Search results

Considerable attention has been given to the vulnerability of young people leaving care in the UK in their transition to adulthood. To date, however, there has been limited focus on the perceptions of care leavers about what factors enable and inhibit effective practice. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This systematic literature review sought to elicit the views of UK care leavers in identifying barriers and facilitators to the process of transition to adulthood. Qualitative studies in the care-leaving field were identified, of which seven met inclusion criteria and were included in the final synthesis.

The findings yielded a range of facilitators, including authentic and consistent relationships with those acting in the role of corporate parent; and flexible systems, which accommodated personal readiness for leaving care. Barriers included insufficient recognition of, and a lack of support for, the psychological dimensions of transition, exacerbated by insufficient support networks.

This literature search yielded seven qualitative papers, some with small sample sizes, meaning that the findings may not be representative of a wider population or directly relevant to international contexts.

Suggestions for enhancing the transition process are posited. In particular, the potential usefulness of an “interdependence” transition approach for UK care leavers is proposed.

This study analyses qualitative data, thus constituting a response to policy calls for care leaver views to be central to transition processes.

This article takes a fresh look at the duties to care leavers, focusing on the overlap with adult services in relation to young care leavers over the age of 18.

This article sets out the views and experience of children and young people on selected major aspects of their lives which are governed by provisions in the Children Act 1989. It draws on extensive statutory consultations with children in care, receiving children's social care services, or otherwise living away from home, carried out over the past eight years by the Children's Rights Director for England. Two key themes from children are featured in particular: the extent to which the intentions of the Act are actually experienced by children in practice, and the extent to which delivery of the intentions of the Act is individualised according to each child's needs, wishes and feelings. Children's views, experiences and, in some cases, proposals for the future are explored in relation to ascertaining and taking into account children's wishes and concerns in decision‐making, selection of placements, support to care leavers, family contact, care planning and reviews, and complaints and representations. The issues of private fostering and the intentions and development of the role of the Independent Reviewing Officer are discussed from the child's perspective and in the light of the subsequent Children and Young Persons Act 2008.

The government’s ambition is to have three million more apprentices by 2020. The newness of degree apprenticeships and insufficient data make it difficult to assess their relative importance in boosting the UK economy, meeting higher skills needs of employers, closing educational attainment gaps, increasing social mobility and supporting under-represented groups into professional employment. The purpose of this paper, led by the University of Winchester and delivered by a new collaboration of private and public sector partners, is to build a pipeline between those currently failing to progress to, or engage with, degree apprenticeships and employers seeking higher skills and a broader pool of applicants.

The paper provides an analysis of collaborative initiatives and related research in England as the context for university involvement in degree apprenticeships. The case study illustrates the benefits of collaboration in targeted outreach initiatives within the local region to address gaps in progression to degree apprenticeships.

This paper illustrates how establishing a regional picture of degree apprenticeship provision, access and participation can inform effective partnerships and build capacity locally to deliver the higher skills employers need, further demonstrating the potential benefits of university involvement in degree apprenticeship provision in contributing to local and national policy ambition. It also shows how effective targeted interventions can help under-achieving groups, including those in social care and women in digital enterprises.

The authors believe this paper is the only academic analysis of the impact of Degree Apprenticeship Development Fund activity in the region.

This paper seeks to explore three key aspects of the education of children in care: the composition of that population of children and the extent to which they differ from the general population of children due to difficulties most of them have experienced prior to as well as after entering care; issues relating to the identification of causal relationships and the extent of “underachievement” by children in care; and any evidence that care may provide more positive opportunities than is often supposed.

The paper's approach is an extensive literature review of existing published research into social policy and practice of caring for looked after children.

The significant factors that contribute to better achievement for children in care are: placement stability and support at school but for some children therapeutic help and specialist assessments are necessary to improve outcomes. Different analyses produce different results and the scrutiny of children's trajectories indicates better outcomes than one‐off comparisons with children not in care.

Extensive research has established that children in care achieve less educationally than their peers not in care, but does not explain why. This paper helps to fill this gap.

The authors give a view from the Probation Service in Inner London about the potential impact of the Government's Supporting People proposals on the care of offenders in the community.

This paper aims to describe the challenges and potential benefits of moving a mentoring programme for young people in care and care leavers to an online mode of delivery in response to the South African Government’s efforts to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19.

A descriptive account incorporating reflections from staff responsible for the move to e-mentoring and from South African and UK researchers undertaking an exploratory study of mentoring vulnerable youth at the time when COVID-19 restrictions were imposed.

E-mentoring can provide an effective means to maintaining the essential elements of a well-established mentoring programme for young people in care and care leavers under government enforced “lock-down”. E-mentoring presents particular challenges and benefits in the South African context. Youth in care and care leavers have unequal access to a digital infrastructure, but this can be overcome by investment in resourcing, equipping and training carers, mentors and mentees. The geographical reach offered by online platforms gives young people access to a more diverse pool of mentors.

Both care leaving services and the use of e-mentoring to meet the needs of vulnerable young people are emerging areas of practice and research interest. This paper brings the two areas together in the context of South Africa under COVID-19 “lock-down” through describing the response of one mentoring programme and highlighting the benefits and challenges.

The purpose of this article is to advance knowledge concerning outcomes among the former residents of therapeutic children's homes, especially those located in England.

In total, 16 young adults who had been resident in one of seven therapeutic homes took part in interviews.

It appeared, from the information they gave in these interviews, that their outcomes were good in terms of their emotional and behavioural well‐being, physical health, accommodation, and absence of early parenthood and substance use. Some of the young adults also had good outcomes in respect of their education and absence of criminal convictions. A small number of the young adults did less well on these latter two measures but few of them were particularly poor in either of these respects. The young adults had limited contact with their family members.

The evidence from this research is that young adults who have been in therapeutic residential care can have good outcomes.

The chapter explores an overlooked theme across the literature: capturing the experience of childhood family disruption and transitional flux between foster family homes and the independent sensemaking into the present of young care-experienced parents. The chapter draws upon research that constructed 20 biographical life story accounts of a diverse sample of foster care-experienced young people. The chapter aims to reflect upon the findings garnered from six of these accounts through extracting the narratives of a selection of participants who were to become or had become parents. This chapter makes sociological connections between past family disruption, demarcating present families of choice, and reconciliation of the past through experiencing parenting into the future within constructed ‘family displays’ (Finch, 2007). The chapter illustrates this phenomenon through narrative accounts offering a family history of parents who have experienced a variance of transitions between family units and who were negotiating, or had negotiated, their post-care independence through the role of becoming a parent themselves. The chapter highlights the symbolic value of parenting to the lives of young people who have experienced care in recalibrating their past familial experiences, as demonstrated through their family displays. Through the family displays of care-experienced parents, the importance of the relational context to youth transition ultimately reveals itself, as does the development of relational agency, and ultimately the role of parenting in developing a young person’s independent ‘post-care’ identity.