Do-It-Yourself Biographies in the Public Child Care System

The economic and social changes of the past few decades induced a dual process, with an effect on the definition of “life sequences”: biological maturation occurs earlier, while social maturation is postponed. This dual process led to an emerging interest in understanding and systematizing the special problems and needs of children and youth. The response of the child protection system to the issue of “extending post-adolescence”, is a provision and service for young adults till the ages of 18-24 that can be used on a voluntary basis. The focus of research – which is based on qualitative methods – is on the educational career, labour market participation and future perspectives of young adults brought up in the child protection system, and on their opinion of the support system itself. Firstly, I draw attention to the biography of 40 care leavers, who were brought up in care, to show where they are placed on the continuum of life course, where the two extremes are “normalized” and “selective”. Following this, I aim to demonstrate how the young adults look on the child protection system, the content and quality of professional support, and finally, what they regard as failure or success in their lives. As the study shows, the current child protection practice based on traditional methods resulted in the tendency of the child protection system drifting from a necessity-oriented approach towards a problem solving-oriented one. Supporting those who have come at age, theoretically, is based on tertiary prevention, in which correctional mechanisms are dominated. Regrettably, because the system is in want of adequate professional content, not only the practical efforts, but the ideological ones as well fail to be realized.

Keywords: child protection in Hungary, tertiary prevention, the successful and the survivor