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Five - Social inclusion impact of a childhood in state care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2022

Xiaoyuan Shang
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Karen R. Fisher
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
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Summary

The love and care that children receive in their families or alternative care are among the most important factors influencing the quality of the childhood experience. Young people in alternative care in China grow up in institutions, foster care or family group care arranged by state child welfare institutions, non-governmental organizations or kinship or non-kinship families. The alternative care experiences of these children affect the quality of their childhood and, later, their transition to adulthood.

This chapter introduces the young people in care who participated in the in-depth interviews (see Table 5.1). They were asked about their most unforgettable childhood experiences. It was a way to understand whether they thought that they had received the support they needed to feel socially included or excluded during their childhood and the likely impact on their transition to adulthood. They spoke of positive experiences about affection and love from families and community members, and negative experiences about violence in state care, both physical and emotional. Most of the children only spoke about positive and negative experiences since they had entered state care. Some children could only remember their lives since entering state care because they were babies when they were found. Other children did not have positive memories that they could recall or could only remember negative experiences from before they entered state care.

The descriptions in this chapter are a precursor to the subsequent chapters, which explore the impact of these childhood experiences on the transition of the young people to adulthood. The names used in the chapters are all aliases.

Positive experiences in childhood

The focus that young people spoke about when they reflected on their most positive life experiences during childhood was their feelings of affection, personal attention and love from others, whether from their foster family, carers in the institution or other people in the community. This response would not be surprising from most young adults, but was particularly poignant from these young people in alternative care because they had all experienced the most terrible loss of their parents, extended family and the associated family affection. The researchers observed the young people’s craving for family or other loving affection as more intense than other children.

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Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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