Transition to Adulthood Research Papers (original) (raw)

The journey out of care, be it foster care or residential care, is a challenge for young people. A number of
authors argue that care-leavers are among the most vulnerable groups in society. This is because of a
conflation of factors including: a history of suboptimal care; genetic vulnerability; repeated social
dislocations as they move from one home to another; instant disruption from care into independent living,
rather than a gradual transition into independence; the instant loss of social support, particularly as they
graduate out of protection from the Children’s Act and social security benefits; and inadequate aftercare
services for care-leavers.
Notwithstanding these cumulative vulnerabilities, many care-leavers do make a successful transition out of
care and establish themselves in the adult world. Others may not appear to be as successful, but
experience warm, supportive, genuine relationships that bring satisfaction and meaning. This study was
interested to gain insight into the journeys of care-leavers towards independent living. It was our
contention that greater attention needed to be given to the social processes of care-leaving, rather than
the static ‘success factors’ characteristic of much research. Furthermore, it was our hunch that ‘success’
was more of a process of journeying towards greater success, which we have called ‘successing’, than of
achieving certain externally imposed success criteria. And lastly, we anticipated that these journeys might
be rather circuitous and not straight or linear, as youths learn, through trial and error, how to be more
independent.
In light of that we conducted a qualitative investigation, informed by a constructivist grounded theory
design, into the narratives of nine care-leavers, from a residential programme called Girls and Boys Town
South Africa, who had been in care for at least 18 months and out of care for four to six years. These nine
participants comprised an availability sample from a population of 74 youths, the contact details of whom
had been almost universally lost. In-depth, unstructured, interviews were conducted to explore their life
narrative since leaving care. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, followed by grounded theory
analysis focused on social interactions and processes. A team approach (with three team members) was
utilised in this study, from design to report writing, to provide diversity in perceptions and interpretation
and to increase the rigour and thereby trustworthiness of the study. The team included a clinical social
worker, a research psychologist and an experienced youth care worker and evaluator.
Through the analysis of data, five central social processes emerged as being part of the journey towards
independence among care-leavers: striving for authentic belonging; networking people for goal attainment;
contextualised observation, learning and action; building hopeful and tenacious self-confidence; and
scuppering of façades to achieve authenticity. In addition, we recognised that a more nuanced
understanding of ‘success’ was required and formulated the notion of ‘successing’, where success is used as
a verb. Lastly, we gained insights, largely unsought, into how care-leavers transferred learning from GBT
into adult life.
Following the thematic analysis, we constructed a modest middle-range theory of care-leaving that best
accommodates all of the evidence available to us and that is congruent with our guiding theories, viz
resilience theory and ecosystems theory. Based on the tenet that care-leavers are fundamentally seeking
the experience of authentic belonging, this theory serves to describe, perhaps explain and potentially
predict, the social processes involved in leaving care. We refer to our theory as ‘nascent’ because we view it
as still emerging and requiring further study. Our care-leaving theory can be summarised as follows:
The need for authentic belonging, a genuine experience of being loved and of fitting into a social
system such as a family, emerges as central to this theory. Youths demonstrate that in various ways
– some more effective, others less so and some heavily defended – they strive towards authentic
belonging, which is the underlying definition of success for most. To help them in this striving,
which can be thought of as a process of successing, they draw on a range of social skills, many
taught by GBT and others learned through experience and from other youths in care, to network
Journey towards Independent Living iv
people in their social environments to help and partner with them in attaining their goals,
particularly their goal of experiencing authenticity in human relationship. Optimally networking
people for goal attainment requires care-leavers to rapidly and accurately assess their social
environment for opportunities (which can be utilised) and threats (which need to be avoided or
circumvented). This requires astute observation of their environments, insight and learning from
their observations and then acting upon this learning, to transform opportunities into assets and to
neutralise threats. Because their social environments are frequently complex and suboptimal, careleavers
require a great deal of resilience, particularly an unshakable hope and tenacious selfconfidence,
to believe that they can effect change in their environments and that they really can
carve out a better future for themselves. When, however, care-leavers believe that their lives are
somehow a sham, when they are co-opted into seeking and accepting superficial notions of
success, some youth subvert or scupper their apparent success in order to tap into the deeper
authentic belonging that they long for. While these responses appear unproductive and may be
interpreted as evidence of programme failure, they are, in many cases, an important part of the
journey towards authentic belonging.
This report provides the theoretical and empirical background to the study, an account of the research
process, a detailed explanation of and evidence in support of the findings, and a narrative presentation of
the resultant theory. Recommendations for youth care practice and research conclude the report.