Ageing Out of Care Towards Living a Self-determined Life: A Multidisciplinary Mentoring Model for Unaccompanied Care Leavers

Abstract

Unaccompanied children in residential care need to be engaged in mentoring relationships that will equip them through gradual and participatory strategies to be able to face real-life challenges and lead a successful autonomous life once leaving care. The multitude of expressed anxieties from children in care regarding the stability of a self-determined life after emancipation demands a shift of perspective and action in the residential care system. Such a shift would enable caregivers and legal guardians to support on target the transitioning youth to enter, explore, and define a period of healthy maturity after state care.

For a child in care, becoming an adult should be the culmination of a gradual developmental path supported by interdependent networks and the local community. Unfortunately, it is perceived as a status merely defined by age and independence imperatives instantly when reaching 18. There is a need for a deeper and holistic understanding of the complementary needs of each unaccompanied child, which, if left unaddressed, might pose a prominent threat to the young person’s self-determined lifestyle after ageing out of state care. Due to the disconnected and vulnerable status of unaccompanied children, their success in the transition to adulthood highly depends on the existence of a good and supportive relationship with an adult figure, a mentor. Their cultural, social and immigration status must be seen in alignment primarily with their rights as children.

Following national ethnographic research that envisioned a personalized participatory framework, a core of 9 essential Pillars has been identified as vital to sustaining unaccompanied children ageing out of care towards a self-determined life. The INTEGRA Mentoring Integration Programme (The presented data is extracted from the ethnographic research in Cyprus titled The White Paper, the Mentoring Integration Programme training, and pilot implementation done in Cyprus during November 2019–February 2020) was developed as a multidisciplinary mentoring model to train residential care professionals and elevate their capacity to Leaving Care Mentors. Within this framework, the mentor has the role to guide, connect, mediate, and support unaccompanied children in care by providing experimental learning opportunities, assisting the restoration process of lost reference points (e.g. family, friends), and assisting their socio-economic and cultural inclusion as a persona integra into the life of a host community.