Participation in decision making is a key factor for the wellbeing of care leavers

The dispositional agency of a care leaver correlates with their well-being only if they have an active role in decisions over their life path, new study confirms
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Una giovane ragazza con in mano il suo zaino

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A new study conducted by UniMiB researcher Chiara Carla Montà and by UniMiB Professors Alessandro Pepe and Elisabetta Biffi in collaboration with the Department of Economics and Management at University of Florence, recently published on Children and Youth Services Review (Volume 160, May 2024, 107500), has investigated the extent to which the relationship between agency (the construct describing one’s ability to have a direct control over their life path) and wellbeing in a group of Italian care leavers is mediated by their participation in the decisions that affect their lives. The group adopted a quantitative method by analyzing the anonymous responses of 48 care leavers in the Italian cities of Florence and Prato to three different questionnaires (WHO-5 Well-being Scale, Children’s Hope Scale and Child and Adolescent Participation in Decision-Making Questionnaire) and computing the goodness of a specific evolutionary model where participation in decision-making acts as a mediator variable between care leavers’ perceived level of agency and their self-reported well-being. Despite the reduced size of the recruited sample, results show that such a mediating model is significantly robust in fitting the collected responses: in a context such as the care system, where adolescents’ agentic possibilities are limited, having them involved in decision-making processes is a crucial factor for converting a self-perceived dispositional agency into an actual higher life satisfaction. The key conclusion of the study is that having the opportunity to be involved in decision making, to be informed about the various elements that characterize one’s condition, and to discuss in agreement with service professionals one’s future possibilities represents the central element that allows care leavers’ agency and well-being to be in a positive and statistically significant relationship.

Care leavers are young people who have grown up in the care system, either in foster care or in residential care homes in transition from care to adulthood. As such, they are a vulnerable population that must receive adequate protection and support to help them transition to independence and achieve positive outcomes in adulthood. Care leaver protection encompasses providing care leavers with access to a stable accommodation as well as adequate financial support to help them cover living expenses, granting opportunities for education, training and employment, ensuring that young people have access to mental health and other support services, but also giving them access to information and advice about their rights and entitlements, as they transition to independence. However, professionals might worry about exposing care leavers to the burden of decisions and responsibilities and may act as constrainers of their agency for the sake of their wellbeing. This approach can lead care leavers to a sense of powerlessness and lack of control of their own lives. Furthermore, missing the opportunity to practice decision making while still in care can turn into a following struggle, during adulthood, to make decisions about education, relationships, or employment.

Leaving care opens a new phase for adolescents: they perceive an expansion of their life opportunities and emphasize their feelings of agency, but also realize that they have a reduced ability to make independent decisions compared to their peers, due to the intermediation of the “ecosystem of adults” implied in the protective service. The research group has conceived a structural equation model (SEM) where agency is a dispositional variable, well-being is an outcome variable and decision making is a mediator variable. The 48 recruited care leavers responded to three questionnaires that investigated each of these three variables. By calculating five different indices of goodness of fit between the theoretical SEM and care leavers’ responses, the group has quantitively confirmed that participation in decision making drives a positive correlation between self-perceived agency and overall life satisfaction.

The right of care leavers to have a role in the decisions made about them is not only one of the basic requirements of the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (1989), but also becomes the element that allows agencies to return to their function of promoting well-being in a context in which freedom of action is inevitably constrained. A practical implication of the work’s results, for practitioners and professionals working in the care system, is the need for an ongoing dialogue with care leavers and a careful observation of their participation levels. Professionals should also investigate their own willingness to share power and responsibilities with care leavers and measure how their relationships with care leavrs are actually promoting a positive transition to adulthood. This can be achieved by adhering to robust theoretical models when planning and developing care interventions. The authors cite three models of self-investigation for practitioners: the “Ladder of Participation” model (Hart, 1992), Shier’s model (2001) and Lundy Model (2007).

The research was conducted within the CarIng project, co-funded by the Rights Equality Citizenship (REC) Programme of the European Union. The project supports young people who have left the care system to pursue their life goals and provides tailored training for social service professionals.

The full paper is available in open access.

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