From a life course structured by society to independent adulthood

Objective: The objective of the study is to investigate young care leavers experience of planning their move from care as a central turning point of their life course. What do they think is crucial to plan and to what extent... [ view full abstract ]

Objective: The objective of the study is to investigate young care leavers experience of planning their move from care as a central turning point of their life course. What do they think is crucial to plan and to what extent are they participating in the process?
Context: Off all children and youths placed in out of home care in Sweden sometime during 2014 (N=28700) a fourth were aged 18-20, thus in the age of leaving care and heading for the path towards independent adult life. Earlier research has shown that they embark on this journey earlier than their peers and that they make this transition faster and with less support. Leaving care is also to a high degree affected by society’s formal structural conditions as laws, regulations and professional praxis. Furthermore they are highly over represented in later life criminality, mental illness and increased mortality - especially those being placed for reasons related to their own behavior rather than lack of care.
A life course perspective helps us to take a closer look at their transition from care as a part of a lifelong development process, a turning point followed by others in which each individual makes own decisions and plans for their future, given the options they perceive. These options are affected by contextual social circumstances on different levels but we know from a life course perspective, that making plans and decisions promote one´s agency and have a strong impact on future trajectories.
Method: The data are based on the first wave in a longitudinal and qualitative study of 23 young care leavers (aged 16-21) in Sweden for whom leaving care was a current issue. The data was analysed by thematization.
Results: The tentative results show that the informants express a need for clarity in the moving out of care -planning process; when to move (the exact date), where to live, how to manage (economy, education, work), will they get any support from professionals (practical and emotional) when they leave the safety of a placement? Many also stress the need for a clear agenda of goals that can be checked off giving them a sign that they´re actually moving on and minimizing the risk for misunderstandings. One pervading issue is time; sometimes too little of it and sometimes too much when it comes to waiting for the day of leaving care.
Conclusion: Quite a few of the informants expressed a lack of participation in the planning process. Some refrained from participating as a way to avoid responsibility (if something goes wrong they could not be blamed). Others did not get the opportunity to participate. However, even though they had a low degree of participation in the formal planning, they often developed strategies to influence informally (by knowing how to “play the game”). These different strategies used will be framed in a life course perspective and discussed as ways of claiming agency for the studied informants.

Key references:

Elder, Glen H. et al.(2006). The emergence and development of life course theory. I Mortimer, J & Shanahan, M (Ed) Handbook of the Life Course (3-19).
Socialstyrelsen (2015). Statistik om socialtjänstinsatser till barn och unga 2014.
Vinnerljung, B. & Sallnäs, M. (2008). Into adulthood: A follow-up study of 718 young people who were placed in out-of-home care during their teens. Child And Family Social Work, 13(2), 144-155. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2007.00527.x