How care experiences arise in critical turning points in life courses after care

Objective: The aim of this presentation is to reflect on life-long impacts of care experiences. Thus leaving care is seen as a structural and emotional transition out of care on the one hand, and as an unfinished process in... [ view full abstract ]

Objective: The aim of this presentation is to reflect on life-long impacts of care experiences. Thus leaving care is seen as a structural and emotional transition out of care on the one hand, and as an unfinished process in life courses of care-experienced adults on the other hand (Schröer et al. 2012). The key objectives are to define named theoretical premises, to understand long term outcome of care from the view of those affected, and to deduce how to prevent burdensome life course as long as young people live in care and start to leave care.
Context: This paper adopts the hypothesis that the primary organizational structures and social environment of the out-of-home-placement play a decisive role in explaining pathways and junctions in further life (Gabriel & Keller 2014). Processes of upbringing and socialisation are always to be understood as products of active subjective interactions. But research thus far does not allow for precise statements about the social situation or the social exclusion of people having spent years in out of home care. In the context of the study within a Swiss National Research Program this presentation will be based on (www.placing-children-in-care.ch), it was of special interest to scrutinize the biographies of former children in care (1950 – 1990) by analysing junctions and relevant turning points in their life from a life course perspective.
Method: One generic case will be presented; it’s theoretically selected from a qualitative study-sample with 35 care-experienced adults (placed between 1950 and 1990) in the Canton of Zurich (Switzerland). In biographical narrative interviews (duration 1.5 to 5.5 hours) they told of their life. This rich data was analysed by the method of Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin 1990). Taking into consideration the objective of this presentation, categories connecting care experiences to life courses will be focussed when following the reconstruction of a care-experienced life course.
Findings & Conclusion: As mentioned, the second part of the presentation discusses a generic case and its subjectively relevant meanings of having been placed in care and becoming adult respectively old. That highlights the concrete capacity of a turning-point-model when reflecting and trying to understand life course after care. The case will represent a struggling way to independency as well as an overarching story back to dependency after many years. Here the question is what the influences were of administrative decisions and placement, and which turning points of an individual life after outplacement could be connected to those (overall) experiences. The third part concludes what current practice of placing children could learn from individually meaningful turning points, how to prevent or supervise leaving care in a short-term and a long term manner. Finally it might question a common concept of resilience as well.
Schröer, W., Köngeter, S. & Zeller, M. (2012). Statuspassage "Leaving Care": biografische Herausforderungen nach der Heimerziehung (Status passage "Leaving Care": biographical challenges after leaving residential care). In: Diskurs Kindheits- und Jugendforschung (7)3, 261-276.
Gabriel, T. & Keller, S. (2014). Junctions, Pathways and Turning Points in Biographical Genesis of Right-Wing Extremism. In: Social Work & Society (12)1.
Strauss, A.L. & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques.