ABSTRACT
Based on a cross-national study on French and English young people’s perspectives, this chapter explores the importance of one very special place, the bedroom, in the everyday life of 16 young people living in care. The ELTA study was conducted in 2014 and involved social mapping, walking interviews and making and commenting on photos, intending to give participants some control over the data collection process. Eight young people aged between 14 and 18, living in institutional and foster care in each country, participated in the research. The aim of the study was to gather young people’s views and experiences on their everyday lives while in care. A crosscutting theme that this chapter will explore is the choice of spaces which young people were particularly keen to talk about. The most important place, which almost all young people talked about, was their own bedroom. This analysis will look at (1) how young people described themselves in their rooms, (2) what was the specificity of this place which made it so important and (3) what were the challenges they had to face. Finally, we will seek to draw some lessons for child protection systems to learn from these young people’s lived experience.
