Yvonne Sjöblom

Voices of 65 Young People Leaving Care in Sweden: “There Is So Much I Need to Know!”

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine young care leavers’ experiences of supportive and nonsupportive factors after leaving care. Telephone interviews were conducted with 65 young people, between 18 and 26 years old, who had left care in Sweden within the previous 3 months to 3 years. The care-leaving process was in many cases described by the young people as badly planned and compressed. Some interviewees received support from the formal network (social services, foster carers, residential homes, contact persons) for housing (37) and financial matters (36), but few received support from the formal network concerning employment (14) and education (11). Emotional support was mainly provided by partners and friends. Altogether, the results suggest that access to support is a helpful factor for young people leaving care, but also that many of our interviewees had no such access, from neither formal nor informal networks.

Runaway or Thrown Out? A case study

The purpose of this article is to present a case study of one teenager’s story of leaving home. The point of analysing this particular narrative is to gain more knowledge and understanding of how young people present and account for such a dramatic event as running away from home or being thrown out. A further aim is to see how social services’ efforts are reflected in the narratives. I intend in the article to focus on three issues. How does this young person present himself in his narrative? How is the situation in itself (being thrown out/running away) represented? In what light do the social services appear? The empirical material underlying this article consists of two studies treating the subject of running away from home/being thrown out:one from the youth and the parent perspectives (Sjöblom,1995) and one from a social services point of view (Sjöblom, 2002). The article discusses the importance and consequences for these adolescents in their development towards adulthood and the lack of a young people’s perspective and emphasis on the sanctity of the family within the social services.Social services dominated by a family perspective with the aim of reintegrating adolescents into an often dysfunctional family appear in a mainly controlling and disciplinary role, where the young people’s individual survival strategies are not given enough attention or taken seriously.

‘Well, it’s up to me now’ – young care leavers’ strategies for handling adversities when leaving out-of-home care in Sweden

Abstract This qualitative longitudinal study of 20 young Swedish care leavers investigates their subjective experience of and strategies for handling adversities when being in the process of leaving out-of-home care. The empirical data is based on two sets of interviews, the first conducted at time 1 (T1) when they were still in care but the moving out process had begun, the second (T2) 6–10 months later when the vast majority had left care. The thematic analysis based on resilience theory showed that the majority of the informants over time developed process-oriented strategies, which in our categorization emanated either from the inner world of the informants (e.g. through re-framing of experiences and an emerging self-reliance) or from their outer contextual world (e.g. through a restructuring of the social network). The results are discussed from a resilience theoretical perspective in which the informants’ strategies are illustrated by the conceptual pair of ‘navigation’ and ‘negotiation’, used to make sense of their inner and outer world-oriented strategies.

Chapter 11. Narratives of Clients’ Experiences of Drug Use and Treatment of Substance Use-Related Dependency

The article focuses on narratives of clients’ experiences of using/misusing alcohol and drugs and includes comments on their therapeutic process during treatment for dependency on psychoactive drugs. It discusses the role of narratives that focus on clients’ experiences of understanding the use/misuse of psychoactive drugs, emphasizing the importance of the narratives. Narrative therapy for substance-use-related dependency is discussed. Insight into the treatment processes of dependency, based on narrative case illustrations, is also provided.

Chapter 1. Introduction: using narrative research methods for the analysis of use and misuse of alcohol and drugs.

Introduction : Using narrative research methods for the analysis of use and misuse of alcohol and drugs

Leaving home in early youth: Influential factors in running away from home or being thrown out

The main objective of this article is to investigate the extent to which youth in Sweden run away from or are thrown out of their homes. A further aim is to determine what conditions lead up to and triggers such a break-up and to see what takes place during the break-up process itself. In our results roughly one in ten of youth in Sweden (≈11%) had experienced a difficult break-up from home by running away or being thrown out. Over 30% of those placed in foster families or institutions had run away from home or been thrown out. By our results, only a minority of runaways do so for the excitement or the fun. The majority made clear that their running away was a flight from the family rather than to something exciting and adventurous. It is also obvious from the results that young people who have run away three or more times are more severely at risk than those who have experienced only one or two break-ups from home. For some of these young people, a breakaway from home is the start, however premature, of an independent adult life. This vulnerable group of young people should be entitled to support from the social welfare system during their transition to adulthood.

In Sweden work is more important than the culture, actually! : The care leaving process for unaccompanied youths from the perspective of social workers

In 2014 about 7000 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Sweden and a great part of them were allowed to stay. Thus Sweden is one of the countries receiving the highest number of unaccompanied children in Europe. Previous research has shown that individuals with out-of-home care experiences belong to a vulnerable group. Besides that, young people with a migrant background sometimes experienced exclusion and discrimination. This study aims to explore social workers’ understanding of the unaccompanied youths’ minority backgrounds in relation to the process of leaving care. With a qualitative approach, data have been collected through focus groups at two residential care units. Within this kind of human service organizations (HSO), the staff struggle with meeting the perceived needs of the youths based on their minority background. Alongside, they are trying to teach what they consider as being good Swedish practices claimed to be necessary when facing life outside care. A transnational perspective prevents an understanding of the unaccompanied youths’ context as static, but rather promotes a way of relating to the youths in past and present times in order to be prepared for the future.

Chapter 2. General Theoretical Perspectives of Narrative Analysis of Substance Use-Related Dependency

This chapter provides a short introduction to, and an overview for, using narrative analysis in the understanding of the use and misuse of alcohol and drugs. Important theoretical and methodological dimensions are discussed. Some tentative conclusions, limitations, and unresolved critical issues concerning the use of narrative research methods in the analysis of substance use-related dependency problems are also presented.

Chapter 4. A Self-theoretical Perspective on the Use–Misuse of Alcohol and Drugs Based on Qualitative and Narrative Data

This article discusses different self-theoretical perspectives of the self that are of importance in the analysis of the use and misuse of alcohol and psychoactive drugs. The self-theories considered here include cognitive, psychodynamic, transpersonal, and social constructivist perspectives. A multidimensional perspective focusing on the connection between identity structures and analyzing the use/misuse of alcohol and psychoactive drugs is presented. The article argues for a self-theoretical analysis based on narrative data in order to reach an in-depth understanding of the use and misuse of alcohol and psychoactive drugs.

Chapter 10. Perspectives on Treatment, Alliance and Narratives Concerning Substance Use-Related Dependency

This article considers different perspectives on the treatment of substance use-related dependency, focusing on the importance of a therapeutic relationship, working alliance, counseling, and the use of narrative methods. The article also discusses some unresolved critical issues concerning the possibilities and limitations of acquiring necessary knowledge about substance use-related dependency when using narrative research methods. The main conclusion is that the therapeutic relationship between the therapist and the client is of crucial importance for a positive outcome of treatment and that narrative methods provide a detailed empirical database for analyses of substance use-related dependency.