I Was Put into Care

What’s it like to grow up away from your family? Two women who spent part of their childhoods in care tell Kim Chakanetsa how they look back on that time, and how the experience has shaped them as adults.

As a child, Rukhiya Budden experienced terrible neglect and abuse growing up in an orphanage in Kenya. Today she campaigns for orphanages to be abolished worldwide, as she believes such institutions can never provide the level of care that children really need.

Following her mother’s death, Hayley Kemp was left at a children's home by her father, who had told her they were going to the dentist’s; she was eight years old. She remembers her year in the home as the happiest time in her childhood. She says that growing up in care has drawn her to work with refugees, as she finds it easy to empathise with their sense of displacement.

(L) Image and credit: Hayley Kemp
(R) Rukhiya Budden (credit: Hope and Homes for Children)