Bethaney Dixon: “Those safety nets are often invisible to the people who have them”

How Bethaney combines care experience and cross-sector expertise to build practical support and help organisations become more inclusive.

Before redundancy, Bethaney Dixon had built what she describes as a successful cross-sector career, with credible titles and responsibilities. From the outside, she says, she “had technically ‘made it’ and appeared no different from many of my peers.” She had kept her care experience largely private at work, because she understood the stigma and assumptions that could come with disclosing it.

Redundancy showed her how quickly that security could disappear. “Losing that security that was once my survival mode exposed how deeply the absence of a traditional safety net can still be felt beyond twenty-five,” she says. Many people can fall back on family, financial support or somewhere safe to return to in a crisis. “Those safety nets are often invisible to the people who have them.”

In 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics, 28.7% of people aged 20 to 34 in UK households were living with their parents, up from 25.4% in 2015. Bethaney points out that the figure leaves out the many more who have moved out but can still call home, return if something goes wrong or rely on family for practical and financial guidance.

Rather than letting that experience define the end of her career, she says, she used it as part of the drive to build Adelphi – Adulting, Together®. Adelphi is the company, a lived-experience-led social enterprise supporting care-experienced people across the UK, and a free digital platform sits at its heart: more than 70 personally written guides to the things people are often expected to know without ever having been taught, from housing, money and bills to employment and wellbeing. The platform, she says, was the starting point and remains central to Adelphi’s wider initiatives and professional services. Bethaney is Adelphi’s founder and director.

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Seventeen

Bethaney entered care at nine. She was moved approximately 100 miles away and separated from her siblings, and at seventeen she became independent. “The focus was largely on immediate survival: whether I had somewhere to live, could manage basic responsibilities and was technically independent,” she says. Far less attention, she says, went to “building confidence, developing a career or having somebody consistent to call when ordinary adult decisions became overwhelming.”

In England, Department for Education figures show that 40% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 were not in education, employment or training in the year to March 2025. The estimate for all young people that age was 15%.

After leaving care, she says, she experienced homelessness, exploitation and further adversity. “These experiences were not evidence of a lack of ambition or capability,” she says. “They reflected what can happen when somebody enters adulthood without consistent protection, guidance or somewhere safe to return to.”

The capability, she says, was always there.

Ten Years Inside Organisations

Bethaney later built more than ten years of experience across organisational development, learning, operations, quality, vulnerability and commercial roles. Her manager, Stephen, gave her an opportunity in her first Team Leader role, at 22, during a period of considerable instability in her life. “They stayed consistent, invested in me and helped me develop skills that I still draw upon today when strategising, supporting across organisations and people.” Stephen showed her, she says, “the impact one person can have when they look beyond somebody’s circumstances, recognise their potential and give them a genuine opportunity to grow.”

Working inside organisations, she learned how processes are designed, how teams are trained, how quality is measured and, in her words, “how easily a service can make sense operationally while remaining inaccessible to the person expected to use it.” She says she will keep asking, “But what does this feel like for the person trying to use it?” until a process makes sense in real life, not only on paper.

“It takes a village, I am just lucky that I am able to combine both professional and lived experience in a way that supports those at the frontline as well as understanding organisational requirements and change.”

Bethaney, Founder and Director, Adelphi

She doesn’t claim to speak for every care-experienced person. She brings her own experience together with more than a decade of professional knowledge, she says, “to ask better questions, develop practical solutions and connect sectors that need to work together if lasting change is going to happen.”

Adelphi began with the platform.

The Guides

The platform is free, and it runs in a browser on a phone, tablet or computer. Its guides sit across ten areas of adult life, with videos, examples, downloadable resources, an accessibility tool and around four hours of wellbeing content alongside them. Bethaney wrote the guides herself, in language she describes as intentionally human and straightforward.

“I did not want Adelphi to feel like another system or formal service telling somebody what to do,” she says. “I wanted it to feel more like having a knowledgeable sibling beside you, helping you understand your options without judgement.”

Around the platform sit initiatives run with delivery partners. Drive 2 Thrive®, with delivery partners National Intensive and Book Instructor, gives care-experienced people of all ages access to discounted driving lessons nationally. A free moving and home-setup service, with Just Move In, covers utilities, broadband, council tax and moving admin for any house move, with no age limit, online or over the phone. Neither depends on a postcode or an unnecessary referral. “Support can become fragmented as young people leave care, with further gaps as they move beyond age-based eligibility,” she says. “Care experience does not end at twenty-five, and somebody should not lose access to useful support because they have moved area, are no longer connected to formal services or do not fit neatly within an existing pathway,” she says.

“‘Adelphi’ means sibling, and that principle sits behind everything we do: adulting should not mean doing it alone.”

Bethaney Dixon, Founder and Director, Adelphi – Adulting, Together®

She has a view on what people most often get wrong.

What People Get Wrong

The most common mistake, Bethaney says, is “confusing a lack of opportunity, stability or support with a lack of ability.” She sees two familiar pictures of care-experienced people: vulnerable people who need rescuing, and exceptional success stories who overcame everything alone. “Both can be limiting.”

“What may be labelled as difficult, disengaged or resistant can be somebody protecting themselves using the tools they developed to survive.”

Bethaney, Founder and Director, Adelphi

“The better question is not, ‘What is wrong with this person?’ but, ‘What have they had to carry, what is their behaviour communicating, and what becomes possible when the barriers around them are removed?’” Behaviour, she says, is communication, and the idea runs through her work. She wrote a five-page article, “More Than a Label”, for the August 2026 Care, Fostering and Adoption edition of Counselling Matters, the magazine of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society. More Than a Label® is also the name of Adelphi’s clothing line and community campaign, whose message, she says, extends to anybody who has felt reduced to a circumstance, diagnosis, background or assumption.

The same question applies to services and workplaces.

Working With Organisations

Adelphi operates through two connected areas, Bethaney says. The first provides free, practical support directly to care-experienced people. The second works with organisations through paid professional services: keynote and guest speaking, talks, training and workshops, consultancy, co-production, organisational development, partnership development and lived-experience insight. Income from those services, from partnerships and from the clothing line supports Adelphi’s growth, she says, while keeping direct support freely accessible.

Care-experienced people are estimated to represent around 1% of the population, she says, yet care experience is rarely recognised in mainstream inclusion, workforce or people strategies. Many choose not to share it because of stigma, assumptions or concern about being treated differently. Organisations may already employ, educate or serve people carrying barriers they haven’t recognised. The aim, she says, is to help them “understand the person behind the label” and to embed lived experience “meaningfully rather than tokenistically,” without expecting anyone to disclose.

Partnership is central to how she works. Adelphi’s publicly announced partners also include Utilita and Consciously Ash, and Adelphi has been confirmed as part of the Care Leaver Covenant. “These partnerships are not simply endorsements,” she says. “They bridge gaps across sectors, reduce silos and make it easier for care-experienced people to find, understand and use support that already exists.” She is a finalist in two categories at the Small Business Awards UK 2026, Female Entrepreneur of the Year and Social Impact, and has spoken about the work on Episode 5 of The Kindness Code and in conversation with Scott Rado for the We Need More of This podcast. She also contributed to an Allwork.Space article on rethinking career entry and creating a more inclusive future of work.

That work is already under way.

Where Bethaney Is Now

Adelphi is live, active and, in Bethaney’s words, already creating national impact. She developed the foundation of the platform between October 2025 and January 2026, and it launched more widely in May 2026. In a single 30-day period within its first months, the website was accessed from 84 geographic areas across the UK, with visitors also reaching it from 16 countries. The figures count areas rather than people, and they cover website access only, not Adelphi’s reach on social media.

Adelphi may be a young organisation, she says, but it is not an idea waiting to be built. Next, she says, is “expanding Adelphi’s national reach, professional services and cross-sector partnerships, creating a sustainable organisation that keeps direct support accessible while changing how care experience is understood and included across society.”

She wants to hear from leaders, commissioners, educators, employers, funders and potential partners, within and beyond the care sector, who want to improve how they understand, include and support care-experienced people. She also wants more care-experienced people to find Adelphi. “Supporting care-experienced people is not solely the responsibility of social care,” she says. “Education, housing, employment, utilities, finance and wellbeing all shape somebody’s ability to move through adulthood with genuine opportunity.”

Her speaking, training and consultancy sit alongside her work as an independent panel member for two national fostering companies, supporting the application and review process for those supporting children and young people across the UK, a board role with Corporate Jungle CIC and an Advisory Board role with Big Creative Education. Outside work, she says: “Time in nature, support with my grandparents and my two very different cats keeps me grounded and reminds me that life cannot only be measured through work.”

“Societal change does not happen in silos,” she says. “That understanding shapes both my leadership and the way Adelphi has been built.”

Five Reflections from Bethaney

Ask what it feels like for the person using it. Keep going until a process is practical, and not just in theory or on process documents.

Read the behaviour as communication. What looks difficult, disengaged or resistant may be somebody protecting themselves with the tools they developed to survive.

Notice the safety net. Ask who a person could call, or return to, when an ordinary adult decision becomes overwhelming.

Look past the threshold. Ask who loses access to support because of their age, their postcode or the pathway they fit into.

Connect what already exists. Ask what support is already there and how it could be made easier to find, understand and use.

From the Diary of Bethaney Dixon

Bethaney Dixon is an Essex-based consultant, strategist and speaker and the Founder and Director of Adelphi – Adulting, Together®.

“More Than a Label®: behaviour is communication, so be kind enough to look beyond the label and see the person underneath.”

Editor’s Note

The editors chose Bethaney Dixon because Adelphi is an organisation with a free digital platform, practical initiatives and delivery partnerships already in use, and because she writes plainly about who it is for. She brings more than ten years inside organisations together with her own experience of leaving care, which lets her work with people at the frontline and with organisations managing change. The feature is written for the leaders, commissioners, educators and employers she says most need to read it.

Executives Diary, Editorial