge industry makes vast profits on the back of that individual pain. I know the facts but thanks to Lemn, I remembered once more the feelings of pain, insult & outrage too. Thank you.