Session Information
05 ONLINE 36 A, Care, Crisis and Covid-19
Paper Session
MeetingID: 818 3065 2659 Code: pa6kX0
Contribution
Since the end of the 20th century, there has been a decline in the labor market participation of the youth population (Yang, 2020). Even among employed youth, their situation is far from satisfactory, the poor quality of the jobs to which they have access is manifested in precarious working conditions, lack of legal and social protection, and limited opportunities for training and career advancement (International Labour Organization [ILO], 2020).
To all these employability difficulties must be added those caused by the global pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has severely affected labor markets around the world, hurting youth more than other age groups. Globally, youth employment fell by 8.7% in 2020, compared to 3.7% for adults. The unemployment rate provides only a partial view of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on young people (ILO, 2021) whose impact will be more pronounced on vulnerable populations within this group (Galea et al., 2020; Ornell et al., 2020). In this context, the social support network, along with the academic trajectory, are two phenomena that can act as a risk or protective factor in the labor market insertion process linked to the transition to adulthood (Díaz-Esterri, et al., 2021).
However, this reality is more critical for those young people whose trajectories place them in a position of vulnerability, as is the case of young people who enter the infant and childrn´s care system. These youth often lack an environment that can provide their biological, social and affective requirements (Refaeli et al., 2019) and, on many occasions, present emotional and behavioral problems that often limit the development of a support network that can respond to their needs in order to face the abrupt transition to adulthood (Mann-Feder and Goyette, 2019). Moreover, the low qualifications of these young people and the alarming indicators of school failure they present make it difficult for them to access the world of work (Dixon, 2016).
The objective of this research was to identify the most representative training trajectories of young individuals who had left the care system, recognizing the risk and protection factors for their insertion in the labor market. For this purpose, a qualitative study was carried out with two types of populations in which 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with young who left from the child protection system and with fifteen professionals in socio-educational intervention who work with this group in Spain. From the analysis of their speeches, the results point to several factors that hinder the inclusion of these young people in the formal education system, which negatively affects their subsequent access to the labor market. Likewise, there is evidence of macro-systemic barriers that limit the labor market insertion of young care leavers. The testimonies include actions and proposals that encourage the educational inclusion of these young people and promote their entry into the labor market, this being considered essential in their transition to adult life. All in all, a line of future research is opened to optimize psychoeducational intervention with this group
Method
The simple was composed of 35 participants. Of these, 20 were young people whose stay in the infant and children´s care system had come to an end, either because they had moved on to a program supporting transition to adulthood or because they had reached adulta ge whilst completing a legally stipultaed period of internment. Inclusion criteria were as follows: Be aged between 18 and 21 years and have stayed within the care system for more tan two years. The remaining fifteen participants were proffesionals with at least two years proffessional experience working with this youth group. Semi-estructured interviews were conducted (Strauss y Corbin, 2003). One interview was conducted with professionals and two with young people, with one being performed with those who were in care facilities and another with those who were completing a judicial order at a detention centre. Responses were processed systematically throught a coding process applied to informations nodes. This gave rise to both descriptive and axial levels of coding (Jansen, 2013). As a consequence, a system of these main codes and ten sub-codes was identified which were ftted to meet the study aim and allowed content pertaining to questionnaire responses to be analysed. In order to evaluate the reliability of the coding system, four expert coders on the topic were enlisted. Following this, the Fleiss Kappa agreement coefficient was calculated. This produced a value K = 0.909, which inidcates very good agreement strength (Fleiss, 1981). In accordance with Kuckartz and Rädiker (2019), preliminary data codes wre established throught open coding and information nodes developed inductively from participant discourse. Associations were found between data codes following succesive coding. For data handing, the software program MAXQDA Analytics Pro-2020 was employed in its versión for Windows 10 Windows 10.
Expected Outcomes
The findings of this research have made it possible to identify two very different groups within the group of nationals young people who left care system and young people who emigrate as unaccompanied minors. This circunstance confirms the findings of authors such as Leloux-Opmeer et al. (2016) and Santana-Vega (2018). Within the first group, it has been recognized that, together with the shortcomings detected in the field of emotional, employability skills and the design of a training-labor project, risk factors associated with COVID-19 have been added to their training-labor trajectories. In the second group, the study identifies that the entry into the labor market of these young people is not linked to a training-labor project and is not preceded by a training path characterized by socio-educational inclusion. This is a consequence of two factors: on the one hand, the need to reach employability immediately in order to regulate the documentary situation; on the other hand, the shortcomings of our formal education system whose lack of resources limits the educational options of these young people practically to training for employment by segregating them in certain training contexts that end up being exclusive. In addition, COVID-19 exposes these young people, within its triple aspect of vulnerability, to a situation of risk in which the configuration of inclusive social networks and the strengthening of the academic trajectory are foreseen as protective factors against possible processes of social exclusion that these young people may face in their transition to adult life. In this context, actions and proposals emerge that highlight the importance for both groups of young people of having socio-educational support systems that allow them to improve their academic performance, self-esteem, social skills, and their ability to adapt to new situations.
References
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