Swindon care-leaver celebrates work milestone

Jack Segelov is celebrating his one-year anniversary of working for the youth service that he credits with helping him "turn his life around".

He was taken into care at the age of 12 and by the time he arrived at Kingdom Youth Services in Swindon, aged 17, Jack calculated he had been in "near enough 30" foster placements, residential homes and emergency accommodation sites.

The now 19-year-old said: "I didn't settle anywhere before Kingdom. They just didn't give up on me."

Kingdom Youth Services provides safe accommodation and sets up their clients to be able to live independently.

Jack said he was the perfect fit to work for the service that had helped him because he had become "an expert by experience"and loved "connecting with the young people".

When he was first put into care, Jack said he went to live with his mother's godmother who was a foster carer in Newbury, Berkshire.

Separated from his siblings, who had been placed in care in Swindon, the placement did not work out.

"I just wanted to be at home. It was quite hard for me being the only one moving away", he said.

At that age, Jack said he could not fully process what was happening to him and why it had to be the way it was.

From there, the now care worker said he went to live with "the loveliest family" just a few weeks before Christmas.

"I was a part of the family. They had three children of their own but they just included me from the first time I went in."

Jack said the family even paid for him to go to Disneyland with his dance group, an experience he would have never had without them.

While he is still in touch with that family, Jack said he ran away after finding out a judge had agreed he and his siblings would stay in care full-time.

Jack said he went "missing for a week and a half" and was only found when he turned up at school one day.

Although he wanted to return to his placement family, Jack said he "couldn't come to the truth" that he wasn't "going back to his mum and dad" and never returned.

After that Jack started "getting in trouble" and his life "spiralled out of control", and he was moved from foster families in Kent, Reading, Newbury and Salisbury.

He said: "For a while it felt like I was living out of my suitcase."

"Some places lasted a few days and then I was moving onto the next."

Jack said a lot of families who looked at his record, dubbed him a runaway and wrote him off straight away.

"No one listened to me when I was younger, unless I was doing wrong - so I had to go missing and run away because that's when they would actually listen to me."

Jack said he did not want anyone else to feel the same way and that made him determined to work in the care sector.

He said relatability to the people he cared and worked with was really important in his role and recalled meeting a care worker who had been adopted while living in a children's residential home, which had given him "hope".

His advice to anyone going through the care system was, while "it's very hard to open up, be honest about what support you want".

Speaking as a care worker, he added: "Please trust your carer because as soon as you start building that trust up, a lot of things start going the right way."

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