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Care leavers are young people who have grown up in the care system, either in foster care or in residential care homes in transition from care to adulthood. They are a vulnerable group, with a high risk of negative outcomes such as poor mental health. The development of agency and the promotion of well-being are two of the most important aspects of the psychological and educational intervention with care leavers.
The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the relationship between agency and well-being in a group of care leavers (N = 48) recruited from the…
For centuries, residential child and youth care systems worldwide have provided homes for vulnerable children and adolescents. The implementation of children's rights, especially the right of participation, is assessed as an important base for promoting the best interests of the child in an out-of-home care environment.
Featuring contributions from distinguished international authors, this volume offers an in-depth understanding of crucial participation processes and underlying power structures when involving young people in decision-making about their care and everyday life in different…
Children need stable and safe relationships with caring adults to thrive, and such relationships are far more likely to be created in a family environment. Those growing up in alternative care have very often experienced significant trauma before being placed in care. Residential care, in particular, can expose them to all the risks associated with social exclusion if it is not equipped to give them the tailored support they need.
That is why it is important to know the proportion of children placed in residential care compared to those in placed in formal family-based care. This would…
There is a firm commitment by the European Union and its Member States to the deinstitutionalisation of children in alternative care and support for their transition to care that is family and community-based. Children growing up in alternative care have very often experienced significant trauma before being placed in care. Residential care, in particular, is known to expose them to additional risks if it is not equipped to provide them with the individualised care they need for their healthy development and social inclusion. Children need stable and safe relationships with caring adults to…
Eurochild and UNICEF carried out the DataCare project to map alternative care data systems across the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU-27) and the United Kingdom (UK). They found that despite differing national definitions and categorisations of alternative care across the region, enough data being published at national level can be used at an aggregate level to establish comparable indicators on the number of children in residential care and three other relevant and interlinked indicators.
As the European Union does not currently have comparable and Europe-wide data to gauge the…
Abstract
Summary
This article presents the results of a qualitative study whose objective was to collect information on the perceptions of changes in parents and their children who are in the Spanish foster care system after completing a positive parenting programme.
Findings
The participants in the focus groups included 66 parents and 57 children. Triangulation of the voices of all protagonists identified findings that suggest the need for changes regarding understanding foster care measures and the process of family resilience; the…
The two-year project ‘Leaving Care – An Integrated Approach to Capacity Building of Professionals and Young People’, has aimed to build the capacity of professionals working with children and young people who are leaving care as well as to strengthen support networks for young care leavers. The project has been coordinated by SOS Children’s Villages International and implemented in cooperation with SOS Children’s Villages’…
This child-led research initiative was conducted under the umbrella of World Vision’s DEAR project (Development Education and Awareness Raising) and the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The authors worked together to raise children’s voices to the highest levels possible in order to have an impact on decisions and processes that affect them, especially the work around the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. These child researchers were invited to choose one of the issues covered by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each country team discussed these issues, and they decided to…
Abstract
Restriction of living environment refers to limits, rules, and structures in place in an out‐of‐home residential placement for children/youth. This article describes the process of revising a measure of out‐of‐home living restrictiveness to be culturally congruent for Portugal, providing preliminary data on validity and reliability, and discusses the feasibility of using this measure in Portugal. The findings suggest that the Portuguese language version has acceptable reliability. The interviewers identified several additional content areas to increase coverage of the construct.…
Abstract: Although lacking in official figures, latest reports from NGOs highlight that Greece has over 85 institutional settings that house more than 2,500 children, excluding unaccompanied minors entering the system continuously for the past few years. Given the impact that institutional care has been found to have on psychological and cognitive outcomes, the authors make the case for the adaptation of Early Childhood Child Care HOME (EC-CC-HOME) a world-renowned instrument that assesses children’s child-care environment. In this instance, we have adapted the child-care version of HOME to…