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Increasing numbers of rural girls and young women in Ethiopia are migrating to urban towns and cities and taking up employment as domestic workers, some of whom continue their education by attending evening classes. For urban households, rural migrants help to fill the domestic work gaps created by the entry of urban women into employment. For rural young women, migrating as a domestic worker is an important strategy for achieving social mobility and empowerment. However, domestic workers are vulnerable and largely hidden in the city and we know little about their lived experiences. In this paper, we start to address this gap, drawing on interviews with eight rural female migrants who are working as domestic workers in the city and attending evening classes in urban secondary schools. Informed by a critical framing of empowerment, we explore the extent to which intersecting inequalities in rural areas disempower these young women, and how migration and education become important strategies for improving their lives. We show how the support of social network members is crucial in enabling participants' migration, yet how this also leads to power asymmetries and exploitation. We reflect on how the ability of rural young women to achieve better futures is limited due to their status as poor, rural, female migrants, yet how many wait in the city in the hope of a better future. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of critical approaches to female empowerment that includes a focus on structural inequalities and power imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult care leavers who have spent time in 'out-of-home care' during childhood face many educational challenges. While some care leavers may manage to adhere to 'normal' timelines within their educational progression, others may experience delays in their educational journey or a longer-term 'resignation' from education during their care/post-care journey. In this paper, we offer a fuller understanding of what drives underachievement in this population, as well as what helps care leavers to re-engage with education. Using a case study approach, we explore the potential of the life course principle 'linked lives' for better understanding barriers to re-engagement and the processes through which key actors may promote the (re)development of learner identity, and educational re-engagement among adult care leavers, over time. We draw on analysis of data from two studies of positive educational outcomes for adult care leavers - one in education, one in the workplace. Using a linked lives lens, this theoretically-informed paper presents the concepts of support, learner identity, and educational memories as candidates for deepening our understanding of educational re-engagement of care leavers – and comparable populations facing educational challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, we explore the rural-urban migration of 27 girls and young women who leave their rural communities and move to the city to pursue their secondary education, in the ethnically diverse Southern Region of Ethiopia. We consider the nature and extent of the inequalities that they face in rural areas which limit their education opportunities and outcomes and underpin their expected entry into marriage. We compare their experiences in their rural communities with their lives in the city, where they have greater access to resources and greater freedom and decision-making power and the opportunity to continue their secondary education, although their futures are still uncertain. Through our analysis we reveal some of the tensions between the promise of girls' secondary education promoted at the international and national level and the lived realities of rural girls and women, many of whom are unable to realise this promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the disability related identity experiences of young people with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. Using a narrative inquiry methodology, 25 young people between 18 and 29 years participated in in-depth interviews. Their narratives highlighted growing perceptions of difference and how the negative actions and attitudes of a few people in their past continued to shadow their current lives. Influenced by perceived negative attitudes of others to disability and their own internalisation of these, the young people conceptualise a binary of normalcy and difference, finding themselves liminally positioned, somewhere in between, and mostly seeking to avoid a disability association. In new social situations, the young people reported engaging in disability identity management work, while often resisting having disability as part of their identity. These can be conceptualised as acts of resilience and of resistance in the face of oppressive social forces. There is a powerful counter narrative in a sub group of the participants who were actively engaged with peers with experience of disability. For these young people, the inclusion of disability within social identities became possible. The findings of this study have implications for our understandings of managing identities in young lives, particularly for those in marginal positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the lenses of agency and precarity, this article examines how young migrants and refugees negotiate legal and social marginalisation growing up along the Thailand-Myanmar border. It explores the pervasive insecurity, vulnerability and uncertainty characterising the young people's worlds, and the ways they strive to manage their circumstances and protect themselves from despair. The study on which the article is based involved 44 semi-structured qualitative interviews with 35 young men and women who were either born in Thailand to migrant or refugee parents, or had arrived from Myanmar, with their families or alone, before the age of 12. A social constructionist epistemology and qualitative case study methodology underpinned the research, chosen to facilitate a bottom-up, person-centred approach, and prioritise the young people's perspectives within their cultural contexts. The findings capture the everyday precarity of the young people, living as 'illegal aliens' under Thai law. Arrest, detention, abuse, labour exploitation, and restricted access to state services, including accredited education and affordable healthcare, are daily challenges. However, the young people are far from passive victims of their circumstances, and resist reduction to those terms. As agentic social actors, they are both cognisant of their constraints and actively – relentlessly – engaged in managing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the consensus statement on therapeutic residential care developed jointly by an international consortium of experts on residential care. It highlights the efforts of British Prime Minister David Cameron in reviewing the role and purpose of residential placements within the wider child welfare system. Information about the working definition of therapeutic residential care is also offered.

The role and impact of male foster carers in the lives of foster children is under-explored.This article reviews relevant research evidence (based on searches of Web of Science and PubMed and other sources) in relation to the particular contribution men as foster carers can make to a sense of ‘secure base’ for children in their family's care. It also includes attention to how men as foster carers may play a special role in helping to cultivate valuable social capital for the young person in their care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to highlight the resilience-enhancing potential for vulnerable young people of roles and relationships in the domains of recreation and work. The paper explores its theme through a specific focus on the needs of young people in long-term care. The paper has four sections: the first deals with some key conceptual propositions relevant to understanding resilience-related processes; the second with the resilience-enhancing potential of recreational activities; the third with the resilience-enhancing potential of work roles; and the fourth with the implications for practices by carers and professionals in relation to helping young people in care to derive benefits from the positives that recreation and work experiences may have to offer. The paper reviews relevant research evidence from a range of perspectives and through related case examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While serious adversity is often associated with educational under-performance or failure, this is not necessarily always the case. There is evidence that in certain circumstances vulnerable people may display resilience thanks to academic or social achievement in the domain of education. Young people in care have typically endured significant adversity in their lives, leading to the decision to admit them to care, and perhaps also during their time in care. This cumulative adversity may affect their educational attainment. Yet at least some young people in care make good educational progress. Doing well in care seems linked to doing well in education. It is argued that those concerned with the progress of young people in care need to recognize the importance of their education, and what may support or impede their educational progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the concept of resilience and how the natural qualities supportive of resilience in children and families can best be nurtured. It argues that there is an emerging crisis in bureaucratised child protection systems that alienates and undermines both social workers and clients, and that runs counter to the spirit of resilience-led practice. Responding to this crisis requires a new emphasis on relationships, strengths and the clients' social context in child and family social work. It also requires practitioners and students to reflect carefully on the nature of helping. The paper explores some of the implications of these ideas for social work practice, education and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]