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Abstract
The purpose of this article is to show that social relationships and participation in communities are of central importance to promoting positive educational pathways for young people from a public care background. The article will explore what facilitates and hinders young people's educational pathways. In addition to a general description of facilitators and barriers, this article focuses primarily on the importance of social relationships. This is done with reference to an EU research project called Young people from a public care background: Pathways to education in Europe. This article will show that young people's age at entry to care, pre-care experiences and in-care experiences influence their educational pathways. The article argues for the importance of professionals to be proactive in helping young people access and engage in social communities.
I denne artikel belyses, hvilke faktorer der har en positiv indvirkning på unges uddannelsesforløb. Samtidig vil det blive undersøgt, hvilke faktorer der udgør en barriere i forhold til de unges uddannelsesforløb. Facilitatorer og barrierer vil blive diskuteret, og der vil være særligt fokus på sociale relationer, da der argumenteres for, at sociale relationer og deltagelse i sociale fællesskaber har afgørende betydning for tidligere anbragte unges uddannelsesforløb. Artiklen bygger på et multimetodisk EU forskningsprojekt ‘Young people from a public care background pathways to education in Europe’ (Tidligere anbragte unges uddannelsesforløb i Europa). Det konkluderes i artiklen, at de tidligere anbragte unges opvækst og anbringelsesforløb påvirker deres uddannelsesforløb. Det påpeges, at det er af afgørende betydning, at de professionelle støtter de unge i at skabe adgang til og deltage i sociale fællesskaber.
Notes
1. The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 217297. The research project was undertaken by a team of cross-national researchers from: the Danish School of Education University of Aarhus, Denmark; the Institute for Social Policy and Labour, Hungary; the Research Institute on Quality of Life, University of Gerona, Spain; the Department of Social Work and the Department of Education, University of Gothenburg; and the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, UK. All the researchers contributed to the research reported here but responsibility for this paper lies with the authors. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of other partners or of the European Union.
2. Showing educational promise included having completed compulsory school and undertaking further education or just about to start on an education programme. At the age of 19–21 years, all but three of the young people had completed compulsory school. The telephone interviews revealed that 18 young people were studying at the time, 9 were in employment, 3 were unemployed, 1 was on sick benefits, 2 were on maternity leave and 2 chose the category other.
3. Follow-up interviews were carried out a year after the in-depth interviews.
4. The young people were asked to nominate an adult that had had a supportive role in their life particularly in relation to education. Sixteen young people nominated an adult, most commonly a foster parent followed by a regular support worker and a grandparent.
5. See http://tcru.ioe.ac.uk/yippee/ for more information about the whole project.
6. Invitations to participate in the study were sent to 235 young people but only 75 young people agreed to participate. The 75 young people were drawn from the 5 participating local authorities. The relatively low participation rate may indicate that a lot of young people did not want to discuss their care lives or did not want to be associated with the social services. It may also mean that the young people who agreed to participate in the study are interested in education and, therefore, agreed to participate in the study.
7. Social relationships are to be understood in a wide sense and include in this study relationships with friends, family, carers as well as the participation in social communities.
8. It is important to acknowledge that some of the ideal types are based on very small numbers.
9. See Bryderup and Trentel (Citation2010) for a discussion of all the characteristics.
10. In this case socio-economic status was an attempt to classify individuals, families and households in terms of indicators such as occupation, income and education. Low socio-economic status meant that if the parents held a job, it was unskilled and they had no educational qualifications.