We, the young people who have left care, want to be heard.

That afternoon I had an exam, and I was clinging to the classic last-minute review, the kind where you trust your memory will beat time, racing against the clock to record content you haven't managed to retain in weeks. Amidst messy notes and half-dried highlighters (the second-to-last exam of the course), I received a call from L., and, between somics and broken words, I made out: "Social Rights" - "email" - "€36,000" - "I don't know how" - "I called."

–You too.

–Me too?

Yes, me too. Everything.

A cold, sterile email from the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion announced the start of a review process for the financial benefit I've received since I was 18 (I'm 22 now) as a minor who had left care. I had 10 days to present my arguments and prove that I had always resided in Catalonia—where else, without family support and following an educational path?—and that I had complied with the Individual Work Plan, the essential tool for continuing to receive the benefit, which I religiously renew every six months.

There were a few seconds of denial of reality. Of putting it on airplane mode and pretending none of it had happened. Taking the exam that afternoon. Preparing for the last thing. Working and enjoying a few days of vacation. Acting as if nothing had happened. But the number prevented me from doing so. The €36,068.61 kept coming back to me.

L. and other affected friends created a WhatsApp group. The groups trickled in, and in just over four days we went from a group of five friends to 140. All of us scared, but also willing to use this anxiety as a driving force to speak out. To denounce publicly. To make it clear that we felt like thugs and, above all, that our rights like the presumption of innocence were being violated.

For the first time, as a group, we heard that public opinion was on our side and wasn't criminalizing us or telling us we were only living on handouts. It's worth noting that young people who have been exiled from care, for anyone who has any doubts, live very precariously and get everything before their time. We left home much earlier than other young people, between the ages of 18 and 23, and it was also at that point that we understood what it meant to not make ends meet. The benefit is €778.49, and we must assume part of the payment for the apartment we live in. If we work, it's reduced.

In just over a week, the email we received was a mere formality; the 10-day period was extendable, and the amount could go down or even drop to zero. I recognize the department's quick response, and I appreciate that they even summoned us to apologize and give us explanations in person.

But that doesn't erase a week of constant, noisy buzzing, of not being able to attend the last two exams of the course, of losing two kilos, and of having to answer constant calls from people who, through tears, told me they didn't know what they would do, and I couldn't find the words.

An administration designed to protect us shouldn't generate this feeling of helplessness and reinvigorate our vulnerability. From the moment we leave the protection system at 18, we should put all our efforts into building a sustainable life plan that allows us to be independent when we have neither benefits nor housing coverage. We take short steps to avoid falling, placing one foot after the other, each time with more firmness, and blows like these destabilize us. They remind us again of our vulnerability.

We have a feeling of injustice, and not so much because of the why as because of the how. Public money should be audited, without a doubt, but not like this. Not with an unannounced letter, full of technicalities, accusing us without explaining why, giving us a short window to prove our innocence, and announcing such a significant impact. Because what we have experienced, it must be said, is institutional violence. Sometimes a more human tone is enough, with language that doesn't make you feel, once again, small and controlled.

We trust that the department will keep its word, that we will soon receive a letter—this one preceded by some preliminary work on its part—telling many of us that this has all been a mistake, or a nightmare for us. Above all, we trust that this will not happen again, and for that to happen, we believe it is essential that we be allowed to participate as a collective in this transformation of the DGAIA into the DGPPIA. Because no one knows the system and its obstacles as well as we do. And because more than giving us a voice, which we have, what is needed is for us to be heard. Because we want a future where no young person in or out of care ever has to receive an email like that again.