Why youth leave care: Understandings of adulthood and transition successes and challenges among youth aging out of child welfare

Sara Goodkind, Lisa A. Schelbe and Jeffrey J. Shook

Children and Youth Services Review, 2011, vol. 33, issue 6, 1039-1048

Abstract: Child welfare policies and practices are changing to allow more youth to remain in care beyond age 18. Yet, the majority of youth do not stay. Given recent evidence suggesting that remaining in care may be beneficial, there is a need to understand why youth leave. Using data gathered from in-depth interviews with young people aging out of care, this paper explores this question, relating it to youths' understandings of adulthood and the successes and challenges they face during their transitions. We find that youth leave care because of misunderstanding and misinformation about the requirements for remaining in care, as well as because of a desire for autonomy and independence. Specifically, many youth equated adulthood with independence, and thus felt that they needed to leave care to achieve adulthood. Unfortunately, these efforts to be independent often hinder youths' development of supportive relationships, which they reported to be one of the greatest challenges in their transitions. Based on these findings, we conclude by challenging the conflation of adulthood and independence, as well as of childhood and dependence, calling for connected autonomy as a goal for child welfare involved young people of all ages.

Keywords: Child; welfare; Aging; out; Emerging; adulthood; Independence; Interdependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190-7409(11)00022-3
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:33:y:2011:i:6:p:1039-1048

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 ().