Care experienced young people: Agency and empowerment

Citation

Priestley A (2020) Care experienced young people: Agency and empowerment. Children and Society, 34 (6), pp. 521-536. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12383

Abstract
Empowerment discourses have become fashionable in current policy and practice relating to young people, including those with care experience. Empowerment, however, is a slippery and contested concept, associated with neo-liberal discourses. An ecological understanding of agency offers more theoretically nuanced understandings of empowerment, taking account of the complex, temporal, and relational factors, upon which empowerment is contingent. This paper utilises data generated through an ‘empowerment group’ for care-experienced young people; it illustrates how an ecological understanding of agency, as a heuristic, might further understanding of the lives of care-experienced young people.

Keywords
agency; empowerment; young people

Journal
Children and Society: Volume 34, Issue 6

People

Dr Andrea Priestley

Lecturer, Education