Using data from a nationally representative household survey conducted in Senegal in 2006-2007, the survey Pauvreté et Structure Familiale, this paper studies the long-term outcomes for adults who have been fostered in their childhood, including children fostered to Koranic schools. It focuses its analysis on education, first employment and current employment as well as on marriage. Findings show that the long-term impacts of fostering are heterogeneous and depend on various reasons including the locations of fostering, host parents, fostering age, and gender.

Using a nationally representative household survey conducted in 2006-2007 in Senegal, this study sheds light on the common practice of fostering (confiage) by examining the characteristics of households and individuals involved in fostering, the motivation for fostering and its impact on host households, sending households, and the foster child, with a focus on education, employment and marriage outcomes.

This monograph reviews literature pertaining to children without permanent parents.

Utilizing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, this paper from Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development Volume 76, Issue 4 examines critical components and current characteristics of alternative care for children in low‐resource countries.

Few local authorities had elaborated programmes or routines for care leaving. Many small municipalities had few young people in care, which made it difficult to organise elaborated programmes for care leaving. Manager’s expected a rapid and linear transition to adulthood. Little awareness of the yo-yo transition pattern common for other young people. Managers were worried that continued contact with social services would lead to young people being dependant on support. Only 6% of managers had any information of young people’s whereabouts, once they had left care.

The authors of this article carried out a follow-up study of 143 young adults leaving kinship care. They assessed the young adults’ transition to adulthood with interviews and questionnaires. A small part of the sample presented serious problems of social exclusion. Seventy percent had found employment or were in higher education. The youth had frequently suffered the loss of foster carers and lack of support.

In December 2011, the Children and Youth Services Review released a special volume (32) focused on "Young People's Transitions from Care to Adulthood."

This article, from the Children and Youth Services Review special issue on ‘Young People's Transitions from Care to Adulthood’ examines the school performance and psychosocial wellbeing of care leavers in Sweden.

Foster youth in the US do not appear to be receiving many forms of help that are called for in federal law. Over one-third did not receive help they would have liked to have received. System factors play a stronger role than individual indicators of need in help receipt. Independent living services should be more widely available and better targeted.

The aim of this article is two-fold. Firstly, to present a critical discursive analysis of young people's accounts of themselves in the transition from care. Secondly, to shed light on three different ways of making the transition from care; transition through a break with the past after moving out, transition through continuing change and transition as a way of dealing with the risk of further problems in their lives.