This work is part of the Constellation Project’s Better Journeys initiative that took place in 2021-2022 with a team that included people with lived experience of this transition. The team undertook a research project to better understand the experience of young people transitioning from out of home care and youth justice.
The report is designed to provide information that assists key stakeholders, from community members to those with paid roles or formal authority, in understanding the needs and aspirations of young people. The information provided in this report can be utilised to better respond, reflect, plan, design and embed the voices of lived experience in service reform.
It highlights the role that young people with relevant lived experience need to play in informing policies and services that directly affect them.
Lived experience is critical in offering insights that may not have been considered previously so that policies and services being developed and implemented meet the needs of their intended beneficiaries. People with lived experience have a unique awareness of how policy decisions and social structures affect them and the community that they are part of. To effectively measure the quality of current policies and services and shape future ones, we need these voices at the table.
“I had to leave when I turned 18. I was never prepared. There was no preparation.”
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Our research shows that many will face a tough transition, and in some cases, homelessness. This is not surprising as the rate of young people experiencing homelessness who have a history of involvement with the Child Protection (CP) and Youth Justice (YJ) systems is high, pointing to a large systemic failure.
Despite policies and processes designed to protect young people, this report finds the young people interviewed did not feel supported or ready to leave the systems when the time came to move into independent living. Nor did the practitioners involved in these systems judge support to be adequate.
“What’s important about this report is that young people and those with lived experience have been able to contribute to the ideas and thoughts about having a home post their care or detention experience”
– Shona Reid
Guardian for Children and Young People South Australia
