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Care experienced young people: Agency and empowerment
Author(s) -
Priestley Andrea
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
children and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0860
pISSN - 0951-0605
DOI - 10.1111/chso.12383
Subject(s) - empowerment , agency (philosophy) , sociology , public relations , gender studies , political science , social science , law
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.