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JASMINE was 11-years-old when she first entered the care system.
For years she moved between foster homes and residential care. When placements broke down, she said this made her “feel not wanted and unloved”.
“This happened seven times for me. This meant new schools, new families, new friends and a new identity where I felt I had to be ‘Little Miss Perfect’ in order to be accepted and to fit in,” she told a group of peers at an event to mark Care Day 2019 yesterday.
“I felt like I have no say in every aspect of my life.”
She spent her late teens in a residential care home and said this gave her the stability she needed in her life.
This is where I found myself, where I accepted who I am and where I come from. And I felt loved, I felt accepted and I found my own voice. I began to grow and blossom and not be angry at this world over people giving up on me. This was the chapter where I turned my life around.
Now 21, Jasmine is living in a Focus Ireland hostel – she has nowhere else to go.
“We all deserve a forever home, we deserve our own home because we have no family to fall back on,” she told TheJournal.ie.
“We don’t have stability and when we have to go back to a hostel, that’s not nice. I’m homeless myself and it’s very hard to try and get a place. I think we should get a place straight away when we turn 18 because we’ve been moved around our whole lives, we deserve a stable home.”
Jasmine is on the youth council of Epic (Empowering Young People in Care), which is an Irish organisation that works with children and young people who are in care or who have care experience.
Her fellow council-member, 23-year-old Dillon also shared what he described as a positive experience in care.
He said he had “amazing social care workers and key workers” and that they helped him get a good education, which they knew was important to him.
Dillon said Care Day means a lot to him and other young people with experience in care, as their voices are not often heard and they feel there is a stigma is attached to it.
“It can be so isolating so it’s important for people to know that there is this day.”
His advice for young people entering the care system?
“Trust people, trust social care workers, trust key workers because they’re doing it for you. They’re not out to get you. When a lot of kids go into care I think they feel like people are out to get them. So I say just trust the people you’re meant to trust.”
“It’s important to remember everything happens for a reason,” Conor, who is also on the Epic youth council told us.
“Don’t be afraid of your identity – there are a lot of people out there in the care system who are afraid of it.”
‘Show your support’
Care Day is an initiative of ’5 National, 1 Voice’, an alliance made up of children’s rights charities across the UK and Ireland. This year The Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia also joined in the celebrations.
“It is such an exciting and positive day internationally, and each year it is growing,”said Terry Dignan, CEO of Epic.
“Care Day is a day where we are asking you to show your support, get vocal, get social and get involved in celebrating the successes and positive achievements of those in care or with care experience.”
Jasmine said getting involved with Epic and being on the council has given her a community and a support system. And it has given her a voice.
She wants other young people in care or with experience of care to “make sure their voices are heard”.
“Speak up, fight for your rights – do it the right way – and it’ll be okay.”
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To all the people blaming the Gardai on this they were busy dealing with a major collision on the m9 at Thomastown which resulted in a large section of the motorway being cleared. They have more important things to be dealing with than ensuring a generation of people who think the world revolves around them getting to a festival ! Your day was slightly changed and you were inconvenienced , it happens , get over it.
@Darren Moore: ?
@Darren Moore: First world millennial problems…
@Darren Moore: is that section of the M9 close to where the festival is, I’m unfamiliar with the area? If so it wouldn’t have just been a reduction in availability of Gardai causing the issue, but also diversions due to the accident.
I think those involved in the accident have been significantly more inconvenienced than a group of festival goers who would have heard about the incident on the radio and didnt modify their plans accordingly
@Darren Moore: well said I totally concur! Next year now they can go down the night before. Simples
@Spbeak: don’t just blame millenia ls its also become common aming middle age because the platform is available to complain. Quit generalisation its mud
@Darren Moore: delays while travelling to a festival on a bank holiday weekend? We need an oireachtas committee to investigate this ASAP.
Jesus Barbara chill out, maybe you should have left earlier
@Stephen Walshe: in fairness, if you check out the Twitter feed, there are people who left Dublin at 11:30 or earlier and still weren’t there at 9pm. Then people saying another 90 mins to get checked in once you arrive. How much earlier should people have left do you reckon?
How the hell could there be that much hassle with only 20,000 people. Its obviously extremely poor planning and management.
Tailbacks for miles in Carrick-on-Suir from mid afternoon and not a cop to be seen, they b out Monday morning with the bag when people goin home tho
@Ole dan tucker: the Garda I met directed us back towards Carrick-on-Suir only for us to spend 2 hours coming back the same way! 3 by roads into 1 doesn’t work.
@Ole dan tucker: true that, drove to galway then Killarney didn’t see one garda. That’s unique.
I live about 20 mins from Curraghmore. It took me 4 hours to drop somebody off and get home again. I don’t mind traffic jams and I wasn’t in a hurry to get home but it was strange that there is a huge estate with many entrance gates and loads of space for parking and yet getting into the space was so difficult. In those 3.40 hours it took to get in we saw one Garda and three people in high vis jackets. It seems rather strange. Hopefully everybody is in there now and will have fun .
Bought tickets for All Together, ended up All Together in a traffic jam…I really don’t see the issues…
@Robin Basstard: and you can cap it off listening to Fontaines BC and their dinosaur music
@alan: retro 90s/dinosaur is so in right now you uncool kid.
@alan: Dinosaur music? It appears you are a simpleton
@alan: it is DC
Maybe they need to sell timed entrance tickets. Arrive between a certain 2 hour period or something.
@Sean Ryan: that might work in Germany, not for a festival in Ireland. Get real
@Jazz Buckler: it would work if implemented. What’s your soloution?
We left Artane at 10:30am today.
After 11 hours we got to the festival, then we got asked to go in a line for a camp site only to be told it’s full. Absolutely dreadfully organized. Decided to leave and we’ve been given a full refund.
Whilst there NONE of the toilets had toilet paper. Avoid!
@Madra: hate when u need a big massive poop and
theres no poop paper available and so u end up in bits full of poop hoping you don’t poop yourself
@Madra: if everyone was delayed, surly you all arrived in the same order you would have, just over a longer duration, hence, the full campsite would have been an issue regardless, it just took longer to become full. As for the toilet issue, have you never been to a festival before, if so you’d know to bring your own toilet roll?
@Madra: didn’t you have the cop on to bring your own ar$e roll with over 20,000 ppl at an event you can assume toilet paper would be as rare as hens teeth.
@Madra: you didn’t bring your own toilet roll?
@Madra: you didn’t bring your own toilet roll so you asked for a refund?
15,000 people at Indie 19, in Mitchelstown tonight, a small town in North Cork and not a bother getting in or out of it, just shows what good planning can do.
Perhaps if every child wasn’t dropped by a suv 4×4 there wouldn’t be half the traffic problem.
It’s rediculous. I blame FFG for this obviously. I’m a typical “The Journal” reader with astute political acumen and an honest sense of fairness and equality. So I know when I see a Government led plot to upset citizens bank holiday weekend. Bla bla bla idi0ts. Jackíns all came down using their sat navs instead of following the Garda traffic plan. Then they go blaming the Gardai for the problems. Nuff said.
@Sonic: Haha I enjoyed that comment
No logical reason for such delays. We were lucky getting to gates relatively quickly but then spent 45mins to travel <1km. Made no sense as they were only letting 1 car at a time into huge field. Madness.
Their supposed apology was some joke. Most of it talking about how great the site and festival was etc. Red rag to a bull I’d imagine!
Can’t wait for the Netflix documentary
Ireland can’t do festival parking. There is never adequate plans or space allowing proper parking. There is usually no budget as maximum profit rules.
@Martin Sinnott: wrong. Never had an issue at EP
@Rob Hall: plenty of issues in the early years
@Martin Sinnott: I never had an issue at the Forever Young Festival! It was brilliantly organised with plenty of folk in high visibility jackets and all without exception were extremely helpful! Please stop running Ireland down – it really is a fabulous country with great events in the main!
They said to follow the traffic plan and don’t put Portlaw into gps.. so everyone put Portlaw in their gps
First world problems. Poor us with our delayed gratification – it’s not exactly Ebola!
@Spbeak:
Surely you can understand people’s frustrations after spending hard earned money and being subjected to such incompetence on the organisers behalf. You’d be bullin if ya missed a band you wanted to see cause you were stuck in unnecessary traffic.
@Spbeak: Last time I checked we were first world people living in a first world country.
@Ajax Penumbra: a very poorly run first world country by all accounts
Thoughts and prayers for the poor darlings. Let’s make the world revolve around these people again.
Left Dublin at 1 and arrived in carpark at 4 and that was with a quick stop off in Portlaw. Not that bad?
We left dry land as the cock crooe in the morning
And he crooe in the afternoon
He crooe by mistake in the evening cause he thought it was d millennium
The problem was obvious once we got to the car park, the stewarts didn’t have a clue. Taking far too long trying to park every single car individually. It was ridiculous. I’ve never seen a car park at a festival like it!
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