“Don’t Give Up”: Persevering for a better life through community college among students with foster care experience

Judy Havlicek

Children and Youth Services Review, 2023, vol. 155, issue C

Abstract: Community college is the predominant pathway foster youth take to postsecondary education, but little is known about young people’s experiences. To address this gap, 24 community college students in or formerly in foster care in Illinois were interviewed by phone using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. An inductive analytical approach searched for themes in the data and identified thematic groupings. The findings suggest that (1) high school was a struggle, which prompted young people to look forward and not back; (2) transitions to community college were motivated by funds for college and a desire to have a stable adult life; and (3) strategies for success in college focused on perseverance. The discussion offers recommendations for child welfare systems and educational institutions to cultivate stronger bridges across institutions aimed at alleviating the burdens faced by foster youth in their pursuit of successful lives after foster care.

Keywords: Foster youth; High school; Community college; Qualitative interviews; Perseverance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740923004152
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:155:y:2023:i:c:s0190740923004152

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107219

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().