Voices from Care | Transition from Care to Aftercare and Third Level Education
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- Transition into aftercare
- Considering post-school options
- Challenges related to transition to higher education
- Stigma attached to care-experience
- Social and academic sphere
- Mental health issues and support
- Accommodation
- Financial Issues
- Need for flexibility in supporting young care-leavers
- Conclusion
“But it is very difficult coming straight from foster care as a whole, from second level education, with a family that you know you weren’t born into …. To have to jump straight from second level to third level without any additional supports in between. So that you can kind of come to terms with leaving foster care and entering aftercare.”
“When you’re near 18, when you have family and stuff, you can fall back on if stuff goes wrong. If college isn’t working out or something like that. But once you’re older and you’re in aftercare, it’s kind of …it’s down to you. You’ve to make that decision, which is really hard because I’d love to just be able to say, oh, I’m just gonna move back into my parents’ house now because I can, but I can’t, you know? That’s difficult, that’s hard. It’s kind of difficult – transition from secondary school to just being by yourself.”
“I think they should start giving the aftercare worker like bang on at 16 and not 17 -nearly 18 … It’s just the whole process of it is shocking. It’s like you’re constantly fighting for something that you’re entitled to automatically. …. I had to go and actually get them on my side and purely to fight to get an aftercare worker. … I should have had him when I was 16.”
“The aftercare worker at the time, she was new. I’m assuming she had a lot on her plate because I don’t believe that she had just one of us. She probably had a couple of us, like, you know, that she had to work with. But why allocate somebody like that when you know it’s needed? It’s like the aftercare is something that is necessary, especially for somebody coming out of care, you know it’s a complete shock because you’re left on your own. Like completely left on your own. You don’t know what to do. Like when you’re 18, you’re gone.”
“There are simply not enough social workers, and definitely not enough aftercare workers to meet the amount of people leaving care. … And also, you’re having such, you know, turnover rates within the field, you know. … I think that would be really, really helpful even if the aftercare worker can’t be fully engaged at all times, or if there is a change you have a document there, you have a signpost basically. I think that would be really, really helpful.”
“I always just thought that’s what you do, that you finish school and you go to college.”
“I just thought that was something you had to do, to be honest. You know, you just went. You did. You finish 6th year at school and go through to college. I didn’t think about not doing college. … I just always thought that you had to go to college and that was it. Like you know, I was never given any other options but to go to college, and that was from social workers. And my foster mom in particular, you know, she said no, you go to college. So yeah, I just thought that was something that everybody did, to be honest with you.”
“And I think the only reason I went to college was because of aftercare. Because I needed that support, I always wanted to take the year out between doing my Leaving Cert and going to college, but that wasn’t an option.”
“You think that you’d be used to moving to different places and new places… I suppose when I moved here for college like I found that very difficult … it was like PTSD again … having to move and having to find a new place and being surrounded by new people. Like living in an apartment with two other people and stuff like that. Just like the whole movement to college type thing, I found quite difficult, so I did, you know?”
“I had started college like in September, and I moved out like in December, that Christmas. So, I was in the middle of everything like, you know, I’m trying to move things and attend and then organize myself and all that. That was a huge, huge challenge.”
“Ireland does have this kind of stigma of those who are care experienced, maybe having antisocial problems. They do drugs, they do alcohol, etcetera, etcetera.”
“I find it hard to tell people even in college that I was in care is that I don’t want people to see me as a ‘hero’, …. Cause I came into college when I was 17, so some people would have been like, wait, so you were kept in foster care, you did your Leaving Certificate, and you enter all these foster homes and then you had this struggle and then this happened to you and you’re still in college. … It’s not like it’s how I want to be seen.”
“I think the socialization aspect was a bit different for me and trying to make friends. So, I think I was a bit unprepared in that aspect.”
“So, it is quite difficult making new relationships with people because I just think, oh, they’re just gonna leave now. And what’s the point in making friendships? But the majority of my friends have been in foster care, so they are my friends, my care friends, to be honest. It’s people who share that experience. You’re kind of just able to connect with them on a different level that you’re not able to do with other friends.”
“I suppose just the constant pressure with the attendance. I won’t lie. It was a nightmare for me. I am trying to attend and it’s just the amount of pressure … not even tutors would put on to you. But like, again aftercare, the amount of pressure that they put on me was horrendous. And my own personal circumstances as well, [things] that were going on in my family weren’t taken into consideration as to how that would have affected my performance in studying in college. So, and that would have been probably another reason why if I were to, if I did drop out, I more or less did towards the end of it.”
“When everybody’s going home during the weekend, I always kind of feel kind to jealous because it’s like, ohh, they have something good to go to. …. So, there was a lot of to traumatic events I would have experienced [at home] along the way when I was younger, it would have been very hard to kind of go back home, because it’s like I’m going back to my trauma rather than I’m going back home. Like when you’re in foster …when you come to college, you’re kind of trying to form your own family, like with the friends you have.”
“I struggled with college a good bit, but what helped me was the actual lockdown where it was online the first year and I knew I was hidden behind the camera. I was like, oh, this is fine. Like I’ll get through this year. And then as I got more comfortable over the year then I was like, OK, well like if I can do it online, I can go in and do it in college because I’ve really bad anxiety as well. So, like I find it hard to go out.”
“I took care of my own emotional well-being. I with my own therapy and I made sure that aftercare funded it for me. You know, I kind of got on to them and said that you do have to actually fund me for that. So, they financially supported my emotional well-being through therapy, but the connection between I and the aftercare worker, I mean, was like, no.”
“When I came to college, finding accommodation [was a challenge] because in my college, there’s no on campus accommodation, it’s all private accommodation. So that one’s a bit of a weird one. You kinda have to go and look, and keep looking, and sometimes it might not be the most suitable accommodation and stuff like that, and also, it’s really hard to budget €300 a week, which I know sounds like a lot, but when my accommodation is €650 a month, and that does not include electricity. So that’s basically over half gone.”
“Like living in student accommodation. Much of my money is gone to live here, so I’m left with 140 or a week. 100 of it has gone counselling a week, which leaves me €40 to get things that I actually need, like shopping. Stuff to get me through the weekly.”
“I ended up having to get myself a full-time job, so I was doing my bar work full time and trying to go to college. Late nights. I couldn’t find the balance to put 100% of the work into college. So that was another challenge.”
“Maybe when you’re in some of the trades that may not be QQI accredited, and that might be what that young person’s really passionate about and could make a really good job and career and life the stable life out of. So, I definitely think they there needs to be support and help in that for a young person, the different opportunities and courses available to them. But also allow a young person to take a breather, I think is very important, you know.”
“I did visit a couple of different counsellors, and this was in between times while I was in school. … It was as if I couldn’t even tell them that I’m not ready for this right now, because if I did, it would be: ‘OK that’s not the way our system works’ or… ‘You must advance into aftercare or, you know, getting apprenticeship or do a course or you have to be doing something’. It was very difficult to even to know what to do or where to go. It was almost like giving me a direction, but not having a roll out, you know. There was nothing in front of me, and I didn’t know where to go and it almost felt … I felt pressured. I felt like I had to make a decision now, or else I would lose, you know, the extra benefits that aftercare does allow.”
Transition from care to aftercare and third level education
This chapter has focussed on the transition from the care system and second-level education to aftercare and third level education. Existing research has shown that care-experienced young people tend to be at risk of poorer outcomes at this junction of their lives compared to their peers who have never been in care (Harder, et al., 2020). However, care-leavers are not a homogenous group and their experiences during this transition vary. In general, the results of this study showed that those who had experienced more stable care placements, good quality care and very few, if any, school changes, tended to fare better when leaving care. However, young people with disrupted placements and schooling, as well as those experiencing mental health issues found this stage in their lives more challenging. They were also more likely to experience interrupted third level education. In recognition of the importance of post-care transition, supports such as an aftercare worker, have been put in place to assist young care leavers. However, the relationship between the young person and their aftercare worker is not always positive as demonstrated by the narratives of young people in this study.
Making a transition from second level school to third level education can be challenging for young people due to the differences in teaching and learning approaches between the two sectors. Many young people may also be uncertain about whether this pathway is right for them, or even if it is, what course they should apply for. Furthermore, for some, the ecision to enter third level education tends to be linked to access to aftercare allowance rather than a desire to continue their education. While providing a useful roadmap for many young people who are not certain what to do after finishing school, a requirement for being in full-time education or training in order to avail of aftercare support may put some people under pressure, especially the ones who may not have chosen this pathway, or who may have wished to pursue this pathway later on.
Once in third level education, young care leavers tend to encounter a number of overlapping challenges, including managing their finances, issues around accommodation, adjusting to more self-directed learning, to name but few. Young people with learning difficulties or who experience mental health issues tend to find the transition to third level education even more challenging. Some young people were critical about the level of assistance they received, particularly regarding their mental health and emotional well-being.
In order to assist young people, changes are needed, whereby children and young people in care receive consistent and sufficient support throughout their educational career. Interventions need to be introduced early, and the support needs to be embedded in an interagency collaboration and be sufficiently flexible, reflecting the varied, and sometimes complex needs of young care leavers. Designated personnel, or ‘one good adult’ continues to be important in the lives of young care leavers as they enter into independent living and third level education.