“As events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a snake and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake” (Rushdie, 1981, p. 161).
Over recent years, there has been growing international recognition, by practitioners, managers, researchers and policymakers, of the importance of the transitioning from residential and foster care to adulthood process. Across public services, including child welfare, many governments have also been promoting a conceptual shift from outputs to outcomes and, with it, a stated wish to ensure better value from public expenditure. However, despite these two developments, we still know very little about positive outcomes for care leavers. What little we do know from the limited number of research studies in this area, along with administrative data matching undertaken by some governments, historical reviews into the abuse of children in care, and professional and organisational experience, tends to be framed around negative outcomes such as, for example, homelessness, imprisonment, and suicide, or their absence, rather than positive outcomes per se.
In this paper I will initially briefly explore the notion of positive outcomes in the context of transitioning from care to adulthood. I will then present, supported by slides, some of the key findings from a qualitative doctoral study ‘Climbing up Snakes, and Slipping down Ladders’, undertaken with seven New Zealand care leavers who went to university. Using informal conversational interviewing and thematic analysis, the study explores their experiences of foster care, leaving care, schooling, university, interpersonal relationships, as well as their feelings, motivations, views and attitudes.
While these individuals experienced many of the same barriers as other care leavers, a number of ‘success factors’ are identified including positive or very positive experiences of schooling, educational stability for their final year or years at secondary school, attending a local university and being close to their existing support networks, having experienced at least one high quality and valued foster care placement, education being valued by families and partners, having a supportive circle of friends, being able to access a high quality transitioning to independence support service, wanting a different kind of future for themselves, having a sense of (educational) resilience, feeling cared for and cared about by at least one adult, having a strong identity as a student or a professional, and completing their degrees.
An understanding of such ‘success factors’, and indeed their ‘obstacles’, may well be transferable to some other university students with a care background and others in care in New Zealand and overseas, and contribute towards our broader understanding around supporting transitions from care to adulthood.
However, the paper also draws upon another of the study’s key findings; that being in foster care, and transitioning to adulthood, is a highly complex process. As such, ‘success factors’ and ‘obstacles’ may in practice take different forms with different individuals, and depending upon their own particular context may also be experienced, and responded to, in very different ways. Such factors also interact with each other, while some may also have unintended consequences, both negative and positive. Furthermore, this study also suggests that acts of enormous generosity, and serendipity, may also have an important role to play in positive outcomes for those transitioning from care to adulthood. Using illustrative audio clips as well as slides, some of these complexities, tensions, contradictions, and their implications, are also explored.
As well as policymakers, managers and researchers, the findings will also be of interest to practitioners and managers who are supporting young people in care or care leavers, as they try to navigate their way towards adulthood.
Transition to adulthood from care , Education and qualification of children and young people in care
