ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the polarisation of participants’ trajectories over the three years of the study in relation to key theoretical and policy perspectives. Attachment theory and Coleman’s focal model of adolescence are used to explore the implications of young people’s experiences of transitions in multiple domains of their lives as they graduate from state care to independence. Participants’ preoccupation with relationships with their birth family members and the reassessment of their relationships with carers as they age out of care are discussed. Stein’s categorisation of care leavers based on resilient adaptation is employed to summarise the effect of risk and protective factors in young people’s lives and the role of self-reliance in their choices and outcomes to date. The motivation for and implications of some young people’s active choices to move to live independently are addressed in order to understand young people’s pathways to the situations they found themselves in at the end of the study and the very diverse futures that they appeared to be facing.
