Review: Young People Leaving Care - Supporting Pathways to Adulthood

If you were about to skip this book, wondering "can Mike Stein really have anything left to tell us about leaving care?", think again. Revered and respected in this field, Professor Stein has been writing and publishing authoritative works that have informed thinking and practice in the area of leaving care for 30 years. What he achieves in this slim volume is a bringing together of much of his more recent thinking into one coherent and compelling thesis on the needs of care leavers and the solutions that are required to bring greater social justice and better outcomes for this group.

The first part of the book sets the context for leaving care services in the UK, outlining the origins and progress of care leavers in policy as a distinct group from the 1948 Children Act up to the present day. The central part of the text reviews all the areas we are used to considering when we think about leaving care; the need for settled accommodation, education as a foundation for future career planning, and developments in access to further education. It covers homelessness, health and wellbeing, placement transitions, and the kind of support that can benefit care leavers at different times during their "compressed and accelerated" journeys from care to adulthood.

The review of past research and examples of current good practice remind us that we already know most of what we need to know to make life after care a lot smoother and long-term outcomes a lot better for most care leavers. The author urges policy makers to work harder at ensuring good practice becomes universal practice, and provides plenty of case studies illustrating what works. Thus, readers working on the front line managing or designing systems can make immediate use of the material in shaping improvements and joining up their own areas of activity.

Consideration is given to sub-groups differentiated by additional needs within the overall population of care leavers, including asylum-seeking, disabled, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender care leavers, and international comparisons are drawn. Crucially, the author also reminds us of the potential that is within a flawed system to do good things that really can help influence and shape the future lives of vulnerable care leavers; against a somewhat gloomy realisation, from reading the policy overview, that change over many decades has been slow to come. Evidence is presented of improvement in specific areas, and hope for practitioners in understanding the crucial role they play individually in building the resilience of care leavers to overcome adversity through their relationships and daily interactions.

Young People Leaving Care is a highly accessible handbook to current legislation and regulatory requirements; this alone is a good reason to ensure that you have a copy on your shelf.

Reviewed by Janet Rich, trustee, The Care Leavers' Foundation