This report presents the latest findings from the Growth Beyond the Town Girls and Boys Town South Africa (GBTSA)/University of Johannesburg (UJ) joint partnership longitudinal research study. This serves as an update to a similar report that was written in 2019. The report includes data collected since the project’s inception in 2012, up until the last wave of data collection, which took place in late 2019. Presented are the findings from 150 participants who were interviewed as they disengaged from GBTSA, as well as the outcomes of many of these care-leavers that have been measured each year during follow-up interviews. The report also provides an analysis of resilience variables that predict better outcomes for care-leavers as they transition out of care over the first six years out of care.
The report presents quantitative results concerning:
- A description of participants at the time of leaving care.
- A description of a range of care-leaving outcomes over the first six years of leaving care. (We omitted the seventh year due to the small sample size.)
- An examination of the contribution of resilience variables measured at baseline to care-leaving outcomes over the first six years out of care.
- Based on the results, we draw implications for in-care and aftercare practice.
