Disabled Youth Transitioning from Care: An International Policy Analysis

Many countries across the globe have enacted leaving care policy to make provision for transition planning and aftercare support for care-leavers who face significant challenges in adulthood. However, the extent to which care-leaver policy addresses the unique needs of disabled youth leaving care is not known. This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge by analysing care-leaver policy in four countries (United States, United Kingdom, Norway and Australia) with a specific focus on how well they address disability issues. A key finding is the lack of consistency in the explicit recognition of disabled youth in care-leaving policy and an absence of directives to guide the adaptation and implementation of policy for disabled care-leavers. There is also a fragmentation in aftercare support with an increasing individualist approach grounded in normative assumptions for independent adulthood and a medical model of disability with a parallel retraction or redirection of formal regulation that impacts on disabled youth transitions from care. The paper concludes with recommendations for developing policy to give greater recognition to the needs of disabled care-leavers and their non-normative pathways from care into adulthood that require a refocus on interdependence, youth voice, extended aftercare support and collaborative services.