A place to lay my head: The definition of home in the voice of young people in foster care.

摘要

This dissertation is an exploratory study that examines the conceptualization of home through semi-structured interviews with twelve young men and women ages eighteen through twenty-one living in community based group homes/group residences in New York City. The subjects have been in foster care for an average of nine years and have permanency planning goals of independent living. Using semi-structured interviews, this inquiry explored these youths' experiences with the child welfare system and the meaning they attach to the concepts of home. The research also permits the voices of the youth to emerge, allowing them also to discuss their hopes, dreams and desires for the future. The qualitative method of inquiry was used to explore constructed notions of home and enhance understanding of what home means to those who are living in out-of-home care and are close to aging out of care. The theoretical frameworks used to ground this study are safety, permanency and well-being (the basic tenets of the Adoption and Safe Families Act) and social construction. There is nothing written which speaks to the issue of the meaning of home to young people in foster care, how they define it, their experience of it and how they will create homes for themselves once they leave care. Social construction theory, with its emphasis on the socially created nature of human life, provides insight into how young people in care develop notions of home.; This study has offered youth in out-of-home care the opportunity to name and invest their experience with meaning, and it also invited them to actively participate in helping develop improved services for their needs. Several themes emerged from the data analysis, and the findings themselves are organized in three major areas: Safety, Well-Being and Permanency, with direct quotations from the interviews powering the conclusions within this framework. The findings suggest the need for education and training of child welfare staff at all levels focused on the needs of young people preparing to leave foster care. A better understanding of the struggles of these young men and women might inform how services can be improved so that young people preparing to leave care may more easily access them. The need for understanding and empathy from staff is a dominant theme identified by the young people, and staff must recognize and take care not to fall prey to the powerful and potentially negative pull of their own transference to the young people in their care. Trust, caring and acceptance are valued and can help counter the impact of many disappointments and lack of consistent connections to adults. Issues of significance that are often overlooked include: food; family visits; being understood even when they are acting out. They understand that the child welfare staff are not their real parents. They ask, however, to be treated by the staff the way the staff would treat their own children. The longing to be loved and accepted is palpable. The need for home is as real for these young people as it was when Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz closed her eyes, clicked her heels together three times and wished: "There's no place like home; there's no place like home."