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Suicide accounts for ten percent of the deaths of people who grew up in institutions in Russia. In Australia, a third of young women become pregnant shortly after leaving care. Looked-after children in Great Britain are four times more likely to have mental health issues than other youngsters.

Across the world, children in care are far more vulnerable to numerous risks, including poor grades, unemployment, drug abuse and petty crime, than the rest of the population.

But this need not be inevitable.

Here, Apolitical examines three interventions that have already helped children improve their time in care, and their transition to independent life.

While all the programs are very different, a common factor to all is relationship building, whether through mentoring, education or therapy, which provides social support for vulnerable children and is vital to helping them fulfil their potential.

Therapeutic Life Story Work — A journey through the past

The effects of tragedy can follow children in care through their lives, affecting their behaviour and relationships, unless tackled appropriately.

Therapeutic Life Story Work (TLSW) is used for children who have experienced intense trauma.

"Many children have very challenging behaviours but they exist for a reason, to keep them safe"

It may be implemented when their care situation is breaking down, perhaps because of tensions caused by behaviour issues.

It can also be used to help children make sense of their behaviour, or to help them understand why they have been placed in care if they are unaware of the traumatic reasons for being removed from their family.

“Many children have very challenging behaviours but they exist for a reason, to keep them safe,” said Richard Rose, who developed the therapy and trains social care professionals in its use.

Unlike some therapies, TLSW takes place with the child’s carer, who “holds” the child as they work through the story together, with the therapist providing facilitation and discussion, said Rose.

This also allows the carer an insight into their child’s trauma – which may not be given by the state or social services – and how this relates to their current behaviour. This understanding can inform how the carer looks after the child and help fashion new behaviours appropriately.

The nine-month process takes place over 18 one-hour sessions, and has three stages.

Firstly, the therapist contacts people who have been involved in the child’s life to “capture the past,” said Rose.

Working with the therapist and their carer, children then piece together the various aspects of their life chronologically onto wallpaper.

“We’re trying to understand what’s happened, make sense of it, and understand that’s something they can’t change but also that it doesn’t have to define them,” said Rose.

“Often, I am told: ‘I don’t need you [the therapist] anymore’ or ‘I can’t change the fact my parents didn’t protect me, but I can allow others to do this for me and to feel safe with them’”

In the final stage, the results are usually collated into a book, so children “can understand their role, and others’ roles,” said Rose.

Visualising their journey in this manner helps children “understand what they can change, and what they cannot so as to work on the first and accept the second,” said Rose. “So they are no longer led by their past but hopefully fashion their future.”

For the first time in their lives, children develop a positive sense of self, he added. “Often, I am told: ‘I don’t need you [the therapist] anymore’ or ‘I can’t change the fact my parents didn’t protect me, but I can allow others to do this for me and to feel safe with them’,” said Rose.

The therapy can be conducted with children who are 5 years old or more, and is also effective with adults. It has been implemented in several developed countries, including in Australia.

A collaboration between police and the Department of Justice in Victoria saw a fall in crime, missing children and attacks on staff in the institutions where TLSW was introduced.

Targeted tutoring intervention — Learning to learn

The traumatic experiences young children in care have typically endured “flag up a very high risk of educational underachievement,” according to Vivian Hill, an educational psychologist at University College London’s Institute of Education.

Their attainment often lags behind other students’, along with their sense of self-esteem. Hill and her colleague, Morag Stuart, set out to tackle this. They provided 25 students aged 5 to 11 with a tailored program to improve their literacy or numeracy skills, along with encouraging their resilience.

The result was an intervention so valuable, every teacher continued implementing it unpaid after it officially ended. “It was rewarding and they saw value it had for the child, and enjoyed spending that time with them,” said Hill.

Children who needed extra learning support, and their schools, were identified through the UK’s virtual school system, a local authority tool for monitoring youngsters in care.

The researchers trained teachers from those schools on working with children in care, and literacy or numeracy teaching methods, including language training.

The teachers, who had often taught the child in class, were paid £1,000 each to deliver 40 one-on-one tuition sessions lasting 50 minutes, in addition to their other duties.

The first tutorials assessed the child’s ability and the program was then structured around their findings.

At the beginning of each session, time was allocated for checking in with the child – snacks and drinks were provided – allowing them to share issues, perhaps related to their care situation, that had been troubling them.

Evaluation feedback showed students favourite aspect of the intervention was the relationship they formed with their teacher, which helped to provide a better sense of belonging within the school, according to Hill.

She added: “The second was having a safe place to learn things fill gaps in their knowledge, that maybe they were embarrassed about in the classroom.”

“We shouldn’t be writing these children off”

“They didn’t know how to learn and that’s something they were taught,” said Hill.

The intervention “significantly reduced” students’ literacy and numeracy underachievement, allowing them to narrow the gap with their classmates, said Hill, and improving their confidence and ability to focus and take responsibility for their behaviour.

Developing their learning in a stable environment also helped them to feel in control of one aspect of their life.

“We shouldn’t be writing these children off,” said Hill. “What we should do is offer interventions like this over a longer term so we bring them up to a level they are capable of achieving.”

ProSEED to independent life — Transitioning from care in South Africa

Transitioning to independent life is a daunting prospect for any youth leaving institutional care. In South Africa, where extreme poverty is high and youth unemployment runs at 60 per cent, the challenges are acute.

In Cape Town, the charity Mamelani runs ProSEED, a 3.5 year intervention to help youngsters – who have often spent most of their lives in care – reintegrate into society.

Like in other countries, youth leaving care face difficulties finding work and are at a heightened risk of succumbing to crime, drugs or teenage pregnancy.

A key challenge for the youth people involved is also to forge an identity after being separated from their communities for so long, according to Leroy de Klerk, Programme Manager of ProSEED.

In South Africa, they sometimes contend with a language barrier in their original community. They may also hold higher aspirations for themselves than the families they left years before.

ProSEED begins 18 months before a child is due to leave a Child and Youth Care Centre, at 16-17 years old, and continues for another two years after their departure.

With a focus on experiential activities, ProSEED is comprised of three components: Building a positive identity, strengthening relationships and nurturing resilience. Youngsters are assigned a facilitator, who mentors them throughout the three years, and participate in group activities.

One such activity is the Amazing Race, when the youngsters form groups for a day and complete a series of tasks around the city which prepare them for independent life.

Youth in care have little opportunity to engage in basic social interactions, such as talking with adults in a professional context or using public transport, said de Klerk.

But the Amazing Race gives youngsters “positive and safe experiences of life as an adult,” he added.

Separately, individual mentoring given by facilitators is guided by the young person’s priorities and helps connect them with resources, such as by organising a visit to a college.

Since 2013, at least 50 youngsters have participated in a refined version of ProSEED, and none went on to live on the street after leaving care, a key focus for Mamelani.

Assessments carried out by the charity showed the youngsters improved their support networks and ability to navigate resources. The majority continued in education and half were able to find work.

Mamelani recieves some money from the state, but is mostly funded by NGOs. Without its ProSEED intervention, de Klerk believes the only way youth could be prepared for the transition to independent life would be through their own care centres, whose resources are greatly stretched. — Will Worley

[Picture credit: Jerry Wang/Unsplash]