Transitioning to adult life from a gender perspective: care leavers over 25 years of age

Abstract

Youngsters who leave the Child Protection System (CPS) have to deal with an accelerating process transitioning to the adult life, without the support that other youngsters have. The studies that explore this topic in Spain, and which are focused on the first years of this transition –mainly between 18 and 24 years old- highlight that it is a group of people with a lack of training, and this makes it difficult to be included in the working life. However, there are no studies that analyse their situation with a perspective over the time. An online ad hoc questionnaire was designed for care leavers between 25 and 35 years of age. Using the snowball technique, a total of 81 questionnaires were collected. The main findings are signifying that care leavers who are of this age are in a better situation academically and working wise, compared to those who just left the CPS. Moreover, these care leavers have a higher satisfaction with their years at in the CPS compared to the support that they received when they left the CPS, and they explained that they suffered psychosocial complex adversities. Some gender differences were found. Girls seem to go for the maternity option and for building a family project instead of a professional one, and they mention being less satisfied with their life compared to the boys. To conclude, the situation of the care leavers improves over time, but they also had to deal with some adversities that place them in vulnerable situations with regards to social inclusion. It is necessary to place more attention on those care leavers to help them face at least their emancipation process with a guarantee of success. Moreover, it is important to do this within a gender perspective, because of the fact that lots of those girls live this process through the maternity.

Key words: child protection, care leavers, transitioning to the adult life, social working integration, gender, satisfaction.