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How do young people transitioning from care plan their future lives? Planning is usually thought of as requiring clear goals and ‘future orientation’, but how might planning be regarded by young people whose wishes, hopes and plans have been repeatedly dashed? In this book Peter Appleton builds on research interviews with care-experienced young adults, and on cross-disciplinary theories of planning and of emotions, to develop a creative and non-dogmatic three-aspects model of planning for young people leaving care.
A valuable resource for practitioners, researchers and educators, this book…
This U.K.-based study explored the life experiences of care experienced adults in higher education to understand the factors that impeded or enhanced their journeys. Care experienced refers to someone who has been in the care of the state at some point in their life.
Six students with a history in the care system took part in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis identified global themes of self-reliance, resilience, intrinsic motivation and optimism which derived from underlying experiences of support, attachment, trust, expectations and placement experiences.
Findings suggest…
This research aims to identify and better understand what it is that enables and challenges the necessary improvements needed at national and local level to support children and young people to successfully transition to adulthood.
Many of the challenges identified within this report require complex change in a wide range of organisations. Recommendations cover what is needed to address culture and leadership, guidance, and practice, building on the good practice already taking place in some circumstances, and highlighting where improvements are needed.
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The pressures of ‘accelerated adulthood’ are a critical challenge for young people ageing out of the care system. Despite the trauma related to their placement history, young people ‘aging out’ are expected to adapt to adulthood at younger age and faster pace than their non-care peers, who enjoy an ‘extended adolescence’ a far more gradual progression into adulthood than previous generations.
This article draws on first-person narratives of care leavers in Ireland who have aged out of care and transitioned into independent living in a dedicated social housing programme to examine their…
This APPG report puts a spotlight on what ‘community’ means to care-experienced people and explores what might be done to help strengthen important community relationships and connections for current and future generations of children in care.
The report contains 15 practical recommendations for changes that could be made in the near future to improve the ways in which the care system supports young people to connect with their communities and highlights 5 broader areas where the authors feel serious reform is required that the Department for Education (and others) should consider in…
Scottish Ministers have published ‘Caring for our children and young people: An update on Scotland's Corporate Parenting 2018-21’, detailing how Scotland’s corporate parents have delivered on their duties to support children and young people with care experience.
Putting this second national report on corporate parenting before the Scottish Parliament in line with their duties under Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, the Scottish Government provides an overview of corporate parents’ activities over the last three years. The report aims to become a useful learning resource for…
Abstract
This article presents findings from an exploratory in-depth qualitative research project with seventeen child welfare professionals exploring their permanency decisions with regards to Looked after Children. Thinking aloud-protocols and semi-structured interviews, in conjunction with a specifically constructed vignette were used to explore the permanency decisions of child welfare workers. Findings from this innovative research suggest that different decisions were taken by participants based on viewing the same vignette. However, even though the decisions differed, they clustered…
This report provides an insight into the Permanence and Care Excellence (‘PACE’) programme – a Quality Improvement programme underway from 2014-2020 which engaged with local authority partnerships in 27 of the 32 Scottish local authority areas. The programme was aimed at supporting local authority partnerships across Scotland to reduce permanence planning timescales for looked after infants, children and young people using a Quality Improvement framework.
This report sets out the fundamental ways in which the…
Abstract
When children are first looked after, a significant challenge for those who support them is helping the children understand the reasons why they are in care. The Narrative Model is a model for supporting social workers to structure conversations with children about their entry to care and other complex issues. This article summarises the Narrative Model and shows how it supports placement stability for children. It clarifies how it differs from life story work and how it includes birth parents in the process. It then describes how the child’s response to the experience of having a…
Abstract
Significant concerns remain in many countries about the high numbers of children needing an adoptive placement relative to the low numbers of prospective adopters, the high level of long-term therapeutic support needs for many adopted children and their families, and whether there are appropriate services to meet them. There has been an increase in ‘priority’ children waiting over 12 months to find a family. These are often children aged four years and over, in care with siblings, with additional needs or developmental uncertainties and from minority ethnic backgrounds. The…