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Research highlights that residential care experienced children and young people in Scotland have poorer educational outcomes than their peers within the wider population. Despite this, poor educational attainment is not inevitable, and further research is needed to increase the understanding of long-term trajectories.
This paper aims to address a gap in contemporary literature that is of benefit to practitioners, academics and policymakers. Despite experiencing adversity, attachment, separation and loss, school attainment data on leaving care only reflects part of the educational journey.
When teaching in or around the subject of care-experienced young people, it is important for information to be presented in a way that not only creates an understanding of the prevalence of care experience but also emphasises the myriad of life challenges associated with experiences of being involved in the care system.
It is known that out of the 12 million children living in England, just under 400,000 (3%) are known to the social care system at any one time and just over 82,000 of these children are ‘looked after’, under the legal guardianship of local authorities in England.
It will…
Young people who age out of state care are at risk of a range of negative outcomes. In England, national data provides only five indicators of care leavers’ lives and there are no measures of how young people themselves feel about their transition to adulthood. To fill this gap a new survey to measure subjective wellbeing was coproduced with 31 care leavers. The survey was then distributed by 21 local authorities and completed by 1804 care leavers.
The responses revealed a steep decline in wellbeing after leaving care, a wide variation in care leavers’ wellbeing depending on the local…
Care-experienced children and young people are more likely to experience poorer mental health relative to the general population. Some of the most highly cited literature in this area is becoming increasingly outdated, however, and as the gap between mental health service availability and provision is steadily growing, it is imperative that we understand the scale and nature of the mental health needs of this group. A systematic review of all literature published from the UK was conducted in March 2022 using APA PsycINFO, ASSIA, Cochrane Library, Medline, PubMed, Scopus, Social Policy and…
Abstract
Background
The mental health and well-being of care-experienced children and young people remains a concern. Despite a range of interventions, the existing evidence base is limited in scope, with a reliance on standalone outcome evaluations which limits understanding of how contextual factors influence implementation and acceptability. The care-experienced children and young people’s interventions to improve mental health and well-being outcomes systematic review (CHIMES) aimed to synthesise evidence of intervention theory, outcome, process and economic effectiveness. This…
Abstract:
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning (LGBTQþ) young people are overrepresented in out-of-home social care and face significant physical health, mental health and well-being inequalities compared with their non-LGBTQþ peers. Their residential care experiences have been missing from the knowledge base, with no prior in-depth published research in the UK. Theoretically informed by an intersectional minority stress framework and combining qualitative and co-production methodologies, this study produced a nuanced understanding of the residential care…
Abstract:
Prior research highlights how criminalized mothers may be particularly at risk of negative judgements, but little work to date explores how criminalisation, care experience and motherhood may intersect to produce multi-faceted structural disadvantage within both systems of care and punishment. This paper attends to this knowledge gap, drawing on interviews with imprisoned women who have been in care (e.g. foster care or children’s homes), care-experienced girls and young women in the community, and professionals who work with them. Key findings include: a desire to…
Abstract:
Objective
In this study, the relationship between levels of dissociation, several pre-placement factors and other background variables was explored to facilitate understanding of the high prevalence of dissociation in adolescents living in care.
Methods
A sample of adolescents (n = 68) between the ages of 11 and 17 in care at Five Rivers Child Care (FRCC) participated in the study. The Adolescent Dissocitive Experiences Scale (ADES), a self-administered dissociation questionnaire was compared with an established carer-report…
This U.K.-based study explored the life experiences of care experienced adults in higher education to understand the factors that impeded or enhanced their journeys. Care experienced refers to someone who has been in the care of the state at some point in their life.
Six students with a history in the care system took part in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis identified global themes of self-reliance, resilience, intrinsic motivation and optimism which derived from underlying experiences of support, attachment, trust, expectations and placement experiences.
Findings suggest…
Increasingly progressive organisations are changing how they see and work with young people. Such organisations as well as government are acknowledging the invaluable skills and insights young people with lived experiences can contribute as youth leaders, and genuine co-design partners shaping policy with key decision makers.
This paper presents three care experienced perspectives on the benefits and challenges of capturing the voices of young people to inform policy and organisational decision-making in youth services. Sharing models of effective youth participation in policy development…