This paper presents findings from a new study of outcomes for young people leaving care funded by the Department for Education and Skills. It reports findings for a sample of 106 young people in relation to progress made in housing and employment some 12-15 months after leaving care. The generally poor employment outcomes of care leavers are acknowledged, but ingredients that make for success are also highlighted, including the value of settled care and post-care careers, sound career planning and, significantly, the value of delaying young people's transitions from care. Early career paths also interconnect with how young people fare in housing, in developing life skills and with other problems in their lives after leaving care. Housing outcomes were more encouraging and predominantly shaped by events after leaving care, and faring well in housing was the factor most closely associated with positive mental well-being in young people. Some groups that are at risk of faring badly are identified, including young people with mental-health problems, young people with persistent offending or substance misuse problems and, in some respects, young disabled people. The implications of these findings for leaving care services are considered
Studies have pointed to the link between running away and the need to escape abusing or rejecting parents'This paper reports on a study of over 200 young people going missing from residential and foster care in four local authorities. The proportion of young people missing from residential care was high, ranging from 25 to 71% of all 11 -16-year-olds in mainstream children's homes. Two types of absence were identified: the 'runaways' profile (those who ran away or stayed out) and the 'friends' profile (those missing to be with friends). There were variations in levels of risk for different sub-groups within the sample. Risks included immediate risks of victimization, sexual exploitation (including prostitution), offending and substance misuse. A longerterm risk of detachment was identified among those going missing often, involving high levels of non-school attendance, detachment from carers and involvement in offending and in substance misuse. Difficulties in the assessment of risk are discussed and approaches to managing risk for young people who go missing from substitute care are explored.
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Mind-mindedness in Looked After Children
AbstractThe studies reported here aimed to test the proposal that mind-mindedness is a quality of personal relationships by assessing mind-mindedness in parent-child dyads where the relationship has not spanned the child's life or where the relationship has been judged dysfunctional. Studies 1 and 2 investigated differences in mind-mindedness between adoptive parents (ns 89, 36) and biological parents from the general population (ns 54, 114). Both studies found lower mind-mindedness in adoptive compared with biological parents. Study 2's results showed that this group difference was independent of parental mental health and could not fully be explained in terms of children's behavioral difficulties. Study 3 investigated differences in mind-mindedness in foster carers (n=122), biological parents whose children were subject to a child protection plan (n=172), and a community sample of biological parents (n=128). The level of mind-mindedness in foster carers and parents who were involved with child protection services was identical and lower than that in the community sample; children's behavioral difficulties could not account for the difference between the two groups of biological parents. In all three studies, non-biological carers' tendency to describe their children with reference to pre-adoption or placement experiences was negatively related to mind-mindedness. These findings are in line with mind-mindedness being a relational construct.Key words: mind-mindedness; adoption; fostering; behavioral difficulties; child protection 2 Mind-mindedness in Looked After Children
Mind-Mindedness in Parents of Looked After ChildrenMind-mindedness (Meins, 1997) indexes caregivers' attunement to their children's mental and emotional states. In infancy, mind-mindedness is assessed from caregivers' tendency to comment in an appropriate manner on their infants' thoughts or feelings (Meins, Fernyhough, Fradley, & Tuckey, 2001;Meins et al., 2012) or from caregivers' meaningful interpretations of their infants' early non-word vocalizations (Meins, 1998). In children beyond infancy, mind-mindedness is assessed in terms of parents' tendency spontaneously to focus on mental characteristics when given an open-ended invitation to describe their child (Meins, Fernyhough, Russell, & Clark-Carter, 1998).A growing body of research has shown that both the infant observational and preschool describe-your-child measures of mind-mindedness relate to various aspects of child...
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