DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-857285
title: Care-Experienced Graduates Decision-Making, Choices, and Destinations, 2021-2024

description: Background
Care-experienced students overcome profound challenges to access higher education, such as educational disruption, and mental health issues arising from childhood trauma. Since the ground-breaking ‘By Degrees’ project (Jackson et al., 2005), which documented incredibly low higher education participation rates amongst care-experienced people, there has been a growing body of research on this group’s access to, and engagement with higher education nationally and internationally (Bengtsson et al., 2018; Harrison, 2017; McNamara et al., 2019; Okpych & Courtney, 2019; Zeira et al., 2019). Such research has led to positive developments in the support available for care-experienced students, including the extension of financial and practical support from local authorities in England and Scotland (see, Children and Young Persons Act 2008; Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014; DfE, 2013; The Scottish Government, 2013), as well as the Care Leaver Covenant in England (DfE, 2018) to support care-experienced individuals to develop skills for employment. Yet, for care-experienced people who access and complete their higher education, we know very little about their transitions into graduate life. 

Aims
The Care-Experienced Graduates’ Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations project is the first study to qualitatively explore care-experienced students’ graduate transitions out of higher education and into employment and/or further study. This three-year longitudinal project aimed to: 1. Explore the influences that inform care-experienced graduates’ decision-making and choices about their graduate pathways and destinations; 2. Identify what enables and constrains care-experienced graduates’ transitions out of higher education and into employment and/or further study; and 3. Explore what role care-experienced graduates perceive their care histories as having in their choices and decisions, as well as how these contributed to any enablements and constraints they encountered.

Conceptual framework
The research employed Archer’s (2003) notion of reflexivity to conceptually identify structural enablements and constraints, and individual agency. This was adopted alongside a life course perspective (Giele and Elder, 1998) to explore care-experienced graduates’ perceptions of the influence of their care histories on their graduate decisions and choices, as well as how these contributed to the structural constraints and enablements they encountered over their first 12 months of graduate life. This provided opportunities to explore how participants’ graduate plans and journeys were structurally enabled or constrained by their own social circumstances, contexts, and histories. A longitudinal approach was necessary to capture how constellations of structural enablements and constraints changed over time in response to developments in participants’ contexts, or following individual action.

Methodology
A qualitative, longitudinal, narrative inquiry approach was used to empirically and conceptually explore how a background of care affected care-experienced peoples’ graduate transitions. Narrative inquiry is concerned with the collection of detailed accounts of subjective lived experiences which are temporal and subject to change (Clandinin, 2016); this was needed to understand the influences informing care-experienced students' graduate choices and decisions, and to gather personal accounts of the structural enablements and constraints that were encountered and responded to when pursuing these. 

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with care-experienced graduates in England and Scotland between 2021 and 2023. To understand their motivations and influences informing their graduate decision-making and choices, the enablements and constraints they encountered, and the role of care histories within these, interviews were undertaken at three time points: during their final year in higher education (phase one), then at six (phase two), and 12 months (phase three) after graduation. Phase One explored 23 final-year care-experienced students’ decisions, choices, plans, and concerns regarding their impending transitions out of higher education. Phase Two revisited participants approximately six months after graduation (18 participants) to explore and capture their initial transitions out of higher education and into employment and/or further study. Finally, Phase Three explored any changes in participants’ living, employment, or educational circumstances since Phase Two, their plans for the future, and their views about what policy and practice developments were needed for future generations of care-experienced graduates (14 participants). Participants were also provided with access to a secure online diary to record their experiences of their transitions out of higher education and into graduate life over the duration of the study.

Key findings 
Care-experienced graduates’ transitions out of higher education and into graduate life were found to be risky due to an absence of safety nets, such as a family home. As a result, the opportunity to undertake ‘boomerang’ transitions – where graduates return to live in the family home after graduation - was not available. For those who were residing in student accommodation during their degree studies, not having a family home to return to after graduation led to anxieties about, and in one case, actual experiences of homelessness. Even for those who resided in social or private sector housing during their degree studies, not having the safety net of a family home to turn to if their employment or postgraduate study plans fell through made their transition into graduate life precarious.

The abrupt loss of both higher education and local authority support upon graduation – referred to as the ‘support cliff edge’ – intensified the instability faced by care-experienced graduates. Those who had been supported by their local authority during their studies expected this support to continue until the age of 25, in line with the Children and Social Work Act 2017. Upon graduating, however, a number of participants discovered that their local authorities stopped providing financial or housing support after the age of 21, meaning that they were no longer eligible for this. 

The unavailability of boomerang transitions coupled with the ‘support cliff edge’ meant that graduates did not have the time or space to fully contemplate their next steps or plan for the future. Instead, many had to prioritise immediate living costs, particularly in the UK’s cost of living crisis. This resulted in some graduates accepting employment roles did not align with their level of education or career goals. Even in cases where care-experienced graduates moved directly into a role aligned with their desired career path after graduating, the absence of safety nets and the high cost of living meant that they needed to work a second job, and/or excessive hours to meet their basic living costs, which led to poor mental and physical health. 

This unstable initial transition into graduate life resulted in prolonged financial and housing instability for some graduates, with several being caught in cycles of precarious employment and unstable living conditions up to 12 months after graduation. Yet, this was not the case for all. Those who felt stable 12 months after graduation attributed their stability to factors such as receiving a university-provided graduate bursary, managing to move into better-paid employment opportunities, having a strong support network, and being able to access mental health and wellbeing support.