Session: Making Sense of the Senseless: The Promise of Life Story Work with Young People with Experience in Foster Care (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Introduction and Background In 2021, there were 24,805 foster youth with a case plan goal of emancipation or long-term foster care. Federal policy in the U.S. requires states to provide independent living services and transition planning, but ironically does not require that young people have basic understanding of their childhood experiences of family or foster care. This is true despite the fact that: (1) studies find that young people talk about having knowledge gaps that they struggle to make sense of; (2) how sensitive information is discussed is unclear, and (3) while case records may hold clues, they may also be incomplete. Thus, in the push for independent living, past histories may be unattended to.

Methods This symposium brings together studies that explored life stories of young people formerly in foster care, albeit from different vantage points. The first study explored the types of gaps that exist in the life stories of former foster youth using a thematic analysis and engaged how meaning of gaps was made. The second study introduces narrative identity theory and concepts having to do audiences and master narratives about foster care and applies a modified grounded theory approach to understand the identity building strategies. The third study builds on concepts and applied a constructivist grounded theory approach to understand how young people contend with master narratives of birth family. Each study analyzed life history interviews of 12 former foster youth (3 interviews each) and 6 nominated professionals (42 interviews total), which were originally collected to understand perceptions of risks and opportunities.

Results Findings from the first study revealed the type and scope of information missing from life stories, ranging from not knowing about birth family to not understanding experiences of adversity in family and foster care. Without knowing and talking about experiences, patterns of adversity could be repeated. Findings from the second study identified narratives that were labeled as, resistant identity, or identities that were designed to maintain a view of self as a motivated agent in face of adversity. Three processes supported this process, which involved: (1) actively countering narratives of low expectations by others, (2) actively working to find prosocial pathways, and (3) engaging in settings that cultivated positive views of self. The final set of findings identified the ways that young people contend with master narratives of family on their own, which positioned some to become enmeshed again with patterns of abuse in family after foster care and others to break free.

Discussion and Implications The findings from this study question the wisdom of allowing young people to exit foster care without basic understanding of birth parents and experiences in family and foster care. It reviews how other countries engage life story work and explores with the audience what the next generation of life story work interventions might look like when they are co-constructed and designed to shine a light on systems.