Constructing home on a cliff: Aging out of the child welfare system at age 21 with a serious mental health condition.

摘要

Approximately one in three young people who age out of the child welfare system are diagnosed with a mental health condition, putting them at increased risk for struggling to achieve independency (e.g., employment, stable housing) and discontinuation of mental health treatment upon emancipation. This study uses grounded theory to explore the experiences of 20 young people across their transition out of semi-institutional psychiatric care at age 21 in Illinois. Research questions include: how do young people conceptualize success in the transition out of care and what factors influence success? Participants completed in-depth interviews within a few months of their 21st birthday and at six and 12 months post-emancipation. Participants also completed brief monthly check-ins until their 22nd birthday. Analysis during and after data collection captured complex transition "processes" as well as the meaning generated through these processes. Salient transition processes identified include the cultivating "home" and "managing" social support. These processes occur within a context of immense instability and shifts in social support that are incurred through emancipation.;Paper one explores how and why "home," a personally possessed safe space where control and socialization is possible, dominates conceptualizations of "success" and is key in generating security. Paper two demonstrates how social support is not lost at emancipation, rather it is reconstituted, demanding new agency in negotiation and reciprocation. Paper three shows how social support processes post-emancipation are experienced in four qualitatively different ways, which are defined through combinations and interactions between individual and social network characteristics.;This study importantly foregrounds the perspectives of very at-risk young people across a critical juncture in their development. The findings underscore the many contextual and social factors at play during the transition out of care, and highlight the unique challenges facing those aging out with a psychiatric diagnosis. These young people are arguably most at risk for insecurity (due to compromised mental health, vocational development, and social networks) early in their transition to adulthood, yet are suddenly largely responsible for fostering security through independent living and navigation of not only a new social service landscape, but also the new expectations within their informal support network. The variation in how participants perceived and engaged in support transactions with formal and informal connections post-emancipation matter for creating transition services that prepare young people for the social demands of life post-emancipation. The child systems must allow for and support on-going, regular contact with informal networks connections, as well as, integrate practice approaches that address relational trauma within informal networks. Future research must include the perspectives of formal and informal connections of young people if we are to build effective practice models that address social network quality and function in order to bolster the outcomes of at-risk young people.