‘Discuss it with your legal guardian’: Challenges in practising care for young unaccompanied refugee minors

How is care arranged for unaccompanied refugee minors at residential care institutions, and what kind of conditions do these arrangements constitute for young persons' well‐being and development? Informed by developmental perspectives that consider young people's development through partic...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child & family social work 2021-08, Vol.26 (3), p.309-317
Main Authors: Omland, Guro Brokke, Andenas, Agnes, Sveaass, Nora
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Caregivers
Coordination
Everyday life
Families & family life
Guardians
Interviews
Legal Problems
Medical personnel
Minors
Outsourcing
Parents & parenting
Professionals
Refugees
Residential care
Residential institutions
Unaccompanied
Young Adults
Youth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:How is care arranged for unaccompanied refugee minors at residential care institutions, and what kind of conditions do these arrangements constitute for young persons' well‐being and development? Informed by developmental perspectives that consider young people's development through participation across contexts in everyday life and by research into how parents in ‘ordinary’ families organize care, we developed a study based on interviews with 15 unaccompanied refugee minors and their professional caregivers at residential care institutions. The interviews were analysed systematically by exploring how care is arranged between professionals and its implications in the young persons' lives. The results elucidate how responsibility for following up and making sense of central issues in the lives of the minors was allocated to professionals outside the daily care rather than being part of the primary caregivers' contact with the minors. This practice contrasts with what young persons in ‘ordinary families’ in Norway enjoy, where coordination across contexts and keeping an overview of the total care are considered the responsibility of parents. The article focuses on the outsourcing of what we call refugee‐related legal issues in the minors' everyday lives, to the legal guardians, which appeared to be a barrier to being understood and supported.
ISSN:1356-7500
1365-2206
DOI:10.1111/cfs.12810