Self-summary
Li Jean-Luc Harris
Bridging the gap between lived experience and professional practice in the UK care sector.
Li Jean-Luc Harris navigates the UK social care system through a unique dual lens: as a dedicated professional with over seven years of frontline experience, and as a care leaver who understands the reality of the system from the inside. Driven by a commitment to systemic change, Li’s work empowers care-experienced individuals while equipping social care professionals with the unfiltered insights required to deliver trauma-informed support.
The Journey
Entering the foster care system at the age of ten introduced Li to a complex world of instability and emotional upheaval. Like many care leavers, he confronted severe systemic hurdles during his teenage years, navigating mental health challenges and facing the statistical cliff-edges of youth homelessness and addiction upon leaving care.
However, surviving the system is about rewriting the ending. Through remarkable determination and targeted support, Li overcame these barriers to achieve long-term stability, become a homeowner, and dedicate his career to transforming the very system that raised him.
Professional Leadership
Li brings high-level operational expertise to his advocacy. Holding an NVQ Level 4 in Residential Child Care and having served in frontline leadership roles, including House Manager, he deeply understands the strict safeguarding frameworks, operational realities, and complex trauma behaviors that practitioners face on a daily basis.
Today, he is the Founder of Looked After Child Limited, an educational and advocacy platform that is actively executing a strategic roadmap to transition into a permanent Community Interest Company (CIC) by 2028. Through this platform, Li provides crucial guidance to social workers, agencies, and foster parents across the UK.
Digital Safeguarding & The Vault
As Li steps into new avenues of independent mentoring and high-level advocacy, his commitment to sector-leading safeguarding has evolved. To align with the UK Online Safety Act and protect the digital footprints of vulnerable youth, Li has proactively executed a "digital switch-off" of his public personal history.
To mitigate "digital jigsaw" risks, all of Li's granular, highly personal lived-experience content—including his raw chronologies, deep-dive life stories, and music—has been migrated off the public internet.
Here on his personal website, Li hosts The Lived Experience Vault. This secure, password-protected portal is designed exclusively for mature care leavers seeking solidarity, and professionals requiring unfiltered training materials. This strategic separation allows Li to maintain robust public advocacy while ensuring that sensitive trauma narratives are accessed safely, responsibly, and exclusively by those who need them.
Li Jean-Luc Harris continues to inspire systemic change across the sector, proving that lived experience—when managed with rigorous safeguarding—is the most powerful tool we have to build a care system that truly empowers.