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This article focuses on support in transition to adulthood for young people who have been in the child welfare system in Norway. By drawing upon interviews with young people and social workers in c...

This qualitative study explores the need for social support in transition to adulthood for youths in the child welfare service, focusing on what support they need and from whom they can get such support. We have conducted individual and focus group interviews with in all 43 adolescents that are, or have been, in contact with the child welfare service in adolescence/young adulthood. The interviews are transcribed and analyzed by doing initial longitudinal analysis, and thematic analysis inspired by the main structure in Systematic Text Condensation (STC). Through the analyses we have highlighted four different categories of social support that the youths need; practical support, emotional support, affirmational guidance support and participation support. Our findings indicates that such support is necessary, but not always available for youths transitioning out from the Child Welfare System, as many of them lack an informal network of adults that can support them in their transition to adulthood. Several of them consequently need continued support from employees in the Child Welfare Service, which for many of these youths seems to represent a crucial source of social support. One of the challenges seems to be that the youths urge of independency together with the expectations of independency from the Child Welfare Services, makes youths end the contact with the Child Welfare Service too early. The simultaneously need for social support and urge for independency makes it relevant to discuss this in light of the concept of interdependency; which emphasizes the importance of connections and social relations as not only normal but also necessary. This underlines the need for more flexibility and a gradual independency; in contrast to the “sudden adulthood” that many youths transitioning out of child welfare seem to experience.

This current systematic literature review aims to examine what is known about foster parents' needs, satisfaction and perceptions of foster parent training. A systematized search in relevant databases resulted in 13 publications, with mostly quantitative studies, originating from four countries. Research on foster parent training is scarce, and the satisfaction, needs and perceptions of foster parents were included as secondary outcomes in most of the reviewed studies. A synthesis of the results from the reviewed quantitative studies indicate high levels of user satisfaction, whereas qualitative findings indicate needs for more advanced training on parenting children with special needs, and more real life and flexible practice/training. In conclusion, more research is needed to increase the knowledge on prospective and current foster parents' perceptions of, and satisfaction with foster parent training, and their needs for training. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open Access CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Introduction\ud In this article we focus on young people transitioning to adulthood from child welfare services, and how the concept of recognition can be useful for understanding the complexity of young people’s needs in this transition. We draw upon Honneth’s (1996) theory of intersubjective recognition as a way of understanding young people’s experiences of their contact with child welfare services.\ud \ud We ask how recognition theory can help us to understand young people’s experiences and needs in their transition to adulthood from child welfare services, and what are the practical implications. We focus on relationships, participation and social support as the three components highlighted by the young people who participated in interviews. Previous research also indicates that young people leaving care often face challenges related to creating and maintaining good relationships (Marion et al., 2017; Rutman & Hubberstey, 2016), participating effectively in decisions (Authors reference 1) and receiving good quality social support (Barry, 2010; Höjer & Sjöblom, 2010; Authors reference 2; Authors reference 3; Thomas, 2005). We argue that Honneth’s theory is potentially useful, in that these three elements appear to depend on, and imply, the kinds of recognition that he identifies. This theoretical framework provides us with an analytical tool that enables us to understand the young people’s negative stories as experiences of misrecognition, and to show the complexity of the dynamics that shape recognition and misrecognition for this group (Warming, 2015).