THE MANY FACES OF THE “FOSTER CARE YOUTH” LABEL: HOW YOUNG WOMEN MANAGE THE STIGMA OF OUT-OF-HOME PLACEMENT
Abstract
A number of studies have found that adolescents in foster care expect and perceive stigma related to their “foster care youth” status. Yet, little is known about how this perceived stigma manifests, as well as how youth manage it. The current study therefore aimed to explore how young women with a history in foster care integrate these experiences into their life stories. The focus is on discursive manifestations of stigma in participants’ narratives about placement in foster care, their own perceptions of care-experienced girls and women, as well as how they self-present. Special attention is also given to the ways in which youth try to reduce, deflect, or eliminate stigma. The present study draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of 20 young women with a history in foster care. Our findings suggest that participants do anticipate and perceive public stigma in relation to their history in foster care. The results also highlight the various strategies used by participants to resist self-stigmatization. The main strategy used was to distance themselves from their “foster care youth” status, insisting that they should never have been placed in foster care and that they are not faring badly as adults, unlike typical care-experienced youth.
Downloads
Metrics
Authors contributing to the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Rights Granted After Publication
After publication, authors may reuse portions or the full article without obtaining formal permission for inclusion within their thesis or dissertation.
Permission for these reuses is granted on the following conditions:
- that full acknowledgement is made of the original publication stating the specific material reused [pages, figure numbers, etc.], [Title] by/edited by [Author/editor], [year of publication], reproduced by permission of International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies [link to IJCYFS website];
- In the case of joint-authored works, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission from co-authors for the work to be reuse/republished;
- that reuse on personal websites and institutional or subject-based repositories includes a link to the work as published in the International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies; and that the material is not distributed under any kind of Open Access style licences (e.g. Creative Commons) which may affect the Licence between the author and IJCYFS.