Broken Hearts

I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the National Ofsted Conference in 2025. For this occasion, I created a series of illustrations to explain why I founded Spark Sisterhood, a charity supporting girls leaving care.

The idea grew from my own experiences and after reconnecting with eight young women I had met in foster and residential care. One by one, they had reached out to me via social media. I was curious to know how their lives had unfolded since leaving care at 16.

What I heard was deeply upsetting—a story of poverty, anxiety, and feelings of abandonment. The girls shared that one of the hardest lessons was realising that all the times staff and foster carers had told them they were “loved” seemed to mean nothing once they aged out of the system. Talk is cheap. Therapy is rarely affordable or accessible. And education can feel like another universe.

I decided the best solution was to help these young women into employment, apprenticeships and work experience to help them become financially independent.

My work addresses the core problem: these young women feel unprepared. Employers often misunderstand them. Public services move too slowly. These young women are not lazy or broken—far from it. They are disconnected, anxious, and unsupported.

They don’t always need more therapy or punishment. They need understanding, relevance, and real opportunity. They need essential life and employability skills delivered by people who truly understand and care.