ABSTRACT
Young people's stories about entering care when less than five or six years of age can be expected to be impressionistic fragments of emotional memory. By engaging youths in dialogue social workers provide an opportunity to work through their life stories. By talking with social workers youth are able to share their understandings, and to elicit another's reflections and analyses. The segment underscores the importance of intervening with young people in ways that emphasise their autonomy as well as their ability and right to make choices. For many youth, it seemed to them that coming into care was in large part the result of parental choices. The process of separation from family and multiple placements while in care, either in group homes or foster care, can contribute to traumatic experiences of separation and loss.
