The system needs to learn that children are not just a number or a problem to be got rid of. They have minds and hearts of their own, and our words can break them. Eventually, I was placed with a family member that did their best, but I always knew that I was forced on them and I never felt welcome. I was a teen moving around from relative's houses to friend's couches, and back with my mother when I had nowhere else to go. I was bounced from pillar to post, and, by the time I was 14, I had moved schools seven times. I could not keep up, so I did what so many have done before, and I simply dropped out. I got a job and I saved what I could, and eventually I moved into a flat and became completely independent. I worked graveyard shifts at McDonalds while I tried to continue my education by day, doing a course. I drank a bit, I cried a lot, but I was doing OK.