“Although it’s called care leaving, a lot of young people say that actually, care leaves us.”
This is what Mary-anne Hodd, a former care leaver and developer of a game-changing guarantor scheme, says. When she left care, Hodd, who lives in Newquay, wanted to move into privately rented accommodation with her friends. Without a parent to act as a guarantor, she approached her local council for help. But they refused to guarantee her lease.
“I was met with this kind of ‘computer says no, we don’t expect you to rent privately, we expect you to move into council housing or supported accommodation’,” she says.
For Hodd, who works as
