Relationships with family members and transition from out-of-home care: Unfinished business

Madonna Boman

Children and Youth Services Review, 2022, vol. 143, issue C

Abstract: Young people leave out-of-home care (foster, kinship and residential care) in Queensland before their 18th birthday because as adults they are no longer children in need of protection. The state withdraws from the role of mediator for family relationships, whether with carers or original (birth) family, leaving young people and their adult family members free to negotiate how much contact, if any they have. Generally, young Australians are staying in the family home longer and coming and going from the family home well into their twenties, with housing affordability and precarity in employment and employment pathways as factors in this. Not a lot is known about the adult relationships of children with their parents, carers and other family members. Young people leaving care have fewer options to remain housed while they finish school, continue studying, find work or just explore their options. Through qualitative interviewing and ethnography with young people in south east Queensland, aged 18–23 years of age who had lived in out-of-home care as teenagers, this paper describes young people’s family relationships as they establish their adult lives. They reflect on their experiences of disruption in childhood and their experiences after leaving care to demonstrate the dynamic, complex, and enduring nature of relationships with family during the transition out of care.

Keywords: Transition from care; Leaving care; Family relationships; Out-of-home care; Young people (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:143:y:2022:i:c:s0190740922002985

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106662

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