Resilience and survival : black teenage mothers 'looked after' by the State tell their stories about their experience of care

Mantovani, Nadia and Thomas, Hilary (2015) Resilience and survival : black teenage mothers 'looked after' by the State tell their stories about their experience of care. Children and Society, 29 (4). pp. 299-309. ISSN 0951-0605
Copy

‘Looked after’ young people are among the most disadvantaged members of our society. While their disadvantaged status should not be ignored, poor outcomes are often emphasised at the expense of good ones. This paper reports a study that adopts the concept of resilience to understand the narratives of the participants’ experience of care and foster care. A total of 15 young mothers, aged 16-19 and mainly from black African backgrounds, were interviewed. Despite lacking a ‘secure base’, informants invested in a sense of moral identity and a source of self-directedness, which enabled them to move from victim of circumstances to individuals who overcome their circumstances.


picture_as_pdf
Mantovani_and_Thomas_Children_and_Society_forthcoming.pdf
subject
Submitted Version

View Download

Atom BibTeX OpenURL ContextObject in Span OpenURL ContextObject Dublin Core MPEG-21 DIDL Data Cite XML EndNote HTML Citation METS MODS RIOXX2 XML Reference Manager Refer ASCII Citation
Export

Downloads