Cllr Richard Kemp will hand over the ceremonial chains of office having spent the last 12 months as Liverpool’s first citizen
Lord Mayor Richard Kemp, together with Erica Kemp and members of the Care Experienced Forum on a visit to the Town Hall as part of their ‘This place is yours’ work.
Liverpool’s outgoing Lord Mayor has used his last full day in office to set the city a challenge to support those leaving the care system. In the city’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, Cllr Richard Kemp will hand over the ceremonial chains of office having spent the last 12 months as Liverpool’s first citizen.
He has used his year in post to champion the cause of those leaving the city’s care system. Currently, around 700 people across Liverpool are taken out of state support between the ages of 18 and 25.
Now, Cllr Kemp has issued a rallying cry to people and organisations across the city to help change the lives of young people in need of support. In a bid to reframe the narrative around care leavers, Liverpool Council held a landmark conference at St George’s Hall last autumn in a bid to connect education, business and young people to provide greater opportunities.
Cllr Kemp said the conference was an opportunity for the city to “reshape the destiny of our young people” who for too long had been depicted as “problems.” The Lord Mayor said care leavers are in fact “a resource for our city.”
He said: “Almost 200 years ago Charles Dickens came up from London by train and read the next chapter of his books to a discerning Liverpool audience. He spoke about Fagin and child criminals, about poverty, about poor environments and poor housing.
Lord Mayor of Liverpool Cllr Richard Kemp CBE (Image: Liverpool Council)(Image: Copyright Unknown)
“These conditions exist today in Liverpool and most other urban areas. Indeed, the effects of drugs can be found in every community.
“Fagin’s gangs of kids are an old-fashioned version of the County Lines gangs of today with children as young as eight being caught up in the transportation of drugs and where cheap gin has been replaced by Ketamine.”
Cllr Kemp said the young people at the apex of the “pyramid of sadness and destitution” are care leavers who are “dealt an appalling deck of cards at their birth and struggle to improve that deck in their life.” He added: “However, many can get through the problems of their birth family and community to build lives that can be rewarding and successful in many ways.
“The young people who co-produced the conference with us were prime examples of this.” Among them was Mollieanne Joyce, 18, one of the many eaving the care of the local authority after being taken out of what many would consider a “normal” family life 10 years ago.
She is beginning a new phase of her life at university. Cllr Kemp added: “Since then, I have spoken to many young people who have successfully navigated the care experience and come through it well.
“They all had one thing in common. All of them had been recognised by one person who had seen through the problems and discerned a young person who had qualities that they could not recognise themselves.
“That person had stuck with them often through thin and thin until they recognised those qualities themselves and set an upward strategy of self-improvement.” The outgoing Lord Mayor, who will be succeeded by Cllr Barbara Murray tomorrow, said a joined up approach was needed for the sake of young people.
With that, came his call to action. He said: “I now want to give you the challenges that I have given across the city of Liverpool.
“Will you help us to change lives and create potential problem citizens into potential good citizens? Are you the one who can look at an ugly duckling and see the inner swan and help that swan emerge into the light?”