I was just 18 years old when I became a housemother in a local authority children’s home. For nearly five decades, I’ve worked with care-experienced children as a caregiver in a range of settings—children’s residential care, fostering, social work, and supported accommodation for care leavers.

I began my career working in small children's homes and became a foster mum at the age of 22. A decade later, in 1987, I qualified as a social worker. Since 1991, I’ve held senior management roles in children’s social care, and in 2003, I became a provider of children's social care services in the independent sector.

In 2017, I organised the first Your Life Your Story event to amplify the voices of care-experienced adults and caregivers through storytelling. Whether writing for cathartic reasons, for the record, or to be published, Your Life Your Story offers a living-learning community that unleashes the power of relationships and the untold story.

Memoirs of a Caregiver is my reflection on a personal journey that spans six decades of the British care system—told through my experiences as a caregiver, the children I met along the way, and the adults they became.

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Amanda Knowles MBE