Exploring Homelessness Among Young Care Leavers (HACL)

An explorative and bottom-up approach is applied to foreground the experiences of young people. Biographical interviews are conducted with eight to ten young care leavers at risk of or experiencing homelessness in each country, thus summing up to 40 to 50 young people in the project. The interviews focus on life experiences, circumstances in life (economic resources, educational pathways, social support, relationships and networks) and their experiences of critical moments. The temporal perspective in the biographical interviews ensures that young people’s present lives and experiences of (the risk of) homelessness are contextualised in relation to their prior experiences and future plans.

By analysing critical moments in the young people’s lives, such as being taken into care, changes in care setting, school absence, supportive care, love relationships, changes in social worker, dropping out of school or being homeless as subjective incidents experienced by the young care leaver and as objectively defined events, facilitates the understanding of links between the biographical and social conditions.

The young people included in this study are age 18–24, considering the time of legal age and thus the time when young people often must leave out-of-home care as well as the definition of WHO as youth being until age 25. As to the type of placements, the included young people can have been in foster families and in residential care. Research shows that care leavers often have experiences with different placement settings, especially those young people characterised by poor outcomes such as being at risk of homelessness. In the project, being at risk of or experiencing homelessness is defined by young people themselves as the feeling of homelessness cannot be reduced to the mere fact of having a home or not, but also, for example, consists of the complex feelings of belonging.

This work package focuses in on examination and comparison of grey literature concerning young people leaving care and their risk of being homeless in the included Nordic countries. The aim is to gain insight into the values, principles and ethics in the politics and practices that underpin what we strive to achieve in bringing about social change. The focus is the conditions of each country as well as being able to perform cross-country comparisons to facilitate joint learning. The analysis provides a rich understanding of child welfare policy and practice within the Nordic region. A document analysis of white papers published by governments in each country will be conducted.

Additionally, the analysis includes publications relevant to the policies in the countries and the initiatives that have been implemented to support the development of, or as a response to, these policies. A summative descriptive content analysis of the grey literature is conducted, as this method has the potential to process large volumes of data. The analysis identifies similarities and differences in the policies and initiatives that, based on previous research, can have an impact on care leavers’ risk of homelessness in the different countries.

This work package is a central part of the PhD study which examines social worker’s assessment of risk of homelessness when young people leave out-of-home care. In each country, two to four focus-group interviews with four to six social workers working in child welfare services are conducted. The focus group interviews are initiated with a vignette presenting the case of a young person leaving care and being at risk of homelessness. The vignette offers tangible situations comparative in each country for the social workers to reflect on. The vignette is formed based on the collected knowledge from the systematic review and the young people’s experiences.