After a horrible accident I flunked faculty – however now I’m a health care provider

As Rebecca Bradford – or Dr Rebecca Bradford, as she can now be called – walked onto the platform to accept her degree in medicine, there was no proud parent clapping her on.

She did catch the eye of a member of the university staff, though, and the pride writ large on his face moved her to tears. ‘He was a part of the “widening participation” crew at the university, and had been part of my whole journey, involved in offering me a place to begin with,’ she explains. 

‘If it hadn’t been for him, I simply wouldn’t have been there. As I walked up the stairs to the stage, I put my hand on my heart and said “Thank you”. Then I thought: “Holy moly. I’ve done it.”‘

The most touching part of that momentous day, marking the end of an extraordinary journey? The fact that her graduation gown was paid for by an organisation called the Care Leavers’ Association, which offers support to those who grew up in care. The number of care leavers who go on to university is shockingly low. A report last year concluded that care leavers are more likely to end up in prison than in a lecture theatre.

‘I didn’t even know there was a thing called a “graduation package”, never mind that I was eligible for it,’ she explains. ‘They not only paid for my gown, but paid for me to go out for a meal on graduation day, and to stay in a hotel overnight. They’ve been there throughout my university journey. 

‘Every Christmas they would send me a Christmas box including gifts like notebooks, pens, books and socks. Small things, but the sort of things most students take for granted. And those things meant the world, because it meant that someone out there valued me. I felt seen.’

Last month, Rebecca took the next step on her journey to being a fully fledged medic, signing on for her first day as a junior doctor at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. She sounds knackered and she is broke (‘I have about £100,000 of student debt’), but her achievement is astonishing.

Not only did she leave school at 15 without a single qualification, but Rebecca reached her mid-30s before deciding that she wanted to be a doctor.

‘My friends thought it was a joke, and to be honest there was no logic at all to it,’ she laughs. ‘I probably was quite delusional. There was nothing in my background – or my CV – that supported the idea that it was even an option.’

In fact, Rebecca had spent the last four years of her schooling in care, living in a series of children’s homes, ‘where going to university wasn’t an option’. ‘It was drilled out of me that I should even consider it. I was called stupid; told I would never amount to much. I now realise that period was abusive. For many years I felt like a reject.’

She did go on to have a career – two careers in fact, first as a cabin crew member for an airline, then as a personal trainer. But, as she agrees, who does that and then decides they want to be a doctor?

Listening to the story of her seven-year journey perhaps illustrates why most people don’t consider such a career (and life) swerve.

Most people simply wouldn’t have the financial or emotional reserves. Rebecca funded her own GCSE studies, starting with revision books, teaching herself the syllabus and sitting the exams at independent exam centres. She would get up at 2am to study, and continued to work in gyms, and later as a nursing assistant, to fund her progress. Her social life pretty much stopped for seven years; ditto her romantic life.

‘The first exam I took was English. I had no idea if I was even capable of passing it, but when I got an A*, I couldn’t believe it.’

Further exams in maths, science and French followed. Then came a medicine access course – billed as the route that allows students who do not have traditional A-levels to enter academia but, in reality, a stepping stone with no guarantees.

She was rejected from every medical school she applied to – save for one.

‘I was asked to go for an interview at Bristol as part of their widening access programme, which considers applications from non-traditional students.

‘I remember bursting into tears in the middle of it, because I wanted it so badly and because I’d put so much effort into just getting to that stage. I will always be grateful that they must have seen something in me, because they gave me a chance.’

She was the oldest in her intake of 270 students; also the only one who had spent time in care. ‘And in all the years of studying medicine, I only came across one other student who had been in the care system.’

The statistics are certainly shocking. Only 14 per cent of care leavers go on to university, a study from the think tank Civitas revealed last year, compared to 47 per cent of young people who did not grow up in care. Although efforts to widen access have resulted in improvement, the report concluded that ‘it will take 107 years to close the gap at the current rate of progress’.

Rebecca also seems to have been particularly fortunate, because while most UK universities do offer some extra support for care leavers, many stipulate that the cut-off age is 25. ‘Bristol had other sources of financial help even after that cut-off age. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes to just feel that someone is there for you.’

Rebecca’s life story is a salutary reminder of how even the brightest and most able child’s education can be knocked off track.

She was the youngest of three children – there are two older brothers – and grew up in Coventry where her dad was a lorry driver. It wasn’t an affluent household (‘quite the opposite’), but she remembers her early years being full of love – and books.

‘I loved school. I played the cello. I loved reading, learning. Books were a big thing. It was a case of “Give me a book and let me read”.’

It wasn’t, she concedes, an entirely happy house, but her dad was a dominant, and positive, influence. ‘My dad was my hero,’ she admits. ‘He was always the one to make everything OK.’

When she was nine, Rebecca’s parents announced that the family was moving to France. Her parents had decided on a new start – and a new business venture, running a bed and breakfast. ‘My dad loved France, and I think he saw it as a way of bringing the family closer together, somehow. He bought a rundown old house and the plan was to do it up.’

Her older brother opted not to join them, choosing instead to join the Army, but the rest of the family settled in a small village near the town of Pons, in south-western France. Rebecca and her brother attended a local school and all was ‘not perfect, but fine’.

Over the next six months she would become fluent in French.

When she was 12, however, there was an accident ‘which stopped my childhood in an instant’. Her father was up a ladder in the back garden one day, chopping down branches from a tree, and he slipped. A branch went through his eye, impaling him and causing horrific injuries. ‘I was the one who had to call the ambulance,’ she remembers. 

‘My dad was rushed to hospital and put in an induced coma. The doctors didn’t know if he was going to make it. I was never told the extent of his injuries, but I’m pretty certain now that there were brain injuries. He was in a coma for five or six weeks. When he came out of it, he couldn’t speak or walk, and he couldn’t move the left side of his body. 

‘He’d sit in a chair in his hospital room, just looking out the window, and he just looked devastated. I remember his head held straight with a yellow plastic helmet. I think he felt that he’d let the whole family down. Even when I tried to tell him “This is not your fault”, he blamed himself.’

She has wondered since if his determination to care for his family was a contributory factor to the accident. ‘Dad would never buy anything for himself. He always made sure we had clothes and shoes, but there wasn’t much money and he absolutely refused to buy new boots. The ones he wore were years old, and in a state. I always wonder, if he’d had better boots, whether it would have stopped him falling.’

The effect on the family was cataclysmic. Her dad would remain in a wheelchair, and with limited capacity, for the rest of his life. Her life imploded.

‘Over the next few years, we lost everything. The house was repossessed, the car was repossessed, all the furniture had to be sold.’ Social workers became involved. ‘They helped us find somewhere to live.’

By the time she was 13, the decision had been made for Rebecca to join the boarding department of her school during the week and only return home at weekends. Her father – by now in a rehabilitation unit – was also returning only at weekends.

Yet she was struggling. All joy from studying had disappeared, and she started getting into trouble at school. ‘With hindsight I was a traumatised kid rather than a naughty one. What I needed was stability. My whole life had just been pulled from under me.’ Then one day there was a meeting, which she thought was about how best to support her. Instead, she was told that she was going to be taken into care. 

‘I don’t want to criticise my mother, because obviously she couldn’t cope, but when they came to take me, they had to drag me forcefully from the house. I was taken to a children’s home – the first of many – and shown to a room with three or four others in it. I had the bottom bunk. I remember thinking, “This simply can’t be real”.’

This was her reality for four years. ‘I was never placed in a foster home, so there was no family environment. And a lot of the children had gone off the rails. Some were doing drugs.’

Her education prospects weren’t even discussed. ‘No one said “Let’s get her some books”. I was told I was stupid and, as a young person, when you are told that, you believe it.’

She did sit some exams – the French equivalent of GCSEs – but she’d ‘given up by then’, and she failed everything. Her certificate reads, brutally, ‘sans succès’.

‘I left school with nothing. As soon as I could, I got out.’

She had, however, made herself a promise. ‘I do remember sitting in one of those children’s homes promising that one day, even if it took me 50 years, I would prove everyone wrong.’

By anyone’s standards, she did. When she left the care system, aged 18, Rebecca was largely on her own. Desperate to leave France, but at first unwilling to return to the UK (‘because that’s where my family had been happy’), she moved to Germany. ‘I have no idea why, but I got a job as a waitress.’ 

Then she did return to the UK, and worked in a call centre, selling mobile phone contracts. ‘I did all sorts of jobs. It was about chasing money then. All I could think was that I needed to make enough money that I would have stability, and no one could take it away from me again.’

Around the age of 24, she went to Ghana to work for a children’s charity, and something shifted in her – although she perhaps didn’t fully recognise it at the time. ‘Working with the kids, feeling I could make a difference to their lives, made me feel truly happy.’

Two years later, she secured a cabin crew job with the airline Emirates, and for three years she travelled the world. 

In 2016 Rebecca moved back to the UK because she needed a spinal operation. For the first time in ages, she had time to reflect on her life path. ‘And I still don’t know exactly why. It wasn’t just because I was in hospital myself, but I remember this moment of clarity and thinking “I need to be a doctor”. I mean, it was a crazy goal, but it was a goal. I wanted to make a difference.’

Fast forward nearly eight years, and she acknowledges there have been many hiccups along the way. She says she would like to shatter the myth that only the academic elite – and the 18-year-olds from privileged backgrounds – will ever succeed in studying medicine. 

‘There have been times where it has felt too hard and, yes, I’ve wanted to give up. But I hope the fact that I’ve done it will show others that it is possible.’ 

It sounds like there have been lonely moments, too. Her mother is still alive, but there is no relationship there. In her third year at university her beloved dad died, which threatened to unseat her completely. ‘That was the hardest time, but at the same time I could imagine him saying to me “Keep going, Becca, keep going”, so I did.’

What would he make of the shiny new NHS lanyard around her neck that says ‘Rebecca Bradford, Doctor’? ‘I think he would be very proud indeed.’