The aim of this research is to advance the understanding of the impact on school exclusion upon employment and education across the life course for care experienced adults who left care in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With only a handful of pieces of research on the care experienced community post 25 years old, knowledge across the life course of this group of people is decidedly lacking.
Participants are a purposeful sample of five care experienced adults who identify as leaving care in the 1970’s and 1980’s and self-assess as having been excluded from school. This is a mixed methods study using semi structured interviews and structured questionnaires for quantitative data such as age, geography and type of ‘care’ experienced.
Unravelling the impact of “excluding the excluded” across the life course is motivated in part by my professional career in working with vulnerable children and their families in a multitude of settings over the past few decades but also from my personal experience of being a looked after child in the 1980’s who was excluded from two Secondary Schools. I make this explicit for transparency about my motivations, my desire and my attachment to wanting the subject to receive far more attention than I believe it has.
Possible conclusions from this research will present a different narrative than the one that exists about poor outcomes for looked after children within education and employment and will likely offer knowledge about what missing protective factors there may have been that promote resilience to being excluded
