Tag: careexperienced

  • Unseen and under pressure: the academic experience of estranged and care-experienced students 

    Unseen and under pressure: the academic experience of estranged and care-experienced students 

    The HEPI blog was kindly authored by Fiona Ellison, Co-Director, Unite Foundation 

    University is often described as a transformative experience, full of growth, challenge, and discovery. But for care-experienced and estranged students, the journey through higher education is often shaped by the absence of family support, financial insecurity, and a lack of belonging. The Unite Foundation has taken a deep dive into the latest findings from the HEPI and Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey 2025 (SAES), offering a clear picture of these students’ realities and developing a call to action. 

    The cost of insecurity 

    Care-experienced & estranged students are much more likely to drop out of university but we also know from the findings from the SAES that they’re much more likely to consider dropping out as well: 

    • 43% of care–experienced students and 44% of estranged students have considered withdrawing from university, compared to 28% of their peers. 

    Whilst the survey doesn’t give us insight into the reasons why, it does provide clues. For example, care-experienced students are experienced and estranged students work significantly more hours in paid employment: 

    • Care–experienced students work on average 11.3 hours/week, and estranged students work 11.1 hours/week, compared to 8.8 hours/week for other students. 

    This extra workload often stems from limited access to family financial support and a student finance system that doesn’t fully meet the needs of independent students. As HEPI highlighted in their work on minimum income standards those studying without financial support, even with the full maintenance loan, would still need to work over 20 hours at minimum wage to achieve the minimum income standard needed to survive at university.  

    We see this increased workload play out in students’ ability to attend lectures and complete academic work:  

    • 44% of care experienced students requested deadline extensions, compared to 29% of non-care experienced students.  

    It’s no wonder that only 79% of care-experienced students complete their undergraduate degrees compared to 89% of non-care-experienced students, and just 64% achieve a good honours degree compared to 77% of their non-care-experienced peers. We don’t have reliable data on estranged students – but that’s for another blog! If students are having to work longer hours just to afford to live, then it’s no wonder academic studies will often take a back seat.  

    However, there is a shining light. Housing is more than shelter – it’s a foundation for success. The Unite Foundation has, over the last 14 years, provided free, year-round accommodation to care-experienced and estranged students, removing a major barrier to continuity and wellbeing. Data published to celebrate our 10th birthday found that there is ‘strong evidence that the scholarship improves educational outcomes of the students we support, specifically in year-to-year progression and completion’. 

    These figures highlight how housing insecurity and financial pressure can directly impact academic persistence and performance – but whilst there is a simple answer, not enough institutions are truly looking at the evidence-based solution to address the inequality this group of students face. 

    Loneliness and the need for community 

    One of the most striking findings within the report is the prevalence of loneliness: 

    • 45% of estranged students and 36% of care experienced students feel lonely “all or most of the time,” compared to 27% of other students. 

    Loneliness affects mental health, engagement, and retention. While it’s encouraging that loneliness among care-experienced students has decreased from 48% in 2023, the rise among estranged students signals a need for targeted support.  

    For this group of students, studying without the support network of family means the lack of ready-made networks needed when times are hard. The All of Us community was designed by and for care-experienced and estranged students to connect with peers – whether online or in real life. The handy guide #AllOfUsLocal is a practical toolkit that institutions can take to help create a community in your institution to create ways to support care experienced and estranged students to avoid isolation.  

    A mixed picture on wellbeing 

    Encouragingly, care-experienced students report similar levels of wellbeing to their non-care-experienced peers: 

    • Life satisfaction: 6.7 vs. 6.6 
    • Happiness yesterday: 6.2 for both groups 
    • Anxiety yesterday: 4.6 for both groups 

    However, estranged students consistently report lower scores: 

    • Happiness yesterday: 5.9 

    These differences underscore the emotional toll of estrangement and the importance of tailored support that ensures estranged students can access at any point – given we know for many students estrangement happens through their academic journey.  

    What next? 

    The Student Academic Experience Survey continues gives us the evidence about what this group of students thinks and feels about their time in higher education – it makes for some pretty tough reading. However, there isn’t anything new or surprising in the report for those of us that work in this space.  

    We now need to move beyond data and turn these insights into action. Universities, policymakers, and sector leaders must work together to ensure that care-experienced and estranged students are a target for activity. To do this, we need:  

    • Universities to prioritise year-round, affordable accommodation – Institutions should commit to providing or partnering on secure, year-round housing options for care-experienced and estranged students, recognising housing as a foundation for academic success. 
    • Targeted financial support and flexible funding models – Review and adapt bursary and hardship funding to reflect the true cost of living for independent students, especially those without family support. 
    • Better data collection and visibility – Universities and sector bodies must improve the identification and tracking of estranged students to ensure their needs are recognised and met. 
    • Embedding community-building initiatives – Adopt and promote tools like #AllOfUsLocal to reduce loneliness and foster belonging on campus. You can join our HE Peer Professionals network to share your challenges, celebrate successes and learn from others about how to support community-building activities.  

    At the Unite Foundation, we’ll shortly launch our new strategy, which will include practical steps that higher education institutions can take to ensure a focus on housing plays a key role in driving equality for care-experienced and estranged students. If you want to be the first to know about what we’re up to, do sign up to our newsletter.  

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  • How do care-experienced students view their time in higher education?

    How do care-experienced students view their time in higher education?

    Last Thursday 6th March, TASO shared its report on Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care. It found that young people with experience of care are four times less likely to attend higher education by age 22 and more than twice as likely to drop out as their peers without experience of care.

    It builds on a growing body of literature in this area, including analysis by the Unite Foundation and evaluations of its own scholarships with Jisc.

    Through the annual Student Academic Experience Survey (SAES), HEPI and Advance HE collect data on the experiences and attitudes of care-experienced students. We are in a constant process of iterating and improving the SAES, and in 2024, a close reading of our data from previous years suggested a higher number of respondents than expected were saying they had experience of care. To make sure we were capturing the right students, we refined the question as follows:

    Have you been in care? Select yes if you’ve ever lived in public care or as a looked-after child, including:

    • with foster carers under local authority care
    • in a residential children’s home
    • being ‘looked after at home’ under a supervision order
    • living with friends or relatives in kinship care

    Note: This does not refer to time spent in boarding schools, working in a care or healthcare setting, or if you are a carer yourself.

    In 2024, nearly 900 of the roughly 10,300 respondents to the SAES – still quite a high number, but significantly fewer than the previous year – said they had experience of care. What do the data say about their experiences in higher education? (Note that the margin of error for any subset will be higher than the margin for the whole survey sample, which is around 1%.)

    On subject choices, care-experienced students in the SAES were somewhat more likely to be studying Medicine and Dentistry and subjects allied to Medicine, which is consistent with sector-level data. They were also more likely to be studying Engineering and less likely to be studying Business, Social Studies and creative subjects.

    In addition to the challenges faced by having experienced care, these students were also less likely to come from the highest quintiles of participation in higher education (POLAR) than other students and more likely to have a disability (45%, compared to 30% of other students) but less often described themselves as first in family (25%, compared to 32% of other students).

    This probably informs many of their responses throughout the survey. For example, like other students taking courses like these, care-experienced students have more contact hours and do more hours of independent work (a total of 41.5 hours) than students without experience of care (36 hours on average). Likewise, more than half of care-experienced students use AI at least once a week, compared with less than a third (30%) of other students. This is as expected, given that saving time is a primary reason students use AI tools.

    Perhaps surprisingly, care-experienced students report higher scores on wellbeing measures, like happiness and life satisfaction. (For example, they average 7.08 out of 10 for whether the things they do are worthwhile, compared to 6.74 for other students.) However, they also report higher rates of anxiety and loneliness than students without experience of care, averaging 5.29 out of 10 for feeling anxious compared with 4.48 for other students.

    Care-experienced students are more likely to have considered withdrawing: 38% compared with 24% of all students. When asked for their main reason why, they cite mental health as the primary challenge, but at a lower rate than students without experience of care. Instead, they were more likely to mention workload – either a higher or lower volume than expected – or their physical health.

    chart visualization

    These data also suggest that care-experienced students face an altogether more challenging context. Some 58% of care-experienced students say they travel 10 miles or more to get to university, compared with only 31% without experience of care travelling the same distance. This may be because the benefits some care-experienced students get can be contingent on living within a particular local authority. Care-experienced students reported living alone or with family at higher rates than other students.

    chart visualization

    Additionally, care-experienced students may need to remain at home to provide for family members at higher rates. Almost all care-experienced students (80%) do some paid work during term-time, compared with 55% of other students. This is most often to supplement their income. But more than one-third of care-experienced students (35%) work to support friends or family financially.

    A third (33%) say the cost-of-living crisis has affected them ‘a lot’, compared with 27% of other students. Care-experienced students are also nearly twice as likely to depend on scholarships or bursaries to cover their costs, which could also show that such funds are being effectively targeted towards students who need them.

    In summary, care-experienced students are more likely to take certain Health and Science subjects, live further from their institution, are more likely to be working to support their families and are affected more by cost-of-living difficulties. These challenging findings help to explain why care-experienced students withdraw from higher education at higher rates.

    Clearly there is more that institutions and government can do to support this group of students. The TASO report recommends, for example, working closely with local authorities to ensure care-experienced students have reliable access to accommodation, both during and outside of term-time. And as Paige Mackenzie wrote for us in 2022, the holidays can be a ‘really lonely time’ for care-experienced and estranged students and it helps when staff reach out.

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