About me

I’m Cherry Casey, and I write about how policymaking ignores, undervalues and at times commodifies childhood, which in turn skews the environment that kids are growing up in.

I’ve always had an interest in the impact of childhood, and in my early writing I explored topics like family estrangement for Marie Claire, or religious ‘cult-like’ upbringings for Vice. But it was my piece for Prospect magazine, about how our dysfunctional services lead to children being put up for adoption, that made me shift my focus from how childhood shapes the adult to how government shapes the childhood.

In the UK, policy and childhood are too often pitted against one another, and I’ve written on how authoritarianism has been allowed to take hold within the state-school system for The Lead and New Humanist; scrutinised why child ‘influencers’ have no protection from exploitation for The Independent, and looked at the argument that our drug laws fuel child exploitation for openDemocracy.

I’ve written on how kids don’t play on the streets anymore, not because they’re too hooked on their iPads but because there’s nowhere to play, and how 16- and 17-year-olds in the care system are being forced to live in accommodation without any actual care.

Always, my argument is that none of this is inevitable. Childhood is complex but we could have a state that supported a safe, fair and happy one for all, if the political will was there. I hope this newsletter can play a part in making that happen.

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