Who Trolled Amber? - Bag For Life | Careless Ep 1

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Journalist Ashley John-Baptiste joins actor Nkechi Simms as she returns to Camden to untangle the truth about her childhood and find out why she was taken into state care when she was 12. Careless is a 4 part original series from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer.To binge listen to all episodes today, ad-free, subscribe to The Observer.Or subscribe to Observer+ on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to listen to all our podcasts, including this one, without any ads.Reported by Ashley John-Baptiste and Madeleine ParrProduced and written by Madeleine ParrSound design by Simon Panayi Artwork by Jon Hill The editor is Jasper Corbett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tortus Investigates. Hi, it's Bashar Cummings here from The Observer. Before we get going, I just wanted to let you know that to listen to the full investigation, you'll need to subscribe to the Observer, where you can get access to all of our Tortus Investigates podcast series. It's really easy to subscribe. You can sign up on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or directly atobserver.com. If you're already a subscriber, just link your account.

Thanks, as ever, for listening. Welcome to Camden. Everything sort of happened in Camden. Camden is the heart of my story, I'd say. Nakechi Sims is walking the street where she grew up, a stone's throw from the borough's famous market. It's full of tourists and buskers, and for Nakechi, memories.

This is the door, pretty magical. It didn't look like this when I lived here. The door would be blended in to like a big mural, and there'd be people sat here eating Chinese. But yeah, I have lots of happy memories living in this flat. My best friend at the time lived downstairs. So we had lots of fun. I feel like as teenagers, you've got your best friend living downstairs.

You're living in the centre of Camden. So we got up to a lot of trouble. But everything is so different now. But I still love it. It's still my Camden. And there's the buildings in the graffiti of the borough have changed. So too has Nakechi. I was 18. I used to work at that pub behind me for £6.20 an hour. I didn't have any GCSEs.

And I actually cried outside my job interview at the time to my boyfriend. I was like, I'm not going to know what to do. I can't do it. And he was like, they're going to train you. It's going to be fine. But I had such little self-confidence that I just thought it was going to be terrible. And I mean, it was terrible, but I did it and I survived it. Nakechi has come a very long way from the teenager crying outside a pub before her first shift. In fact, she's a bit of a big deal now. I wanted to be an actor from when I was a kid. I was very playful and silly and creative.

And I think also my mum really enjoyed watching TV. And so when I think back to my childhood, some of the best memories of my mum would be when we would be curled up on the sofa, under a blanket, watching Charmed and EastEnders. She didn't just like the idea of acting, She was actually good at it. At 11, her nan managed to get together the money

to send her to a drama school on the weekends. Everyone else would be dropped off by their mums and their range rovers and I'd just be there having got like a train and a bust all by myself at 11 and like showed up and done my best. But then as I got older, life got harder, my reality became a lot more difficult and suddenly acting felt. very silly, don't have time for that. I've got real world problems. And so, yeah, by 12, 13,

I was sort of involved in other things that meant acting felt ridiculous. Her ambition to act gave way to some really turbulent years. But then, when she turned 19, someone recommended a youth theatre group to her. I got kicked off the first project for fighting. But they welcomed. to me back and they kept working on me and I just needed to channel all those emotions. By this point I was 19 years old and I, yeah, was really blessed to have sort of had their intervention because a year and a half later I was cast in Toad Boy so it all worked out for the better really.

That's right. You might be a lot of the UK's most popular TV dramas. And not just that. She's been in the BBC comedy preying me. Death in Paradise. And in an amazing full circle moment, an episode of the one of the one and only EastEnders. Are you right, darling? It's Holly, right? We're all ready for you. It's just part round there. Nice one, thank you. I'm looking forward to Reverend Francesco's engine on over town again. And that for me felt monumental, even though it was maybe one of the smallest things I've done if we're going by the size of the role.

But there was definitely a moment where I got a bit teary-eyed and had to, like, you know, act really cool because that childhood version of me would have just simply not believed. Not believed at all. It was all I used to talk about being a kid. I was like, I'm going to be any standers. I'm going to be any standers.

Nakechi is only 26, and she has achieved things that not only she can't believe, but a lot of young people wouldn't dare to dream of. A scroll through her TikTok page gives you the impression of a pretty aspirational life. There are trailers of TV show she's in. Have you seen Sophia? No, I haven't heard from her since last night.

Sophia? Behind the scenes of her on set. I had my house all today and I thought I showed how it works. It was quite jokes. 9 a.m. in the morning, sat down, grabbed a script, read through the scenes, discussed the characters. Doing press for Top Boy, a coffee with a stunning view of the Caribbean coastline, even an advert she starred in for Kurt Geiger.

My name's Nakechie Sims. I'm an actor, a drama facilitator and a youth mental. Going back to my childhood, I think people would describe me as a kid who had a lot of energy. Things are looking pretty good, but getting to this place hasn't been easy. And there's a mystery that has been humming in the background of her life for years, steadily getting louder. When Nakechi was 12, Camden became something else for her. No longer just the world she grew up in. Camden Council became what's known as her corporate parent.

It's a phrase I have a lot of thoughts about, and apparently so does Nakechi. That corporate parent word is so fucked. Her mum had signed a Section 20 order, effectively handing over responsibility for Nakechie's care to the state, and specifically the local authority. The question is, why? Ketchi was taken into foster care, but what happened next doesn't make sense either. And I actually ended up staying for close to 16 months, and I don't really know why. There are lots of reasons that I've sort of heard over the years, but at the time, it was incredibly difficult because six weeks and 16 months are two very different expectations.

Here's the thing. If you grew up with your family, you probably had someone who was a consistent witness to your childhood, someone to answer your questions about what happened and when, what you were like, and who the people around you were. But for Nakechi, this kind of consistent person just doesn't exist. She has her suspicions about what happened and why, but she's not able to confirm this with anyone. And that hum and sound is getting louder. And those unanswered questions are gathering at the forefront of her mind. What did happen to her and why?

And what are the consequences of her pushing on that door to find out? It's heartbreaking. I don't really know the word for it. I feel heartbroken for myself. I feel heartbroken for like my family. This is a story about memory and what we're entitled to know about. ourselves. It's about piecing together the past in order to be freed from it. And it's about how a crumbling state looks after its most vulnerable young people. And I have to be honest, as a journalist, reporting on Nakechi's story has been tricky. It involves excavating the most

private details of a family in their hardest moments. And for that reason, there's going to be certain things that Nakeechi just cannot share publicly. There are other barriers too. The narrative is rarely clean and straightforward, and for very good reason, it's blurred by trauma, competing accounts and gaps in memory. This makes Nakeechi's search for the objective truth, whatever that is, even more important.

I'm Ashley John Baptiste. From Tortus Investigates and The Observer, This is Careless. Episode 1, Bag for Life. I first met Nakeechi when she was playing a lead role in a production with her theatre group. I went to interview her and the first thing I noticed about her is her charisma and her ability to tell stories. She was part of a drama group called The Big House, a cast made up entirely of young people who have been in care. Also, she was cool,

braids, swagger, but now she is telling me her story, the one she has pieced together from fragmented memories. What kind of kid were you? Oh, that's a good question. I think I was quite interesting. I was very cheeky, very, like, smart ass, always had an answer for everything, very, very, like, silly. But I was also very, like, angry and sad. And, yeah, childhood was an interesting time. What do you mean?

I think I had quite a intense family dynamic. I think even long before I was born, there's like a history of challenges within my family. And so by the time I came into the world, things were already quite precarious. In 1999, Nakechi was born in London to an Irish-Granadian mother and a Jamaican father. I mostly grew up with my mum, who is a very funny, brilliant character.

But she was a single mum, and I think she had a really difficult childhood of our own, and that really influenced the way that she was able to parent. And then my dad, who is great and smart, but was mostly absent, that was really difficult because I think like a lot of kids I internalised what that meant and my mum had two kids that were before me a brother and a sister and my brother was sort of in and out of prison during my childhood

so that was quite difficult because it meant going up and down to a lot of prisons when I was young I remember at school I would tell people that my brother lived with the queen because my mum had told me that he was in his majesty's palace and so I would go to school and be like yeah my brother lives with the queen Nakechi's family moved house a lot it was normal for her and between the instability cherished childhood memories home was home was home I didn't really know any different

my house was dysfunctional aesthetically as well as it was the actual vibe of the house. My mum was a little bit of a hoarder, lots of clutter, she liked her bits and her bobs. Also there's kids in the house, so I think that was definitely a factor. Did you have a bedroom? I did have a bedroom.

I had a bed, I had, you know, a TV, I had all your little things, but also lots of things I didn't have. So it was a funny place to live because we weren't going without, but we didn't have very much either. It was chaotic, always something happening,

always a fight, always an argument, but also a lot of laughter too. My mum was really fun and we loved watching telly together and my siblings were crazy and brilliant. So there were lots of down times naturally but it came with its occasional hi-to. Five years after Nakechi was born, her mum gave birth to her little brother.

Her mum also had custody of her younger nephew at this time, and Nakechi thinks of him as a sibling. It was a lot of pressure. I wanted to protect my siblings who were quite young at the time from a lot of the bigger things that were happening within the family. And I also wanted to make sure that they had the things that they needed. Now it means my little brother and me, were five years apart, I still sort of take on that parental role. My dad actually had to tell me off

not long ago because on Sundays we used to all have dinner together and I'd be like, do you want me to cut up your chicken for you, my little prince? And my brother would be like, yeah, he loved it. He secretly loved it. But my dad would be like he's 19 years old. Why are you cutting up his chicken and potatoes? Between looking after her siblings and navigating the chaos of home school fell by the wayside. I loved learning but hated school. I didn't really have good attendance at school. We moved house every year,

which meant I moved school every year. Often, particularly towards the end of my primary school and certainly secondary school, I just wouldn't go. And when she wasn't at school, she was making the most of her freedom in one of London's busiest boroughs. One of my flats,

the living room window looked out onto the cross-in and so me and my friends would wait for people to cross the road and egg people. In some ways, her childhood sounds pretty typical of any young person, outlooking for fun and mischief. Me and my other friends, we obviously were smoking at quite a young age and we'd take one side of the high road each because it was full of tourists and stuff

and we'd have an empty box of cigarettes and you'd stop and ask people for cigarettes and we take one side of the road each come back and at the end we'd have a 10-deck, pick and mix of cigarettes. And then of course go up the heath and smoke and drink wine and think you're grown up. So yeah, it was fun. It was really fun, robbing the markets and being cheeky and crazy.

But there was a lot more going on. Also, it's a dark place. There's a lot of poverty and austerity that is existing there. The community of people is diverse, but there's a lot of hardship and I naturally got caught up in the wrong crowds. And I think that's easy to do when you're young, but also easy to do when you don't have a solid home environment. And so there were people who did take advantage. And so growing up in Camden was difficult because I also found myself in a lot of trouble. When I ask Nakechi about this, about what kind of trouble she means, she's understandably a little vague.

I just didn't have a good sense of judgment and I picked all the wrong friends. I was super desperate to fit in and so I often followed the crowd. A lot of them would like rob people and even though I never robbed anyone, I was obviously there and present for it. there was also a lot of county line stuff happening which was traumatic. At this point I can imagine the Ketchi's life looking like a bunch of pots on a stove and the temperature is rising. She's trying her best to keep on top of all of them. Things had broken down quite a lot at home around that time.

My mum was navigating a lot of her own mental health struggles and that meant that I was taking on quite a big responsibility with my younger siblings at home and I was also hanging around with the wrong crowd and that led me to some pretty dangerous and traumatic experiences like outside of the home and yeah I experienced some things in that time

that I will probably be healing from forever and then suddenly when she was 12 the pots started to boil over. So I quite quickly found myself in a position where I was traumatised and I didn't really have the language or the skills to express that or share that with anyone. And so naturally I'd go to school and I would kick off and I would fight and I would shout and I would abscond from home

and my mum would kick me out and we'd have these huge fights and bust-ups and the police would bring me back home. Nakechi moved in with a friend and their mother. Nakechi's relationship with her own mum had deteriorated. It just wasn't working. In the end, she signed a Section 20, which was relinquishing her parental responsibility to the state. I've asked Nakechi what she remembers about the reasons for her mum's signing

the Section 20. She tells me it was a mixture of things. They were the experiences she had outside the home after getting mixed up in the wrong crowd. The trauma this caused escalated the conflicts with her mum and they fought in a way that made it impossible for them to live together. Over the time I've gotten to know Naketchi, she's always held the actual details of these experiences with her family back a bit. I know that partly this is about protecting her family and the details of their lives. And I think it's partly that some of these things are just too painful for her to talk about. But there's another reason too.

With all of the chaos of this time, she just doesn't remember a lot of the details. And childhood memories are slippery. Sometimes you can't tell whether you really do recall a particular moment or day or whether you've just seen a photo or some grainy camcorder footage that's created this moment in your mind. For Nakechi, this uncertainty is magnified. There are so many questions she has about what happened during her childhood, and she's wondering whether she forgot the answers during the trauma or whether she even knew at all. But one memory that is painfully clear in her mind is the day she met with the social worker.

On a warm July day, her friend's mum took Nakechi to the council's offices, where her own mum was waiting with the social worker. was waiting with a social worker. Things started to move quickly. There was a black taxi called, and me and my social worker Libby got in the cab, and my mum handed over a Sainsbury's bag for life. And I still remember what was in it. It was like a couple of t-shirts,

like a pair of jeans, a jumper, and like a flannel and like some pants. And it was like the middle of summer as well. So I got in this taxi with my social worker in my bag for life and we drove down to Kings Cross and I remember getting there and being like, hmm, I don't know any care homes in Kings Cross. Over the last few years, Nakechi had been hanging around with kids who were in care or living in hostels so she knew where a lot of the homes were that these kids were living in. I was kind of excited would be the wrong word, but I wasn't scared.

I wasn't scared of going into care at that point. I knew that I couldn't go back home and in my mind I was going to be in a care home with all my mates and we were going to be laughing and joking and I was going to be able to stay out late and it was going to be sick. I remember turning to my social worker and being like, I don't know any care homes around here. Where are we going? And she was like, oh, we're getting on a train to Cambridge and that's where you're going to be and I was like, well, we're going to be. going to be and I was like, what? And I was smoking a cigarette outside the station. And I remember looking around being like, if I start running, where am I going?

What do you mean we're going to Cambridge? I don't even know where that is on the map. Like, I was so shocked. And I remember smoking the cigarette and she was like, well, actually Cambridge isn't quite where you'll be, but it's the nearest big town. So I was even further away from Cambridge. But Nakechi didn't run.

She got on the train and headed to somewhere completely And I remember sitting on that train and I was really tearful and really angry and so confused. Finally, the social worker and Nakechi arrived at her new home. And we pulled up and it was this, at the time, the biggest house I'd ever seen. It was like a five-bedroom, little, not little, big house in the country. And I remember putting up and being like, wow, okay. And then we went in and we sat down in this front room and it was a bit. serious. She was like, she was from Camden herself and she kind of spoke a little bit cockney

but she was trying to do like a serious voice I came to learn. They hit it off immediately. She was like right, she smoked and I looked at her and I went yeah and she went I'm going to buy you a pack of fags a week you can smoke them you're not to touch my fags you're not to steal my fags you can smoke out the garden and that's that and I remember thinking I'm going to get on just fine here. Nakechi settled into her new home with a pale lemon bedroom and a huge garden with two Labrador's. Her foster mum had five children of her own, one of whom still lived with her. And there was another boy who she had fostered.

He was also incredible and very much reminded me of my little brothers at home, which was hard sometimes. Hearing Nakechie talk about this time, I noticed how her shoulders dropped. and her face relaxes at the memory. I was allowed to be a kid, like, for the first time, really. I didn't have any responsibilities. I didn't have any pressures. And on a Wednesday, we'd sit and we'd be chuffing away on fags

and we'd get a cheesecake and we'd watch Wentworth on Channel 5 and that would be like our little bonding time. And I opened up a lot to her and she supported me through, difficult things and I have no doubt I was absolute hell at times. She carried on going to school while she lived in Cambridgeshire, but at this point she was out of mainstream education and attending a pupil referral unit for children who have been permanently excluded. Nakechi's education is one of the rare instances which gives her a small window into her childhood. She's managed to dig out some school reports. They were quite

funny and sometimes hard to read, they mostly talk about me having quite extreme behaviour problems. But a lot of them also talk about me being incredibly bright and creative, which is quite nice. But similarly to other systems, I also feel that within education there was a lot of failure there. And if I was so bright and creative, then why didn't anyone pick up on the grave circumstances I were experiencing? And despite the few insights, she gleaned into what kind of child she was, they only generated more questions. Why, in terms of my education, there was so much that I was allowed to miss and able to miss. It also means even as an adult, there are huge gaps in my education because I just wasn't at school and I didn't know and I didn't learn.

But even getting diagnosed with things like ADD and dyspraxia really late in my teens, I've often looked back at my education and been like, well, why didn't no one pick that up? I know I moved school all the time but still that means in another way that's a lot of schools that failed to pick up on anything. And there weren't just gaps in her education. Over the next year and a half,

she went through three different social workers and as she was placed so far outside London, they rarely visited her for statutory check-ins opting instead to catch up over the phone. During this time, she had very little contact with her mum, other than a few supervised visits which were awkward and stilted. Eventually, Nakechi's time in Cambridgeshire came to an end. Her foster mum never took teenagers.

It was one of her big rules and she made an exception for me. Her foster mum needed the room back to foster other children and things hadn't been going well for Nakechie at the Prue. So it was agreed by Nakeechi social workers that it was time to move on. Nakechi was placed in a new foster home in South London with an Eritrean woman who was deemed by the council to be what they said was a cultural match. Are you Eritrean?

My mum's Irish Grenadon and my dad's Jamaican. So, no. Nekechi was deeply unhappy in this placement. She didn't know South London well and had no friends or community in the area. Her foster mum was out working a lot, so she was often left at home alone. She didn't feel safe or happy

and was desperate to move back in with her mum. They had been steadily working on their relationship and had even been allowed to go on holiday together. Then when she was about 16, Lakey was travelling from South London to visit her mum in North London when she witnessed a horrific incident in which someone stepped in front of a train.

It's probably one of the worst things I've ever done but I went straight home and was like, right, I'm using that to not get back on a train. And I convinced my social worker to let me stay at my mum's for like two weeks because I was too traumatised. And then in that time I basically just worked on my mum being like, look, I'm not happy in this placement. I'm 16.

Please let me just come back. We'll work on everything. Everything will be a bit better. You're better, I'm better. Let's just be better together kind of thing. It worked. Nakechi backed Camden into a corner. and she was allowed to move back in with her mum.

But it was short-lived. Despite both of them trying to make it work, it became clear that Nakechi couldn't stay with her mum. This time, Nakechi was placed into a hostel with other young people, some with complex needs, all watched over by 24-hour staff and CCTV cameras. You're living off £57, £50. You're fighting with people

because you've put your track suit in the washing centre. machine and someone has stolen it. You're arguing with the night staff because you've come in late. You're old enough to buy cigarettes and sort of maybe have a drink at the pub, but you've also got a curf you and you're not allowed to stay out. I wasn't allowed to sleep at anybody's house unless I'd had them vetted by social services. I wasn't allowed guests or visitors unless they filled out like a visitor form, which is so embarrassing. when you're like at college and you kind of want to have your mates round and you're like oh sorry you can't come around unless you fill out this piece of paper with all your information on it and then social services are going to go and do like a little background chat and then you can come

round but only between three and eight dead you don't want that it's embarrassing but the first one that Nakechi lived in was pretty great she was given a decent-sized room that she called the penthouse but after her fight between her boyfriend and another boy, which she became involved in, Nakechi ended up getting kicked out of this place. Over the following five years or so, Nakechi lived in a series of hostels. There were mouse and rat infestations and residents struggling with severe mental health issues and addiction. At one accommodation, Nakechi says there were broken windows, no hot water and no heating

for a whole winter. One night, I just had an absolute. mental breakdown. They actually had to call the police and the ambulance, my therapist, everybody. And that was a really sad time because I actually wasn't crazy. They were inducing psychosis because of the living conditions. But during this time, even as she was struggling to stay healthy and sane, her career was beginning to pop off. I remember shooting my very first TV show, which was on Netflix, and it felt so much like I was living a double life. And there'd be times I would cry to my social worker and be like, it feels like I'm being punished for doing well,

because also what happens in a lot of these hostels is your rent is free until you start earning money if you don't stay in education. Like, I'm living in a hostel, I'm filming for Netflix. Like, how am I meant to balance all of this? Like, I just want a flat. I just want to flat. I just want to move on. I just want to be done with it now. Despite wanting so badly to put her experiences and care behind her, the lingering questions about her childhood are like an anchor, keeping her in the past. She just doesn't know what she doesn't know. The thing is, it's just not something she can talk about with the people around her. Today, Nakechi and her mum have a good relationship, but it comes at a cost. I'm so happy with the relationship. I'm so happy with the relationship.

that I have with my mum, even during our most difficult days. I would never want to push that or make that worse by seeking answers for things that I know she's not ready or able to give me. It's just difficult. It's difficult, and I can really empathise with that. I think it must be really hard to know that you have maybe done your best as a parent, but ultimately there still have been failures there or things that have happened that you're not proud of. And I think by not having those conversations and accepting that they're difficult and

probably not going to end well, it's easier for us to just have a new relationship. Have you tried to fill in any of the gaps of what happened in your early life by talking to your siblings? I think it's really hard because my older siblings have got their own feelings about their experiences and I wasn't there for them and it's not my place to really comment on what they experienced of my mum growing up. But I understand that she was in her early 20s when she had them and so I have no doubt that they experienced quite a lot of difficulty and trauma. And so when I have spoken to them, of course I've heard stories and the things that they went through,

but it isn't always an accurate reflection of what I went through either. And I think my mum went on to have me in my younger brother when she was in her 30s. So naturally, we received an improved version of my mum. And that also is sometimes a source of tension. And then, of course, with my younger brother, where there's five years, between us, of course, there's a lot more of a shared experience. But that five years is still big enough where there are things that he doesn't know or was protected from.

And the only people with access to those records are the council. In a storage facility and on a database somewhere is the official version of Nakechi's whole childhood is told by social workers, teachers, doctors and other professionals who supported her. And she's legally entitled to a copy of these files. So in 2020, she does something which scares her. She puts in a request to access them. Her personal advisor, her support worker at the council, helped her.

So I sent them an email and I sent off my ID. Then she waits. And after about a month or two, I got a call from my PA. And he basically said that there were concerns about me having access to my files and that at best I could come down to the town hall and maybe look at some redacted files, but they were concerned about giving me access to everything. She pushed them on what that meant.

They basically were concerned that what I would see would be so upsetting, and it was quite a vague conversation. She felt like she'd hit a brick wall. The decision to ask for the files had weighed heavily on her, and the response felt disappointing and confusing. And at the time, I just wasn't in the place to fight it and I knew I didn't want to go into the town hall and I knew that wasn't correct

and I just left it alone completely. Nakechi moved on. She got more racked in jobs. She worked on relationships with her family and she grew up. Finally, when she turned 22, Nakechie was given her own council flat. But with all the freedom and independence

of having her own place comes a lot of pressure. That was a really scary and exciting time, but nothing prepares you for what it's like to pay bills, call the council, know what to do when things go wrong. And so I was 22 when I finally got a flat, and I remember being terrified. I was just starting to film a BBC show

where I was going to be away from home for three months, and I just got the keys to the flat the weekend before. and I was arguing with my social worker about getting my leaving care grant so I could furnish the place whilst also being on the phone to the BBC being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm ready for filming, yeah, yeah, yeah, everything's great. What the flat did represent, though, was the end of Nakechi's care journey and the beginning of a more independent life. I remember it feeling like, oh my God, I never have to speak to a social worker again.

I think I let my social worker into that flat like twice. And then I was like, right, see you later. Get out of here. I'm done. Years of trying her best in a system, which felt like it was monitoring, punishing and disregarding her had finally come to an end. She was saying goodbye to her corporate parent. But five years later, that humming sound hadn't disappeared.

It had been buzzing away in the background until she saw something on the news. In 2025, December 2025, I saw that the Information Commissioner had released a report, basically dissecting the way that young people were or weren't being giving access to their files. And that really resonated with me and everything that I was already feeling.

And so I decided there and then to fill out a subject access request form. Nakechi was determined this time. They are her records and it's her right to read them. To find out what happened to her. When the information commissioner had released his report, I was invited on the radio to talk about it, not just as a reporter.

The thing is, Nakechi and I have a lot in common. I also grew up in the care system. Placed into foster care in my very early years, I was shunted between four fostering. foster homes and a residential care home across southeast London, all before the age of 18. I was also given a council flat and struggled with the stark independence and isolation that came at 18. It was in my early 20s that I made my own decision to access my records. I had burning questions. Why was I placed into care? Why hadn't I ever met my birth father? Why did certain foster

the carers let me go. Soon enough, I had the files in front of me. The process of getting them was exhausting and reading them, retramatizing. I shared some of that journey on the radio and spoke about how important files can be to young people leaving care. And then following my radio appearance, Nketchi, that charismatic actor I'd interviewed, DM'd me. Hey, Ashley, this is so important. I've been fighting for access for two years. Have you not had any luck getting your files? None so far.

They said I can come into the town hall and look at redacted files, but not all my files. And I can't take them, which I'm fighting, as I now know I'm entitled. It's such an important issue that I haven't heard anyone else talk about. It was so nice to see and hear your story and for you to be raising that awareness. So by the time I'm sitting in the studio with Nakechi in early 2026, getting her files feels monumental, like it's essential to her happiness. This is something that matters to me quite a lot, and I would like to be able to let go.

And I really think these files will help me let go. Oh, bless you, catchy. But... Have some tissue. I want to let go. I want to let go and not let go because it's bad, but just because it's heavy. But how can I let go of something?

that I still have so many questions around. And if I can just put that to bed, like, I'm 26, I still have so much I want to do. But I also want to become a mom one day. And the thought of going into motherhood with all this burden is really heavy. I'm really not what I want for myself or my future family. And I hope that I'm afforded the opportunity to properly work through it all. so that I can do all of those things so I can be the women I want to be,

be the mother I want to be, be the actor I want to be. But is it always better to know the truth? Coming up in episode two of Careless. I'm waiting for someone else to read it first and decide what I'm allowed to read. There is no way that you are going to find me searching through my files for information about my family and I'm not going to be punished

and I'm not going to be proven to be the bad kid. It sounds to me as though someone in the council knows that something's gone wrong there sounds very suspicious to me. Careless is reported by me Ashley John Baptiste and Madeleine Parr.

It was produced and written by Madeline Parr. Artwork is by John Hill. Sound design is by Simon Penaeep. The editor is Jasper Corbett. Thank you for listening. To get the full series, subscribe to the Observer on your listening platform of choice, or directly atobserver.com.uk, where, as well as all of our podcasts, you'll also get access to the rest of our excellent journalism. Visit observer.com.com.uk forward slash subscribe, forward slash audio, and use the code audio 50 for 50% off today. Tortus Investigates. Thank you.