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Background: This study focuses on young people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism who, due to child welfare concerns, have grown up in children's residential care and are now transitioning out of care at the age of 18 years towards young adulthood. This transition is termed "care leaving" and the young people in transition "care leavers". The care leaving transition can be particularly difficult for young people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism. These challenges can be magnified in a time of a global crisis like COVID-19, which has resulted in countries being on lockdown and care leavers' transitions being curtailed. Many mental health problems have emerged due to the COVID-19 outbreak and resultant lockdown that may negatively impact on the care leaving transition of young people with intellectual disabilities. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six care leavers with intellectual disabilities and their three caregivers in June 2020 in the Cape Peninsula region of South Africa to explore the impact of COVID-19 on their transitional journeys. Findings: Three core themes emerged from the analysis: young people evidenced regression of independence, rather than the expected growth in young adult independence, due to disruptions to routines and opportunities to move out into the world; some young people experienced an exacerbation or emergence of mental health problems, which impacted on their transition to young adulthood; and young people and their caregivers experienced a deepening of caregiver relationships, which enhanced the transition of the care leaver. Conclusions: Services must continue to facilitate progress towards independence and promote personal and caregiver well-being. Support service for care leavers with intellectual disabilities should be essential services, offered in person or online while adhering to COVID-19 regulations. Caregivers should be trained in continuing independent and interdependent living programmes for care leavers in their care, supported through in person or online training, mentoring and supervision. Service continuity is recommended to avoid the contraction of young people's social world at a time when it should be opening up.

While there is a substantial body of leaving care research, the theorization of care leaving has been more limited. Only a few studies have incorporated a life course perspective, mainly in Global North contexts where life course perspectives may differ significantly from those in the Global South, including Africa. Drawing on findings from a feasibility research study, this paper contributes to the emerging international literature on theorizing care leaving by applying a life course perspective to the experiences of youth leaving care in four African countries. The paper highlights how life course can be a useful conceptual framework for understanding the experiences of care leavers with an emphasis on four core concepts: biography, linked lives, waithood, and agency. Implications for policy and practice are outlined with a focus on interdependence, participatory practice, biography, and cultural transition planning alongside efforts to redress systemic, oppressive barriers facing care leavers in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing expectation that children, young people and their parents should participate in decisions that affect them. This includes decisions about their health and social care and collective or public decisions about the way in which such services are designed, delivered and evaluated. Indeed this has become a policy priority across the United Kingdom. The participation of disabled children and young people, however, has been slow to develop in the United Kingdom and concerns have been expressed about progress in this area. Drawing on the results of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded, mixed-methods study, the aim of this article is to explore the participation of disabled children and young people through a social justice lens. Participants, recruited by purposeful sampling, included 18 disabled children and young people, 77 parents and 90 professionals from one health and social care trust in Northern Ireland. There were four phases of data collection: surveys to parents and professionals, parent interviews, interviews with children and young people using creative and participatory techniques, and a focus group with professionals. Results showed that for most disabled children and young people, decision-making was firmly grounded in a family-centred model. However, when children and young people were drawn into participatory processes by adults and recognised as partners in interactions with professionals, they wanted more say and were more confident about expressing their views. Choices, information and resources were at times limited and this had a key impact on participation and the lives of these children, young people and their parents. The article concludes by exploring implications for further research and practice. The need for a two-pronged, social justice approach is recommended as a mechanism to advance the participation agenda.

Disabled young people leaving care often experience a more complex transition to adulthood than other youths. Still, policy and services can fail to recognize the intersection between a young person's care experiences and disability. Drawing on data from a qualitative interview study with 14 social workers who work with aftercare in the Norwegian child welfare services, we investigate social workers' professional judgements about support for this subgroup of the leaving care population. Our analysis uses the theoretical construct of institutional logics and shows that social workers did not include concepts of disability in their judgements about support for these young people. Instead, the social workers' considerations were guided by three other organizing principles: a 'medical logic', an 'activation logic' and an 'aftercare logic'. We discuss these findings in light of critical disability studies and argue for a more nuanced understanding of disability in social work practice with care leavers. Highlighting disability rights and going beyond diagnosis and categorisations of disabled people can challenge a medical model approach to service provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings of an exploratory survey of the ethnic attitudes and identities of a random sample (n=352) of three-six-year-old children in Northern Ireland. The survey represents one of the first of its kind to explore how young children's awareness of ethnic differences develops in contexts where ethnicity is not marked by visible, physical differences. In drawing upon the notion of an "ethnic habitus", the article shows how young children from the two majority ethno-religious groups in the region--Catholic and Protestants--are already acquiring the cultural dispositions and habits of their respective groups even though, at the earlier ages, they have little awareness or understanding of what these dispositions represent. The article shows that young children are capable of developing ethnic identities and prejudices in the absence of physical cues and discusses the implications of these findings for practice as well as for understanding the effects of racial and ethnic divisions on young children in other social contexts. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

This article reports the findings from a series of "Talkshops"--interactive facilitated discussions--undertaken with 114 young people from six secondary schools serving one town within Northern Ireland. The young people first met with the researchers in their own schools, then an elected group came together in combined Talkshops and, finally, a group of six young people, one from each school, met with the researchers to help analyse the data and prepare a presentation on the results. Through the Talkshops the young people explored their views on sectarianism, and the factors they felt helped such attitudes develop; they considered how this impacted on their day-to-day lives and how they had learned to deal with difference. They also considered how things could be different in the future, suggesting ways to promote anti-sectarianism. The article reports the views of the young people, concluding with their summary statement--the message these young people wanted to be heard by adults within Northern Ireland.

There has been an increased emphasis on the voice of the child since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991. Since that time, health and social care researchers have increasingly involved disabled children and young people in research, rather than relying on the views of adults as proxies, for example, parents and professionals. Drawing on doctoral research and the extensive experience of the authors, the aim of this article is to critically reflect on "what worked" along with the challenges of interviewing the children and young people who took part. Practical and methodological issues, such as the need for thorough preparation, the interview process, understanding the children and young people and managing the presence of others are discussed. Finally, recommendations are made for future researchers, including making participation fun, using a sensitive and individualized approach and conducting multiple visits. It is only by considering these factors that we can meaningfully involve disabled children and young people and facilitate their participation in research interviews. Emphasis here is on the practical issues rather than ethical issues that have been published elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer research is increasingly being used in research with children and young people. As a result, there is a growing understanding of both the benefits and challenges of involving young peer researchers in qualitative research. This article aims to add to that understanding by providing a detailed account and reflection of the involvement of care leavers as peer researchers in the qualitative case study phase of a three-year, mixed method study of the transitions of young people leaving care in Northern Ireland. It is one of only a few studies on leaving care in which peer research is central to the design. Particular attention is given to the benefits and challenges for all of the stakeholders involved in the research study: the participants, peer researchers, academic researchers and supporting partner organisation. Key learning points are identified and it is concluded that, despite the considerable challenges, peer research should become a routine consideration as a fruitful means of co-production in the design of care leaver research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]