Transition Of Young People Research Articles

Falling off the ladder: Using focal theory to understand and improve the educational experiences of young people in transition from public care

Coleman's focal theory, developed in relation to adolescents in the general population, appears to offer some explanation for the poor educational achievement and social exclusion of care leavers, but has been little tested empirically. This paper revisits data from two studies of care-experienced young people aged 18–25, drawing on qualitative interviews in the UK and four other European countries, to see if focal theory would have helped to predict their educational progression or otherwise. The lives of research participants were found to be characterised by disruptions and uncertainty, with multiple challenges confronting them in quick succession, making it hard for them to pace their transitions as, according to focal theory, other young people do. Findings suggest that the theory could be used to inform policy designed to improve educational outcomes and should be incorporated into training for those responsible for supporting care leavers through their transition to adulthood.

"Are these adult doctors gonna know me?" Experiences of transition for young people with a liver transplant.

Excellent survival rates in paediatric LTx have resulted in increasing numbers of young people transferring from paediatric to adult care. Understanding the mechanisms of successful transition is imperative for ensuring good long-term outcomes and developing services for young people. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 young people (10 females; age range: 15.2-25.1years). Eight were within 1year of transferring to adult services; nine had transferred. Interviews were analysed using IPA. Analysis revealed two major themes in both pre- and post-transfer groups: "relationships with healthcare professionals" and "continuity of care." Young people experienced difficulty ending relationships with paediatric clinicians and forming new relationships with adult clinicians. They expressed frustrations over a perceived lack of continuity of care after transfer and a fear of the unknown nature of adult services. The importance of a holistic approach to care was emphasized. Interventions are needed to support young people in transition, particularly in ending relationships in paediatric care and forming new relationships in adult care. Young people need help to develop strategies to cope with the different approaches in adult services. Interventions to provide clinicians with skills to communicate and engage with young people are imperative.

Support across life course regimes. A comparative model of social work as construction of social problems, needs, and rights

Summary This article aims at contributing to a systematisation of comparative social work research with regard to reflection on its purpose, object, and methodology. On one hand, models and approaches from comparative welfare and education are presented and applied to comparative social work research. On the other hand, a theoretical and methodological framework model is suggested which develops comparative social work research from a life course perspective which allows to contextualise social work practice in terms of the functions and meanings it takes in different societies. This model of life course regimes is based on a series of comparative studies on young people's transitions to adulthood and the public policy and practice addressing them. Findings The model of life course regimes provides a framework of contextual knowledge which enables interpretation by relating comparative findings with regard to social work to the respective societal contexts. It represents a framework for clustering different constellations of social integration and normality providing social work with specific functions and meanings. Application The model of life course regimes may inform the sampling of comparative studies as well as guiding the process of interpretation and analysis. Apart from this it represents a source of critical reflexivity both for theory and practice.

Young people and housing: identifying the key issues

The housing experiences of young people are a contemporary global concern, with the exacerbation of young people's housing problems in many countries reported widely in the media and raising important policy questions. In response, this special issue of the International Journal of Housing Policy presents new empirical research from Europe and East Asia and seeks to identify key areas for improvement in national housing policies. This editorial summarises the main housing issues identified in the special issue articles and identifies the emergence of two cross-cutting policy challenges. The first challenge is to ensure all young people have an equal opportunity to leave the family home and live independently. This will require a much greater awareness of the political, economic and cultural forces restricting young people's transitions. The second key policy challenge is to improve the suitability and availability of housing for young people, with studies in this special issue specifically pointing towards an improved private rented sector and further provision of shared housing. Articles in this special issue indicate that a failure to respond to these significant housing policy challenges will have wide reaching social and economic consequences.

Economic crisis and the new housing transitions of young people in Spain

This article explores the factors involved in young people's housing transitions in Spain which are typically characterised by late emancipation. The paper incorporates a comparative analysis of the housing transitions of young people in Spain with those of young people in other European countries and using longitudinal data it considers the particular impacts of the recent economic crisis. Most studies have linked late emancipation of Spanish youths to factors such as their employment status, difficulties accessing housing, the economic situation, social welfare policy, youth policy and a protective family culture. In particular, the main drivers of change highlighted in the literature are economic factors (education, employment status, housing, public policy and resources) and on the other hand, cultural factors such as attitudes towards home ownership and forming new households. However, there is very little research analysing the effects that the economic crisis has had on youth housing transitions in Spain. The objective of this paper is to provide insights on the effects the economic crisis is having on the housing market and on youth housing transitions in Spain. This is a complex issue; hence, the paper draws upon multiple data sources. The main conclusion is that the economic crisis has begun to change youth housing transitions in Spain.

Agentic personality as mediator of social capital on developmental outcomes in the transition to adulthood: Evidence from Shanghai, China

Drawing upon a sample of 1153 young people in Shanghai, China, this study investigates how agentic personality mediates between social capital embedded in a range of social contexts (family, friendship, association, and linking connection) and developmental outcomes during the transition to adulthood. The results of a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis provide a good fit for the sample as a whole. The overall findings support the hypotheses that a higher level of agentic personality, including resilience, self-efficacy, and self-esteem, is associated with higher levels of developmental outcomes. Agentic personality also mediates the effects of family, friendship, associational, and linking social capital on developmental outcomes. Family social capital is predictive of university students' identity achievement and academic achievement, but not of their mental health. Linking social capital is only predictive of identity achievement. Unexpectedly, friendship social capital and associational social capital are predictive of a lower level of academic achievement and mental health, respectively, despite their positive influences on all three developmental outcomes through their significant effects on agentic personality. The study provides empirical support for the importance of social capital in promoting young people's transition to adulthood. Implications for theory, practice, and policy are also discussed.

Understanding the transition to independent living among urban youth: A decomposition analysis for Hong Kong

The trends and determinants of young adults' living arrangements across a wide range of societies have been a hot topic in multi–disciplinary literature on contemporary youth transitions and urban and housing studies. Extant literature has identified both macro–structural and micro–individual factors to explain the living arrangements of young adults in developed and developing societies. Empirical studies to assess their relative contribution to the spatial and temporal heterogeneity in young people's transition to adulthood, however, remain scarce. This paper attempts to fill this research gap by conducting a case study of Hong Kong young adults. Through descriptive and regression analyses of the population census data in 1991, 2001, and 2011, the paper identifies a declining trend in independent living arrangements in Hong Kong over the past two decades. Such change has been found to be associated with a compositional shift of young adults in their socio-economic characteristics in terms of place of birth, ethnicity, educational attainment, and income and employment status. Further decomposition analysis revealed that over 80% of the change could be attributed to urban institutional and policy contexts beyond the control of young individuals. The pursuit of residential independence among young adults has become an increasingly challenging task in this Asian's world city because of the worsening structural and institutional environments in the 2000s. The case study highlighted the selective nature of Hong Kong's welfare regime, which prioritizes the extension of assistance and benefits to the elderly at the relative neglect of the demand of young adults.

On the cusp of recognition: Using critical theory to promote desistance among young offenders

Theories of desistance increasingly acknowledge the need to engage with political and economic discourses beyond the criminal justice system. This article turns to the critical theory of Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and others to explore the relevance to criminology of the concepts of recognition and redistribution. Interview data from a Scottish study of youth offending and desistance illustrate the potential of these ideas in promoting desistance among young people in transition. The article concludes that desistance requires the restructuring of wider economic and social policy to ensure social justice for marginalised young people.

To plan or not to plan: The internal conversations of young people leaving care

The purpose of this research is to characterise the internal conversations of individual young people in transition from state care, with a goal of supporting practitioners’ approaches to ‘pathway planning’, and contributing to theories of agency in emerging adulthood under conditions of long-term adversity. We used Margaret Archer’s theory of agency, in which internal conversations are regarded as playing a central role in mediating between structure and agency. Archer describes three different modes of (actively agential) internal conversation: communicative reflexivity, autonomous reflexivity and meta-reflexivity; and one mode of passive agency: fractured reflexivity – associated with adverse contextual constraints. In a qualitative design, using Archer’s open-ended interview framework we met nine participants, aged 19–24, varying considerably in outcome, recruited at a specialised service for care leavers in London UK. Analysis of the interview data included an extended phase of individual case analysis. Two participants experienced emerging active agency (however, both experienced elements of fractured reflexivity). Three participants experienced fractured reflexivity, with limited internal conversation, and low planning agency (however, each experienced green shoots of focused internal dialogue). Four participants experienced a survival-oriented mode of internal conversations, a category not found in Archer’s previous work. All four of these participants showed some elements of fractured reflexivity, but narrated rich internal conversations, including accounts of adverse experiences in which self-reliance was seen as having been essential. The majority of participants (across modes) found the idea of planning (beyond day-to-day) anathema.

Ensuring quality in online career mentoring

This article explores the issue of quality in online career mentoring. It builds on a previous evaluation of Brightside, an online mentoring system in the UK which is primarily aimed at supporting young people's transitions to further learning. The article notes that participants in Brightside's mentoring programmes reported satisfaction with their experiences, with many stating that it helped them to make decisions and to positively change their learning and career behaviours. However, the article argues that there are challenges in ensuring quality and consistency connected to both the voluntary nature of mentoring and the online mode. The article proposes a 10-point quality framework to support quality assurance, initial training and professional development for online mentors.

Juventudes e as Múltiplas Maneiras de Ser Jovem na Atualidade

Studies of young people in the last decades have shown that there are a multitude of concepts about youth. In this sense, the objective of this review article is to identify the diversity of youths present in high schools, analyzing how they are constituted students and how the school is organized to cater to this age group. With this study, we can offer such considerations is crucial that young people recognize the value of school for their training, integrating into your organization and its practices, breaking with the distance between the individual, school and learning objectives. One way to overcome this dualism are the education and training programs on youth, which may contribute to the creation of a significant school, assisting young people in transition to academic life or the world of work.

Person centred planning ‘in action’: exploring the use of person centred planning in supporting young people's transition and re‐integration to mainstream education

This study, by Emma Corrigan of the Plymouth Excellence Cluster and Community Psychology Service, explores the use of person centred planning (PCP) in supporting young people who have experienced school exclusion, in their transition and re‐integration to mainstream settings. Young people of different ages participated in the PCP process and multiple stakeholder perspectives provided insight into the implementation and outcomes of PCP over time. Reported findings indicate a positive impact upon young people's social‐emotional well‐being, attendance in school, and educational achievement, and highlight a range of ‘supports’ and ‘barriers’ that can facilitate and/or obstruct the use of PCP in practice. This research contributes towards practice‐based evidence at a time when legislative reform advocates a broader use of PCP to support special educational needs in the UK. Potential gains, pitfalls and further actions are considered to support a wider application of PCP within the new statutory framework and to inform implications for future practice and further research.

Informed Choice for Disabled Young People in Transition: A Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data

This paper explores informed choice (a key component of self-directed support and personalised services) for disabled young people in transition by means of secondary analysis of archived qualitative interview data using a thematic network approach. Insights were gained into the roles of parents, professionals and how information is used in informing choice for disabled young people. The findings add value to this emerging area of policy and practice by identifying facilitators and barriers to informed choice for disabled young people in transition. Choice-making was seen to involve both rational and emotional components in which experiential knowledge was highly valued. The role of professionals was perceived by most interviewees as being absent or unhelpful. However, the opportunity for supportive and informative relationships between workers and disabled young people was possible in situations where longer term and consistent contact was evident.

An Intergenerational Approach to Transitions to Adulthood: The Importance of History and Biography

In this paper we discuss the importance of taking an historical, intergenerational approach in sociological research. Lives need to be understood in the contexts of particular times and places. The backcloth to our discussion is the contemporary disruption of many young people's life course transitions from education to work in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean countries but also among some young people in the UK, the main focus of the paper. We discuss two concepts and debates that have attracted attention in social science and the public domain. One concerns the designation of unemployed young people as a ‘lost generation’ and the other relates to assumptions about ‘intergenerational conflicts’. These concepts are prone to ignore the historical specificity of the contexts in which and to which they are applied. They also take those contexts as impervious to political intervention. In short they serve to uphold a rhetoric of inevitability about the present economic, political and public policies relating to young people and intergenerational relations. In order to demonstrate the importance of historical context on young people's transitions to adulthood, using a life course biographical approach we analyse an empirical example of a father and son taken from an intergenerational family study conducted in the UK. In this case we also adopt an historical intergenerational lens to show how young people's transitions are supported by other family generations and are thus not individualised pathways to adulthood.

Young people's transitions in London and temporal orientations of agency

This article presents findings from the Changing Youth Labour Markets and Schools to Work Transitions in Modern Britain projects undertaken between 2009 and 2010. The projects examined young people's experiences and perceptions about study, work, and the future while going through transitions. The target group was young people on vocational courses at further education colleges in London aged between 18 and 24. This group is an under-researched cohort, who is neither NEET nor following 'tidy' pathways. We apply the conceptual framework of temporal orientations of agency, originally proposed by Emirbayer and Mische (1998). We discuss the interplay between young people's agency and the contexts in which they live.

“Family Comes First!” Relationships with family and friends in Italian emerging adults

We conducted two studies to examine relationships with family and friends in Italian emerging adults, paying attention to the potential moderating role of gender and occupational status. In Study I, we aimed at capturing emerging adults' perspective on interactions with both family and friends by means of a qualitative approach. Participants were 39 emerging adults (51% males), who were interviewed individually or within a focus group. In Study II, we sought to examine how family and friend importance to identity were related to life satisfaction through a quantitative approach. Participants were 474 (47.3% males) emerging adults who filled a self-report questionnaire. Overall, findings indicated solid family ties and a strong impact of family importance to identity for life satisfaction. Results were independent of gender and occupational status (university students vs. workers). Thus, findings highlighted that in the Italian context young people's transition to adulthood is strongly intertwined with family relationships.

The transition of young people from education to employment in Brussels: challenges for governance

The dualisation of the education system, early school leaving, the high unemployment rate of low-skilled young people and chronic insecurity underline the difficulties involved in the transition of low-skilled young people from education to employment. This synopsis is aimed at providing a better understanding of the transition of young people from education to employment, from unemployment to training, from training to employment and within the labour market itself. It is based on the observations of the “youth lab for the transition of young people from education to employment”, which for two years organised group analyses gathering institutional authorities, teachers, employers, professionals in the field and of course young unemployed people. After a quick review of the situation in Brussels and a specification of the category of “young people in transition”, the authors examine public action aimed at young people in transition. Secondly, a diagnosis of the implementation of this public action and its effects is established. With the stakeholders, it identifies some of the challenges of what is more a patchwork of cooperation between conflict-ridden relations than a coherent plan of action. Thirdly, from a prospective and propositional angle, the authors explore the conditions and ways of improving public action in terms of the transition of young people from education to employment.This synopsis is based on the observations of the “youth lab for the transition of young people from education to employment” (http://www.youthlab.eu). This research received the support of DG Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission, and was conducted in partnership by Université Saint-Louis - Brussels, Actiris and CCFEE (Commission Consultative Formation Education Employment), as well as with three other public employment services: the Arbeitsmarktservice Österreich (AMS – Austria), the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (BA, Germany) and FOREM (Wallonia). For two years, it involved the various stakeholders in this transition in the Brussels Region in making a diagnosis and in building perspectives. The content of this synopsis commits solely its authors.

Young People Leaving Care: Participatory Research to Improve Child Welfare Practices and the Rights of Children and Young People

This paper discusses participatory research with young people who are leaving public care in Finland to begin independent lives. The aim of the research, organised by SOS Children's Villages International, was to bring about change in alternative care arrangements, particularly those involving young people's transition to independence. The project used a participatory research design based on employing care-leaving peers as co-researchers. This paper adheres to the methodological principles of empowerment in analysing the personal experiences of young people leaving alternative care with the goal of informing good practice. The findings suggest that the peer research method can be an effective means of empowering young people to develop research skills and to be involved in knowledge production, as well as serving as a means of promoting improved services for “care-leavers”, those young people who are leaving either foster care or institutional care. The participatory and peer research method challenges the traditional understandings of expertise and knowledge production. Although the hierarchy between adult researchers and young people as co-researchers is still evident, the method provides possibilities for better understanding the social- and health-service systems and their challenges and pitfalls from a user's perspective.

Diet behaviour among young people in transition to adulthood (18–25 year olds): a mixed method study

Background: Young people (18–25 years) during the adolescence/adulthood transition are vulnerable to weight gain and notoriously hard to reach. Despite increased levels of overweight/obesity in this age group, diet behaviour, a major contributor to obesity, is poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to explore diet behaviour among 18–25 year olds with influential factors including attitudes, motivators and barriers. Methods: An explanatory mixed method study design, based on health Behaviour Change Theories was used. Those at University/college and in the community, including those Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) were included. An initial quantitative questionnaire survey underpinned by the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Social Cognitive Theory was conducted and the results from this were incorporated into the qualitative phase. Seven focus groups were conducted among similar young people, varying in education and socioeconomic status. Exploratory univariate analysis was followed by multi-staged modelling to analyse the quantitative data. ‘Framework Analysis’ was used to analyse the focus groups. Results: 1313 questionnaires were analysed. Self-reported overweight/obesity prevalence was 22%, increasing with age, particularly in males. Based on the survey, 40% of young people reported eating an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables and 59% eating regular meals, but 32% reported unhealthy snacking. Based on the statistical modelling, positive attitudes towards diet and high intention (89%), did not translate into healthy diet behaviour. From the focus group discussions, the main motivators for diet behaviour were ‘self-appearance’ and having ‘variety of food’. There were mixed opinions on ‘cost’ of food and ‘taste’. Conclusion: Elements deemed really important to young people have been identified. This mixed method study is the largest in this vulnerable and neglected group covering a wide spectrum of the community. It provides evidence base to inform tailored interventions for a healthy diet within this age group.

‘These are not the best students’: continuing education, transnationalisation and Hong Kong's young adult ‘educational non-elite’

This paper examines the under-explored relationship between young people's transitions to higher education (HE) and the opportunities afforded by transnational education (TNE) programmes, with a focus on understanding the contemporary situation in Hong Kong. A fascinating association has developed, over the past decade, between the expansion of TNE in the territory and the government's commitment to providing ‘continuing education’. We explore what this relationship might mean for the young people directly affected by these new opportunities, by drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with students/graduates. Our sample is, what Brinton [2011. Lost in Transition: Youth, Work, and Instability in Postindustrial Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press] has termed (in another context), Hong Kong's ‘educational non-elite’. We ask: how does this ‘non-elite’ negotiate the shifting terrains of educational provision in an era where credentials (particularly at degree-level) are seen as ‘everything’? Our paper contributes directly to discussions around young people and (international) education, and considers frankly the specific role that transnational HE plays in the education/employment transition of thousands of (hitherto neglected) individuals in contemporary Hong Kong.