Journey Towards Independent Living
Prof Adrian van Breda, in partnership with Girls and Boys Town South Africa (GBT), has conducted a study into the journeys that young people take after they leave residential care and progress towards independent living. This process is called care leaving and the young people are care leavers. Using a Grounded Theory method, the study identifies key social processes (that is, the activities that young people engage in) that facilitate their journey towards independence. Based on this, a theory of care leaving is constructed. The report provides rich theory and participant narrative, giving unique insight into the care leaving journeys of ex-GBT men. The theory that emerges from the study can be summarised as follows:
The need for authentic belonging, a genuine experience of being loved and of fitting into a social system such as a family, emerges as central to this theory. Youths demonstrate that in various ways – some more effective, others less so and some heavily defended – they strive towards authentic belonging, which is the underlying definition of success for most. To help them in this striving, which can be thought of as a process of successing, they draw on a range of social skills, many taught by GBT and others learned through experience and from other youths in care, to network people in their social environments to help and partner with them in attaining their goals, particularly their goal of experiencing authenticity in human relationship. Optimally networking people for goal attainment requires care-leavers to rapidly and accurately assess their social environment for opportunities (which can be utilised) and threats (which need to be avoided or circumvented). This requires astute observation of their environments, insight and learning from their observations and then acting upon this learning, to transform opportunities into assets and to neutralise threats. Because their social environments are frequently complex and suboptimal, care-leavers require a great deal of resilience, particularly an unshakable hope and tenacious self-confidence, to believe that they can effect change in their environments and that they really can carve out a better future for themselves. When, however, care-leavers believe that their lives are somehow a sham, when they are co-opted into seeking and accepting superficial notions of success, some youth subvert or scupper their apparent success in order to tap into the deeper authentic belonging that they long for. While these responses appear unproductive and may be interpreted as evidence of programme failure, they are, in many cases, an important part of the journey towards authentic belonging.
The full report, with a two-page summary, can be downloaded here
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