Leaving Alternative Care and Reintegration

It is important to support children who are preparing to leave care. This includes helping young people as they ‘age out’ of the care system and transition to independent living, as well as children planning to return home and reintegrate with their families. In either case, leaving care should be a gradual and supervised process that involves careful preparation and follow-up support to children and families.

The transition from alternative care to independent living can be challenging for young people. While some departures from care may be well planned, others may be sudden or unexpected, leaving young people emotionally and financially ill-equipped to cope with change. Without adequate preparation for leaving care and support during the aftercare phase, young people may face risks such as long-term unemployment, substance abuse, involvement in criminal activities and homelessness. Studies indicate that the biggest barriers to transitioning children out of care includes the absence of supportive relationships, educational challenges, housing instability and economic challenges (unemployment).

Reducing these risks involves working with children to plan for life after care and adulthood– including helping them to determine the most appropriate living environment, develop necessary life, financial management and job skills, and ensure that they have a reliable support system in place. Once children leave care, they should be encouraged to maintain contact with their previous care givers and friends, have access to basic services and quality housing with financial assistance, and be supported to follow educational, vocational and employment opportunities. Above all, evidence indicates that young people who benefit from gradual, extended and supported transitions from care have better outcomes than those who leave early and abruptly.

Girls and boys who leave care to return home can also benefit from a gradual process of reintegration with their families – both before and after the event. Initially this should involve a comprehensive assessment of whether the problems that led to family separation (such as poverty or social problems) have been adequately resolved, and whether a return home is in a child’s best interests. If so, the child, family and alternative caregivers should be supported to prepare and plan for reintegration – which may involve increasing the frequency and duration of children’s family visits before the final return, helping to build parenting skills, assessing families’ financial, practical and emotional support needs and developing a care plan to address them.

Once children are reunited with their families, ongoing support and supervision can play a critical role in ensuring that reintegration is lasting. For example social or community workers can provide counselling support, facilitate families’ access to social protection benefits and make sure that children have the academic support required to catch up at a new school. In some cases, children’s extended family and the broader community can also be encouraged to provide emotional or practical support.

This section contains literature on children leaving alternative care in non-emergency settings. This includes lessons learned and best practices regarding family reintegration, as well as guidance for supporting young people as they leave the care system and transition to independent living.

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Strengthening Caregiver Parenting Skills for Family Reintegration

Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children), 01 Sep 2019

This Practitioner Brief from the the Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children) project presents key learning and recommendations from the Keeping Children in Healthy and Protective Families (KCHPF) project in Uganda, which supported the reintegration of children living in residential care back into family care through the provision of a household-based parenting program, individualized case management support and a reunification cash grant aimed at strengthening the reintegration process.

Professional Stakeholders’ Concerns about Reunification Case Plan Requirements

Amy C. D’Andrade - Social Service Review, 01 Sep 2019

In this qualitative study, attorneys, caseworkers, managers, and service providers from four jurisdictions are interviewed to understand practice and decision-making in reunification case planning and service delivery.

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Foster Care and Reintegration: Different Portuguese Similarities

Rachel Baptista, Maria Helena Zamora, Eduardo Santos - International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Science (IJAERS) , 01 Sep 2019

This article examines the family reintegration process for those in care in Portugal and Brazil.

Meeting the Costs of Family Care: Household Economic Strengthening to Prevent Children’s Separation and Support Reintegration - A Resource Guide

Lisa Laumann and Emily Namey, FHI 360, 01 Sep 2019

This resource guide aims to assist program designers, funders, and implementers to select and incorporate appropriate and effective household economic strengthening (HES) measures into programs to preserve or reestablish family care for children.

ASPIRES Family Care Family Resilience (FARE) Project: Endline Quantitative Findings Report

Emily Namey, Lisa Laumann, Eunice Okumu, Seth Zissette - FHI 360, 01 Sep 2019

The Family Resilience (FARE) project was developed to help build the evidence base on how to appropriately match economic strengthening (ES) activities with families at risk of family-child separation and with families in the process of reintegrating a previously separated child. The project offered an opportunity for learning about how to provide ES and other family strengthening services and how well they worked. This report focuses on the latter and summarizes changes in key indicators related to family-child separation over the course of the project.

Challenges and Opportunities Experienced by Young Adults Transitioning Out of Informal Kinship-Based Foster Care in Bikita District, Zimbabwe

Charles Dziro - Emerging Adulthood, 28 Aug 2019

This article examines the challenges encountered by, and the opportunities available to, young adults as they transition from informal kinship-based foster care to independent living in the Bikita District of Zimbabwe.

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Gender Intersectionality and Family Separation, Alternative Care and the Reintegration of Children

Family Care First (FCF) and Responsive and Effective Child Welfare Systems Transformation (REACT), 27 Aug 2019

This study from Family Care First (FCF) and Responsive and Effective Child Welfare Systems Transformation (REACT) utilized a mixed method approach to data gathering and analysis to understand the effects of gender, identity, and institutional practices on the well-being of children in alternative care in Cambodia.

Raising African Voices in the Global Dialogue on Care-Leaving and Emerging Adulthood

Adrian D. van Breda & John Pinkerton - Emerging Adulthood, 22 Aug 2019

The special issue of Emerging Adulthood titled “Care-Leaving in Africa” is the first collection of essays on care-leaving by African scholars. This article, coauthored by scholars from North and South, argues in favor of North–South dialogue but highlights several challenges inherent in this, including the indigenizing and thus marginalizing of African experience and scholarship and divergent constructions of key social concepts.

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Beyond 18: Leaving Child Care Institutions - Supporting Youth Leaving Care: A Study of Aftercare Practices

Udayan Care, Tata Trusts & UNICEF, 21 Aug 2019

This report on Aftercare is based on research on “Current Aftercare Practices” (CAP), with regard to Children in Need of Care and Protection (CNCP), under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act, 2015, conducted in five states of India: Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. It is about the status of Aftercare youth, or Care Leavers (CLs) transitioning from state care to adulthood in the wider community.

Needs and availability of support among care‐leavers: A mixed‐methods study

Tehila Refaeli - Child & Family Social Work, 19 Aug 2019

This mixed‐methods study presents data on the needs and availability of support of 222 Israeli care‐leavers, suggesting that the most urgent needs of care‐leavers are a lasting need for a stable and available support figure and assistance with educational issues.

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