THE government has today (16 April 2026) announced an urgent review into the deaths of young adults who died shortly after leaving the care of their local authorities. In the year to 31 March 2026, councils notified the Department for Education of 105 deaths of care leavers aged 16 to 24 in England. This is likely to be a significant underestimate because councils routinely tell the government that they have no information about the living circumstances of around 1 in 20 young care leavers.
Speaking to Sky News, The Barrister Group’s Carolyne Willow urged the government to be ready to act on this review exposing the necessity of wider systemic change to ensure that children in care have the lifelong care, protection and support which is the norm within loving families. She also pressed for stronger legal requirements around local safeguarding adult reviews and inquests, noting that neither process makes any special provision for those who have grown up in the care of the state.
In today’s Sky News report, Carolyne Willow, who is a Family and Public Law Barrister at The Barrister Group, says: “What is required beyond this review is a real openness by ministers to the possibility that much more is needed than a two months’ piece of research. Preventing the early, premature deaths of care leavers requires really comprehensive reform”.
The review will closely examine the deaths of some of these young people to consider their experiences as care leavers, what mattered to them and what more could have been done to support them. BBC broadcaster and journalist Ashley John Baptiste will lead the review with experienced social worker Clare Chamberlain.
The government’s review into the deaths of care leavers marks an important step in confronting a long-standing and deeply troubling pattern of premature deaths among some of society’s most vulnerable young people. However, experts and advocates are clear that a two-month review alone cannot address the scale of the problem. Meaningful change will require ministers to commit to comprehensive, long-ter
