Every child who comes to live with us brings a story - sometimes heavy, sometimes complicated, always completely their own. And when they arrive, our job isn’t just to care for them, but to truly know them. Because when a child feels safe with the adults around them, something shifts. They find the courage to say the things they once held in. The things that felt too big, too painful, or too shameful to speak aloud. And that moment, that trust, can change everything.

With support and guidance from David Walker from Studio III we offer ‘It’s My Life’, which is five personalised therapeutic sessions every month for every child. No one-size-fits-all worksheets pulled from a folder. But thoughtful, responsive work shaped around what that young person needs right then. It might be helping them feel proud of who they are, making sense of their past or identity, or getting ready for adulthood with confidence and hope.

We choose to do this work in-house because our children already know us. We’re the people they laugh with, roll their eyes at, storm off from, and come back to. The relationship doesn’t need to be built as it already exists. And because of that closeness, we can respond in real time to what’s happening in their world, not weeks later through an outside referral. We can celebrate the bright moments, and we can sit with them through the hard ones. We can have the honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversations that real growth needs, because the trust between us makes those conversations safe.

At Genus Care, we’re deeply proud of this work, not because it sounds good on paper, but because we’ve already watched it change lives. The responses to it vary with some young people who love the sessions and others would rather not do them at all. But we stay with it consistently, because we know it matters. And time has shown us that it does. Many of our care leavers tell us that even if they didn’t appreciate the sessions back then, they do now. Others tell us it was the first time they ever had space to speak freely and to felt properly heard.
Because in the end, it’s simple: real relationships build trust. Trust opens hearts. And once a child feels safe enough to let someone into the places that hurt… that’s when real change begins.