Guests and speakers at Money Ready's NI roundtable event

Money Ready Voices: Transforming financial futures for NI’s care-experienced young people

Care-experienced young people are expected to manage their own finances overnight, often without the gradual exposure to money that most of their peers build up over years. There’s no family safety net to fall back on, no one to call when something goes wrong, and too often, no one who taught them the basics in the first place.

What’s standing in the way, and what would it take to change it? That’s what we explored at our latest Money Ready Voices event, a roundtable discussion held on Friday 19th June in Belfast.

Held at The Innovation Factory, the event brought together practitioners and partners working with care-experienced young people across Northern Ireland to discuss financial scaffolding, knowledge gaps and what effective financial education could look like for this group. Following an introduction and insights from Angela Hillan, Northern Ireland Manager at Money Ready, guests took part in two rounds of roundtable discussion.

Attendees included representatives from VOYPIC, Barnardo’s NI, Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), Foster Care Associates, The Fostering Network, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, and more.

Insights from the discussion that stood out

Care often means everything is managed, until suddenly it isn’t: In care settings, young people typically have day-to-day financial decisions made on their behalf, from shopping to school trips. Due to this, attendees described how the transition to independence at 18 felt as a sudden “cliff-edge” shift rather than a gradual one.

Family scaffolding is doing more work than we realise: For most young people, family offers an informal safety net – someone to call in a crisis, a model for budgeting, guidance on a first payslip or tenancy. Attendees discussed how care-experienced young people often don’t have this, and how it shows up in practical terms, from no one to call in an emergency to no guarantor for a tenancy.

Knowledge gaps leave young people vulnerable: Several attendees raised how a lack of financial knowledge, combined with not knowing who to trust or ask, can leave care-experienced young people exposed to risk, including scams and financial harm.

Overall, the discussion surfaced a wide range of experiences and challenges facing care-experienced young people in Northern Ireland today.

Next steps

Thank you to everyone who joined us on the day. It was great to see such lively discussion in the room and hear so much alignment on what needs to change. Please look out for the full roundtable report coming soon.

Photos from the event

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