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Continuities and discontinuities: issues concerning the establishment of a persistent sense of self amongst care leavers

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journal contribution
posted on 2014-09-17, 10:24 authored by Harriet Ward
Research in a number of countries has demonstrated the importance of developing a sense of belonging and connectedness as key factors that facilitate the move towards independence for young people leaving care (see Stein, 2008). This paper utilises findings from a longitudinal study of looked after children (including interviews with care leavers) to explore how the evidence from Canadian research into the significance of perceptions of self continuity for identity formation can improve our understanding of care leavers' experiences and the factors that may act as barriers to their making a smooth transition.The findings demonstrate the extent of disruption and instability that care leavers may experience both before, during and after the care episode. This lack of continuity is exemplified for many young people by the loss of treasured possessions such as mementoes of parents and photographs of previous homes and carers. Constant experience of transience may act as a barrier to the establishment of a sense of self continuity. This may increase the likelihood of leaving care becoming a transitional flashpoint during which difficulties in moving on to adulthood increase the propensity for young people to lose sight of the thread that connects their past to their future, and engage in self-destructive behaviours. Premature, compressed and accelerated transitions may increase the chances of this happening. The paper argues that greater attention to the preservation of possessions that have a symbolic value might be a simple means of helping care leavers develop a stronger sense of connectedness.

Funding

This study was funded by the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, England.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Published in

Children and Youth Services Review

Volume

33

Issue

12

Pages

2512 - 2518

Citation

WARD, H., 2011. Continuities and discontinuities: issues concerning the establishment of a persistent sense of self amongst care leavers. Children and Youth Services Review, 33 (12), pp. 2512 - 2518.

Publisher

© Elsevier Ltd.

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2011

Notes

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Children and Youth Services Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Children and Youth Services Review, 33 (12), pp. 2512 - 2518 (2011). DOI:10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.08.028

ISSN

0190-7409

Language

  • en