Abstract
This in-depth follow-up study presents some foster youths’ lived experiences from when they were teens in a new foster family through the process of leaving care. Their transition to adulthood was delayed because of disturbances in their school situation; however, as adults they took advantage of the possibility to study. The narratives reveal the crucial importance of social workers, and what is needed to make their relations with youth trustful. Even though there were placement breakdowns along the way, in retrospect they all see the benefits of their foster family: as a steady base when needed or just as a construction of a ‘good family’ that they keep in mind. Most striking is the young people’s agency in overcoming challenges and obstacles, which led to increased maturity and self-confidence, though it depended on having some kind of security in their social situation. Facebook plays a vital role in keeping relationships alive, which is especially important for those without a secure base in their family or peer group. It appears that their striving for independence is intertwined with a need for interdependence on the way to adulthood, with varying emphasis over time. Mixed qualitative methods were used: interviews, network maps and The Experience Sampling Method.
Keywords
Introduction
The transition to independent adulthood is an important phase in all young people’s lives, however, it has been shown to be even more complex and abrupt for youth in out-of-home care who are at risk of being socially excluded (see Cunningham and Diversi, 2012; Stein, 2012). The difficulties that foster youth experience are well-established in social work literature and include higher rates of unemployment, homelessness and early parenthood than among young adults in general (see e.g. Cunningham and Diversi, 2012). For foster youth, events during their teenage years – whether they stay in care or experience disruptions – are crucial for how well they cope with this transition. Stein (2008) identifies three groups of care leavers: young people who are ‘moving on’, ‘survivors’ and ‘victims’. In both national and international research, it is obvious that many young people leave care in an unplanned way (see McCoy et al., 2008; Sallnäs et al., 2004), and that those who stay in care get on better (see e.g. Backe-Hansen et al., 2010; Courtney and Dworsky, 2006; McCoy et al., 2008).
Given these circumstances, an important question arises: whether or not young people remain in care, what challenges do they encounter on the way to adulthood and how do they cope with them? This article provides qualitative knowledge about young people’s understanding of their transition process in light of their previous experiences in care and after care. Aspects connected to the outcome of leaving care mentioned by Stein (2008), namely the quality of care, the way they leave care and the support they receive after care, will be in focus. This article is mainly based on the third interview session in 2013 with five young people placed as teenagers in different types of foster families, but their previous interviews in 2008 and 2009 are also reviewed in retrospect (see Hedin, 2012, 2014).
Foster youths’ agency viewed from a ‘life course approach’
From a resilience perspective, Stein (2012: 160) proposes a ‘life course approach’ to better understand care leavers’ path to adulthood, which is understood as a ‘cumulative process’ over time. Different aspects of young people’s lives are interconnected, and their personal agency in the social context matters. Thörnblad and Holtan (2013) identify different types of agency among kinship foster youth in their interactions with the Child Protection Services (CPS) in Norway, from being equal, active participants to becoming powerless actors who distrust the CPS or even do not want their services at all. The ‘cumulative process’ over time (Stein, 2012) is evident in some longitudinal studies by European researchers (Andersson, 2008; Schofield and Beek, 2009), in which children’s own active role in maintaining relationships over time is shown. Schofield and Beek (2005) suggest that specific changes, like starting at a new school or other events in a child’s life, can become a turning point leading in a new direction, for better or worse.
All these aspects are closely connected to this study, however here the ‘life course approach’ is mainly applied from when the young people were placed in foster care in their teens.
Support when leaving care
Both European (UK) and Australian research show that successful care-leaving is characterized by having stable, high quality care, at least one stable relationship, positive school experiences, the possibility to take part in decisions about oneself (Cashmore and Paxman, 2006; Stein, 2012) and a gradual transition from care (Stein, 2012). Feeling a sense of belonging to a family is important for care leavers (Andersson, 2008; Cashmore and Paxman, 2006). This secure base (see Schofield and Beek, 2009) can help care leavers to accept challenges, while leaving them the possibility to return if they feel unsafe (Hiles et al., 2013).
The importance of both informal and formal support, such as social, emotional, financial and practical support, in the process of leaving care is made clear in European research (see e.g. Backe-Hansen et al., 2010; Stein, 2008), but in practice it is not always available as a matter of course (Höjer and Sjöblom, 2014). A lack of informal support may be what Singer et al. (2013) identify as ‘holes’ in the type of support, for example informal network members who provide sufficient emotional support but not as much instrumental and appraisal support. If informal support from their birth family for example is lacking during this phase, then formal support from the social services becomes more urgent (Stein, 2012). A Swedish researcher, Gunvor Andersson (2008), suggests that this follow-up support after leaving care may even be one of the most important services that welfare systems provide in society.
In the Swedish context, foster youth can stay in care until they are 19 or have completed their upper-secondary schooling. A comparison of policy documents from 15 countries with regard to their compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child shows that Sweden is one of four countries that recognize the needs of care leavers to a lesser degree (Munro et al., 2011). This result is confirmed in a Swedish study of Swedish social services managers (Höjer and Sjöblom, 2011). In both these studies, public authorities refer to the general public welfare support systems (Höjer and Sjöblom, 2011; Munro et al., 2011), even though Swedish law requires increased provision of specific social services to young care leavers. Furthermore, Swedish care leavers’ own narratives reveal a shortage of both formal and informal support (Höjer and Sjöblom, 2014).
Supportive relationships are thus crucial in the transition to adulthood and must be considered by practitioners (Singer et al., 2013). In a review of social support when leaving care, Hiles et al. (2013) call attention to the need to promote the young person’s entire network of relationships, including peers (see also Andersson, 2008). Some researchers connect these relational needs of care leavers with a shift in the child welfare paradigm from independence to interdependence, which entails recognizing not only care leavers’ independence as a goal but also their need for various kinds of support and supportive relationships, i.e. their interdependence (Hiles et al., 2013; Singer et al., 2013). Furthermore, in a review of Nordic and European research, Backe-Hansen et al. (2010) emphasize the importance of young people’s wish to be involved in the after-care plans, that is, their desire to be heard and to be taken seriously (see also Stein, 2012).
To sum up, previous research shows not only just the agency of young people leaving care but also their vulnerability and need of support, as well as problems with access to both formal and informal support. However in-depth knowledge about the role of self-agency in their transition to adulthood is still rather rare.
Methodology
This article is mainly based on a 2013 follow-up study of five young people, combined with data from previous interview sessions with the same participants in 2008 and 2009. The study has a qualitative interpretative design and aims to ascertain the young people’s own understandings of their lived experiences (see Dahlberg et al., 2001).
Participants
The participants are five young people who in their teens were placed in kinship (relatives), network (non-relatives, previously known) or traditional (previously unknown, recruited through the social services) foster families. On this last occasion, they were 19–21 years of age. The participants were originally recruited in 2008 through social workers in seven municipalities in Sweden (see Hedin, 2012). In the last follow-up study, out of the 11 young people who were possible to reach (from the original group of 17), only these five agreed to participate. Although four years had passed since the last interview, and most of the young people had left foster care, as transient youth they may be among the ‘hard to reach’ populations (Abrams, 2010: 536). Furthermore, in a few cases former foster carers acted as gatekeepers. The young people all have a Swedish background.
Interviews, network maps and The Experience Sampling Method (ESM)
The in-depth interviews focused on specific themes. These themes (like in previous interviews in 2008, 2009) concerned the young people’s everyday life and dealt with housing, education/work, health, formal and informal relationships, interactions, and access to support both in their present situation and in the interval since the last interview, and their thoughts about the past and future. The fact that I conducted all interviews myself created an atmosphere of openness between the youth and myself and facilitated retrospective discussion of previous interviews. All young people were also asked to rate, on a 10 point scale, how well functioning they thought their former foster family was.
The network map of significant others showed the strength and quality of the young people’s relationships with their foster family, biological family, peers, teachers and others. On a network map, the young people first place themselves in the middle, and then place people who are significant to them as close to themselves as they consider them to be emotionally. The network map is not only an illustration of important relations but also facilitates talking about relations.
ESM were used to capture their here-and-now situation – what they were actually doing at specific times and whom they were doing it with (see Csikszentmihalyi and Hunter, 2003), not just their thoughts about it. The young people received text messages via mobile phone around six times a day, for six days and each time they immediately answered the same four questions: where are you, with whom, what are you doing, how does it feel?
The study was approved by the regional ethics committee in Uppsala, Sweden. To protect the confidentiality of the participants, the names have been changed, as have some details of negligible importance for the results.
Analysis
All audiotaped interviews and text-message responses made in 2013 were transcribed verbatim by myself. Interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis to identify coherent patterns of meaning, which were coded and categorized (Patton, 2002). For each young person, a comparison was made of his or her interview, network map and text responses. A retrospect of previous interviews from 2008 and 2009 was made in order to follow their stories – temporally, but also spatially (see Kohler Riessman and Quinney, 2005) – from their placement in a new foster family as teenagers up to their present situation. Thereafter categories for all youth were compared, and patterns and themes were outlined in accordance with the aim and questions of the study (see Patton, 2002). These themes form the headings in the following results section. My ambition has been to present their narratives as parts of a coherent whole within these themes.
Results
Background information
The young people will be described briefly: Anna, 21, was placed in a traditional foster family when she was 14; Eva, 20, in a close kinship foster family when she was 15; Martin, 21, in a close kinship foster family when he was 15; Anton, 19, in a network foster family when he was 13; Ida, 19, in a network foster family when she was 13. All placements were voluntary, except for Ida’s, which resulted from a coercive intervention where she was placed in another foster family when she was about nine years of age.
Interruptions and disruptions in education delay independence in daily life. All the young people interviewed except Eva had serious school problems before placement. By the time of the first interview in 2008, when they had stayed in the foster family between 9 and 18 months, they had made large improvements in their school performance. After 2008, their individual paths of school development have diverged.
After a long period of truancy before placement, Anna has improved and is somewhat satisfied with her final marks from upper-secondary school, which she completed in 2011. While she was in upper-secondary school, her foster placement broke down and she also came into serious conflict with one of her birth parents. Her leaving certificate does not qualify her to go to university, and she is therefore studying maths and Swedish in municipal adult education, alongside working at a café. She is living on her own. So far she has no idea of her future profession but wants to be able to get a higher education.
Eva has completed her upper-secondary schooling, though with low marks. She talks about her school fatigue, which almost caused her to stay behind in the second form and made her change school twice. Her social worker wanted her to see a psychologist because of some truancy; however, she stopped after two sessions. Now she is an adult student at a folk high-school with the ambition to get passing marks in several subjects within a year and a half, to then be able to study to become a police officer or social worker. I was awfully tired of school. (…) So I took my school leaving certificate, that was my goal even though I didn’t have good marks, because then I could make it up later. That’s what I’m studying now. At a folk high-school. (…) So I’m more motivated to study there than at the upper-secondary school.
Before placement in 2007, Anton attended a special class because of behavioural problems. In foster care he attended an ordinary class, but had to stay behind an extra year in the sixth form to compensate for what he previously had missed. After one year, he had pass marks in all subjects. After nine years of compulsory school with good marks, he requested to move back to his mother, which was approved. He did not like his first year in upper-secondary school, because he felt that the teachers did not care about him. He dropped out of school and stayed at home the rest of the school year, before his good marks influenced him to start again, in a new class. ‘But then I thought, I have my school certificate, I might as well go back to school. So I applied to another school and got accepted there, where I get on well’.
Now Anton has almost finished his first year and hopes to get pass marks in all subjects. However, once again he was tired of school and was absent for a while at the start of the present term, but then he went back. He is studying to be a lorry driver and will take his driving test at school, an opportunity that he appreciates.
Martin’s schooling has been delayed since the time before placement in 2008 when he suffered from severe anxiety because of his home situation. Nevertheless, he rather quickly managed to get passing marks after placement. In upper-secondary school, he changed from a media programme to one with an emphasis on art, but he did not feel socially comfortable there and changed to another class. These changes delayed his schooling by another year. During this year, he obtained some practical experience working in a shop, which he considers to have been beneficial because it gave him a break from everything. He is in his second year and feels he gets on well with his mentor and peers in school.
Ida made real educational improvements in 2008, however, since a breakdown of placement in 2009, she has been to altogether five residential homes and has received no regular schooling. So, she has no school-leaving certificate from compulsory school. She has recently started to study various subjects to get the certificate, which she expects to take about a year. These classes are held at a residential home for youth with a problematic situation, where she has been for the last few years, though she now lives in her own apartment, arranged and supervised by the residential home. Ida regrets dropping out of school when she came to this residential home. Later she plans to get upper-secondary school qualifications, maybe at a folk high-school, in order to study to become a prison guard.
Anna and Eva are economically independent of the social services, and combine working and studying, while Anton, Martin and Ida are still dependent on support from the social services. Anna, Eva and Ida, who live by themselves, express worries about how they will get by financially.
Stability and safety in foster care creates a foundation for the future
Eva and Anton completed their placements in foster care as planned, and Martin is still there, while Anna and Ida have experienced breakdowns in their placements.
Looking back, Anna believes that the stability in her foster family made it possible for her to focus on school. Even though her placement ended in breakdown when she was almost 17 – from Anna’s point of view due to her foster mother’s illness, which made her irritated by Anna – she still considers the time before this happened to have been beneficial for her. I think it was really good at the time, because it was probably what I needed. It sounds like a cliché but I needed some stability and security to become more secure in myself. Because when things are shaky and difficult it feels better to have a stable base.
In hindsight, Anna can understand her foster mother’s behaviour; nevertheless she sees it as an overreaction, as well as her own response to it. However, Anna feels sorry about not having had the possibility to say goodbye to her foster parents, especially her foster father, because they refused when the social workers tried to arrange a meeting.
Eva lived with her biological father for a few years between two kinship foster placements. She regards both of her kinship foster families as her ‘real’ family and feels at home in both families, while her birth father’s family is more like a foster family to her, as is also illustrated on her network map. She rates both kinship foster families as 10 on a 10-point scale, the best rating. Eva does not see herself as having had a foster-family upbringing, but considers her childhood to have been like anyone else’s, perhaps even better. However, she reflects about the problem of being so attached to an old grandmother (former kinship foster parent), even though she would not want things to be different. She is worried about losing her too soon. Her grandmother is the person she trusts most of all.
When Anton had moved in with his birth mother, his foster family became a contact family that he visited once a month for a while. Since then their contact has been sporadic, yet he knows he is always welcome to visit them. He considers the family to be a good one, rating them eight out of a possible 10 points and is happy to have lived there. When he is asked about supportive persons in his life, his foster parents are the first people he mentions after peers. He also mentions the foster family when talking about family life, describing commonplace interactions as valuable, for example at the dinner table. It was like you talked about what you’d been up to during the day and about what they’d done, sitting and talking, having a good time. Being together, doing things together. Not just hi, bye, like that. I think that’s what makes a family.
Anton thinks that his placement has affected his life a lot; without it he would not have bothered about school at all.
For Martin, his kinship foster family meant a safe place to stay, which was crucial to him when he arrived after living with his birth parent. He needed a secure existence to be able to work through his social and emotional problems and to cope with school, something he believes he could not have managed otherwise. He thinks he could not have been better off with anyone else and rates the foster family as10 out of 10. It is important for him to know what is going to happen, to have a predictable life. He thinks he should have come to his foster family earlier in life.
In the first interview, in 2008, Ida expressed great appreciation for her network foster family. However, she had just abruptly left them and was very disappointed with them in the second interview, in 2009, when she was 15. ‘And they could sit there telling me bad things about my friends (…). Whatever I did, there was always something to scold me about. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore because it was so damn hard’.
Now when Ida looks back on the time when she lived in the foster family, she exhibits another way of understanding the family and the breakdown of placement than in the 2009 interview. She can understand that they were worried about her choice of friends and thinks they acted in the way they thought was the best for her. Her attitude towards her foster parents is more like that in the first interview in 2008. ‘They were good people. They had their rules; they respected me and I respected them, you know. They understood me and I understood them, or however you say it. (…) They really wanted me in their family’.
Ida has chosen to take up contact with this former foster family again. They occasionally talk on Facebook, and she visited them a year ago, on the initiative of both sides. When asked what a family should be like to make you feel at home, she answers in terms of this foster family and its characteristics, rating the family 10 out of 10. So even if she did not find stability and safety in care after the breakdown of this placement, she still has this image of what makes a good family, as well as a link to this family.
Committed and informal social workers make a difference
All the young people except Eva feel that they have been helped by the social services in one way or another, and consider a special social worker to be an important person in their life, as also shown on their network maps. Eva was satisfied with the informal support, mostly from relatives, that she received, and did not need any help from the social services.
After the breakdown of her foster placement, Anna was in a critical situation, and her social worker helped her to get a special flat for youth with support and supervision. She stayed there for a year and then got a flat of her own through the social services. Anna still keeps in touch, for support, with one of the social workers from the youth flat, though now informally.
Anton had many social workers before getting the one he considers to be really good. She was nice, listened to him, and if he wanted something she did her best to arrange it. They had some meetings so he got to know her. He is glad that he could keep this social worker for half a year after moving from his foster family back to his mother.
As Martin still lives in his foster family, the social services are involved. He does not have much contact with the social worker in charge of his case, but he used to have a therapist assigned to him through the social services, which meant a lot to him. He is sorry that this form of support had to come to an end, because he was too old to keep it, but he sometimes meets informally with his former therapist to have some coffee and talk. He feels this person has been the second most supportive person in his life after his foster mother. He has received some tools to handle his situation and has access to another therapist.
Ida thinks that after the breakdown when she was 15, she was not really a problematic child. However, after all the subsequent placements she had problems like drug addiction and trouble in school, as previously mentioned. She criticizes the social services’ handling of her case, especially after the breakdown when they placed her against her will in residential care. So, Ida’s opinion of social workers is mainly negative, but there is an exception: a social worker she used to have and who has recently returned to work after parental leave. Believe me, not many people can talk with their social worker. And definitely not say if I’m happy or sad or hungry or full. There’s nothing I want to say to them. But with Karin (current social worker) I can talk about everything. She understands and wants to help.
Ida is also satisfied with the support she receives from the staff at her residential home and appreciates that they listen to her and trust her. When she feels anxious or needs help, they are the ones she turns to. They refuse to give up and have struggled to help her during her stay there, even though she thinks they have made some mistakes. Their importance to her is shown in her text responses – where she describes sitting and making small talk with them during her frequent visits, which gives her a good feeling – and also in how close she places them to herself on her network map.
Informal relations in real life, put on ice or on Facebook
Like in previous interviews in 2008 and 2009, the most important informal relations are with family members or close friends. For different reasons (a mother’s drug addiction, a mental disorder or conflict), Anna, Eva and Martin have chosen not to have any contact at all with their birth mothers, and two of them have even left their mother out of their network map. Instead they maintain close contact with their fathers, even though they could not live with them.
Anna has received financial, practical and emotional support from her father over the years. She also highly appreciates the support she got from her grandmother and a friend of her family after conflicts with her mother and siblings. She thinks herself lucky to have so many people she trusts and can turn to. She considers many friends and colleagues to be close to her, which is obvious on her network map and is also illustrated by frequent contact in the text responses. Some friends have offered practical help, such as tips about jobs when she needed one.
As mentioned before, Eva gets her informal support from her relatives, that is, her former foster families, both practically and emotionally. Everything she has learned about practical matters in preparation for adult life, like how to do housekeeping, comes from her grandmother. She even prefers doing things with her grandmother over with friends. Her boyfriend, siblings and other relatives are also important to her, and the members of the extended family see each other quite often.
Anton thought it was kind of strange to live with his mother again after his foster placement, however, he soon adapted to the new situation. There is a difference in the interaction between him and his mother, namely that they are nicer to each other now. Anton’s father died about 10 years ago. His mother and siblings are important to him, but when he needs someone to confide in he speaks with his best friend, whom he met during his time in foster care. This friend’s importance can clearly be seen on Anton’s network map. They keep in contact mostly via Facebook, as they live far from each other.
Apart from his foster mother, Martin receives informal support from his father and other relatives. His father helps him with some practical matters, like shopping, and he regularly does things with his sibling. Previously, Martin found most of his friends through a group on the Internet with a mutual special interest, and he still keeps in contact with them via Facebook. But nowadays he also has found friends through his interest in music.
Ida lived with her sister and niece for a while before finding her own apartment. She thinks her sister really tried to help her. Apart from this sister she has little access to informal support. Her mother and siblings, her best friend, her boyfriend and her dog are closest to her, as is also evident on the network map. However, the only person she really trusts is her best friend. For some years, she had a contact person assigned by the social services whom she likes and still keeps in contact with via Facebook, just like she does with the former foster family, as mentioned previously.
Overcoming challenges as a way to become more mature
All the young people describe some experiences during the four years since the last interview that were demanding and mostly led to greater maturity, however, a few were of a more challenging nature.
Anna believes she has been strengthened by her frequent removals over the years and the fact that she always managed to get by. It meant a great deal to her to move to her own apartment to live on her own. After graduating from upper-secondary school, she went abroad to work as an au pair, paid for by her birth father. Because she experienced problems in the family, she returned to Sweden after three months. She worked to earn money, took her driving licence and then went back to another au pair job for six months. Anna is satisfied with her life, which has not always been the case. She sees herself as more mature and self-confident now. She considers the experience of the placement breakdown to have had a great impact on her: ‘I might have had another view on life, and maybe I wouldn’t have gone abroad. But I don’t really know (…). Above all I got a kick in the behind’.
Eva appreciates that she will soon turn 20 and be entitled to a student loan to study full-time at the folk high school. She will get financial security, which means a lot to her, and will be able to quit her current part-time job at a burger bar.
Anton has undergone a change during his time in foster care. He thinks he has come to maturity. ‘You grow up and realize it’s not so fun to break that window and get fined. So I grew out of that and found new things to do instead’.
Anton’s plan for the future is to have his own apartment, work as a lorry driver, provide for himself and pay his bills and save money for holiday trips. Now his studies are in line with his plans, but, as mentioned, he encountered some obstacles and interruptions along the way and had to brace himself to cope with school.
Martin has challenged himself several times over the years to deal with problems he suffered from before his placement in the foster family, as well as after. The toughest challenges were some solo trips through Europe in his teens, during which he managed to handle numerous problems that arose. He believes these experiences have strengthened him a lot, and that an absolute condition for doing this was the secure life he had in his kinship family. So I’ve put myself in situations that I thought were tough; for example I’ve travelled to France a few times (…) All by myself. It was good training. (…) Yes, it feels like after I’d done it that nothing was hard anymore. (laugh). Nothing can be worse.
Ida describes a hard last three years, with drug addiction and poor health. She had tried to address her drug addiction before without success, however, she has now been drug-free for about a month. She has taken up her studies again, lives in an apartment with her pet, has just begun therapy and is trying to get her finances in order. This is a real challenge for her. She is dependent on the support from the residential home until she has finished her studies, as she cannot get practical and economic support from her relatives.
Discussion
The most striking thing about the narratives of these ‘life courses’ (Stein, 2012) and something that has received less attention in previous studies is how the young people’s agency in overcoming challenges and obstacles – for example by taking long journeys on their own – has given them greater maturity and stronger self-confidence. They are more like people who are ‘moving on’ or are ‘survivors’ than like ‘victims’ (see Stein, 2008), though there is some uncertainty in the case of one youth who was in the early stages of recovering from drug addiction. Some of the young people even sought out these challenges in order to test themselves. Yet, a prerequisite for their doing this was that they had a kind of secure base in the background (see Schofield and Beek, 2009), their foster family, residential home or birth family.
Another arena in which the young people displayed personal agency was school. They had a delayed transition to adulthood, with disturbances and obstacles, despite improvements after placement. Yet they found means to go forward, including taking advantage of the possibility to resume their studies as an adult, which can be a turning point in their lives (see Schofield and Beek, 2005).
Concerning quality of care (Stein, 2008), they all retrospectively see the benefits they have received in their foster families, and what they have meant for their development. They may characterize a foster family as a steady base to fall back on when needed (kinship foster families) (see e.g. Cashmore and Paxman, 2006) or just as an ideal of a ‘good family’ that they keep in mind. The narratives also reveal the crucial importance of social workers, both in offering resources the young people need, but also in how they treat the young people. Consistent with previous research (see e.g. Backe-Hansen et al., 2010), good social workers show openness, interest and their intention to do their best to help. That they sometimes maintain informal contact after the case is formally closed – in other words, that they do more than just follow routines and procedures – is probably a sign of long-standing caring and worthwhile contact. As young adults, the interviewees seem to be more of ‘equal actors’ (see Thörnblad and Holtan, 2013) in relation to these highly appreciated social workers.
The way they leave care (Stein, 2008) varies in this group. The two young people who experienced early breakdowns have developed in different directions, possibly due to many factors, among them being the quality of care afterwards and access to informal support. It is interesting that in retrospect, these young people have changed their understanding of the breakdown, and also what it has meant to them – a mistake caused by immaturity that led to a troublesome life, or an unfortunate disagreement that nevertheless led to greater maturity. Both received continuous support afterwards through the social services, whether unsatisfactory or satisfactory.
After leaving care (Stein, 2008), the young people no longer in care received the support they wanted from the social services. However, individual treatment is displayed in the possibility for the others to stay in foster care or be supported from residential care until they finish school, even after reaching adult age, which is especially important for the youth with traumatic experiences in their background. So far, the social services’ after-care system or, more likely, the general welfare support systems seem to work in these cases, despite criticism (see Höjer and Sjöblom, 2014; Munro et al., 2011).
The young people reveal their agency by finding at least one trustful informal relationship, despite removals, and by using different ways to keep in contact with important people. Facebook plays a crucial role in keeping relationships alive, especially for those without a secure base in their family or peer group. So, the interdependence paradigm, meaning their need for supportive relationships, (Singer et al., 2013) is evident in this study, and these youth’s active role in finding, and maintaining relationships (see also Hedin, 2012) is obvious. However, in some cases, where the young people deliberately put themselves in challenging situations to increase their maturity, the independence paradigm cooperates with the interdependence paradigm on the way to adulthood.
Conclusion
The mixed qualitative methods used in this study complement each other, creating rather ‘thick’ descriptions. Even though the sample is small, these cases provide an in-depth understanding of some young people’s lived experiences on their way to adulthood and have the potential to bring useful knowledge to practitioners. In this process, the ability of carers to let a young person face challenges and to display trust in his/her capacity is important, though it must be balanced with the carers’ responsibility and support. Furthermore, the possibility to resume studying as an adult and improve one’s educational qualifications is highly important for care leavers.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.