Whilst there is a considerable literature on the difficulties faced by young people leaving local authority care, much less is known about how children who have been brought up in kinship care get on as they reach their late teens and early adulthood. Do they do better or worse than care leavers and how do they compare with young people in the general population? This study is the first of its kind to look at these questions.
The objective of this research, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and conducted by Grandparents Plus, was to fill this gap in our knowledge. More specifically, the aims of the study were to examine the experiences and outcomes of young adults, aged 16-26, who had lived, or continued to live, in kinship care. Information was sought on their relationships with family and friends (including their kinship carer, parents and siblings), their health and wellbeing, educational attainment, and access to further training, higher education and employment. Where possible, comparisons were drawn between the progress of young people in our study and that of care leavers and/ or young people in the general population. Since there have been concerns about the young age at which care leavers move to independent living (see for example, Wade and Dixon, 2006; HM Government, 2016), we wanted to consider how the transition to independence was experienced by young people in kinship care, or in fact, how often the young people remained living in the kinship household as young adults. The study also set out to capture the views and experiences of kinship carers.
