The Every Child Leaving Care Matters (ECLCM) campaign began in December 2013 and was established to challenge discriminatory legislation related to children Leaving Care. Those in foster care are rightly afforded the opportunity to 'Stay Put' i.e. Continue living with their foster carers if they so wish. The same opportunity is denied to children living in residential care. We wish to gain equality of opportunity for this group, many of whom will have faced the most complex of challenges in their lives. We know that many Care Leavers are vulnerable and statistically more likely to suffer acute mental health problems; have a disproportionately high incidence of suicide; may well be homeless; are, despite their ability unable to go to University - the list is almost endless.

The campaign has, thus far been entirely self-funding, not politically affiliated and run exclusively by volunteers. Due to our relative success we have managed to engage with many organisations of influence, the DfE and are supported by approximately 15% of MP's. This is great but involves fairly regular trips to London from the North of England where all of our Board live. We have personally borne the (considerable) cost of this so far but would ask that supporters (and we have approximately 15,000 committed supporters) make a modest contribution to defray future travel costs. If we reach our target we will close the Just Giving appeal and use the money wisely and maintain a full account of expenditure for scrutiny.

Please consider helping us.

Thank you