Sometimes it's the small steps that are the most significant.  One of the things I am most proud of that we have achieved over the last few years has affected only a tiny number of students, but I think we really have changed people's lives.

Young people in care have been the group with probably the second lowest rate of progression to higher education in the UK, after gypsies.  When we first looked into the numbers here in Sheffield we were able to identify only two students from such a background. The frequent moving between foster carers, disruption of schooling, a lack of role models and many other factors lay behind this statistic.

Today, as a result of a campaign that has brought many different people together, we know of 17 such students from care backgrounds in the university.  I know that today one of them crossed the stage and became a graduate - well on the way to a future life in a significant profession.  I take immense pleasure in that.

I will confess that I became interested in the issues affecting care leavers for a very personal reason.  My younger daughter, who at the time worked for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, was asked to play a leading role in producing the green paper 'Care Matters'  that led to awakened awareness of the plight of young people in care.  Her discussion of going round Britain listening to the stories of children in care affected me greatly, and I recognised from her researches how higher education was effectively a closed-off world to such young people.  I then supported colleagues in Student Services and in the Admissions and Outreach team (now relocated within Student Services as well) to develop a programme of support, and we did so in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam.  Academic colleagues in certain departments have enthusiastically joined in.

The organisation that evaluates university measures to help care leavers is called the Frank Buttle Trust.  When they visited us a couple of months ago to look at our programme they described our efforts and structures as 'exemplary.'  That's another source of pleasure for us.  But the real payback is to watch a young person from a care background cross the stage as a graduate, thanks to this university's efforts: that's really 'making a difference.'