Mike Stein

Resilience and Young People Leaving Care.

How do we promote the resilience of young people leaving care? This article explores this question by bringing together research findings on the resilience of young people from disadvantaged family backgrounds with research studies on young people leaving care. These findings are applied to young people during their journey to adulthood: their lives in care, their transitions from care, and their lives after care. It is suggested that three main groups of young people can be identified from leaving care research studies: young people “moving on”, “survivors” and “victims”. It is argued that promoting the resilience of young people leaving care will require more comprehensive services across their life course. This will include, first, better quality care, providing more stability, holistic preparation, a positive sense of identity and assistance with education; second, opportunities for more gradual transitions from care, less accelerated and compressed, and more akin to normative transitions; and third, the provision of better quality and more extended support.

Young people leaving care in Scotland

This paper presents the findings from the first national study of young people leaving care in Scotland. The research involved a policy study of all 32 social work departments and a survey of 107 young people from three authorities, 61 of whom were followed up over a six month period. In exploring the implications for policy and practice, it suggests that although the law and national policy context have been strengthened, improving outcomes for young people leaving care will require responses to more enduring problems, as well as the development of more comprehensive local policies.

Young People's Transitions from Care to Adulthood in European and Postcommunist Eastern European and Central Asian Societies

Abstract This paper explores comparative material from two publications that provided mapping information on young peoples transitions from care to adulthood. It draws on two samples: first, a European sample which included 9 noncommunist European countries; second, a sample of 14 postcommunist societies which included 9 European and 3 Central Asian countries. The paper outlines descriptive data on population; the placement of children living apart from their birth families; the age of leaving care; the legal and policy framework for preparation and aftercare; official (secondary) data and research; and policy and practice recommendations. The paper also discusses the application of Esping-Andersens welfare regime typology in relation to leaving care policy. It is suggested that its application raises questions at two levels: first, in relation to leaving care policy within the sample of European countries; and second, in its relevance, at a more general level, to postcommunist societies. In conclusion, it is suggested the paper provides a starting point for further empirical and theoretical comparative work in this area.

Reviews : Power, Authority and Responsibility in Social Services Malcolm Payne London, MacMillan, 1980 Pricing the Social Services Edited by Ken Judge London, MacMillan, 1980

then aspects of social deprivation (residents of Lambeth are underprivileged and deprived) in its search. But, in spite of Dr Pratt’s stated concern to produce an explanation that deals with the structures of society, these indices of deprivation are never drawn together in any systematic explanation. Poverty does not appear as the reverse of the accumulation of wealth, unemployment has no connection with how production is organised and so on. They remain ’problems’, independent of the processes which distribute people into positions of power and powerlessness in our society. This absence of any structural explanation is confirmed when Dr Pratt turns his attention to the problem of race. He accepts that black people suffer discrimination which increases their deprivation, but offers no analysis of the structural sources of racism indeed, going so far as to say ’the precise reasons for this need not concern us here’. With this sort of agnosticism, the problems of deprivation or discrimination will always remain marginalised. They will always be the problems