Looked-after children, as a group, experience a range of poor outcomes in comparison with their peers. This disadvantage often lasts throughout life. One area where children in care fare particularly badly is in education, where they often have poor experiences and may find it difficult to engage with conventional learning. They often experience high levels of disruption to their education due to their experiences prior to coming into care and the instability of the care system itself.

The aim is to engage or re-engage young people in care with science and learning in a fun way. Over a period of three to six months we will run three separate one-day workshops with up to twenty young people from care, aged between 10-16 at each session accompanied by their foster carer or key worker (if they live in a children’s home), at the Centre of the Cell based at Queen Mary University, London.