This thesis extends understandings of people who experienced care by making use of sociological approaches and concepts. This approach highlights how previous research and cultural representations of young people in care produce individualised understandings and psychological explanations of difference. This is compounded by a lack of research on care leavers over the age of 25 and the omission of the voices of people with care experience within what little research there is. These absences may contribute to the depiction of the deficit, ascribed identity of being a child in care.