Building Positive Futures: A Cross-Country Pilot Study on Youth Transitions from Out-of-Home Care in Africa

We are delighted to inform you that a group of ANCR members have, in partnership with Queen’s University, Belfast, been awarded a research grant to conduct a pilot or feasibility study on care-leaving in four African countries. The grant is valued at £35,000 and the project runs from May 2019 until March 2020.

The aim of this pilot project is to establish the feasibility of a methodology for a comparative cross-country African study on leaving care.

The objectives of the pilot project are to:

1. Test the applicability and translatability of an amended version of the research methodology used in the South African Growth beyond the Town (GBT) care-leaving study to investigate the experiences of care leavers in four African contexts (Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe).
2. Develop the research methodology to be inclusive of different groups of care leavers, with particular consideration of gender, disability, ethnicity and cultural background.
3. Explore the feasibility of developing a research approach that builds on the capacity of young people who have already left care to act as peer researchers.
4. Explore the utility of the theories of resilience (Van Breda, 2018a), care-leaving (Van Breda, 2015), life course (including waithood) (Cuzzocrea, 2019; Honwana, 2014) and intersectionality (including disability theory) (Liddiard et al., 2019) to explain care-leaving transitions in Africa.

The principle investigator (who is a member of Queen’s University, from where the funding is provided) is Dr Berni Kelly. The Africa study lead is Prof Adrian van Breda (University of Johannesburg) and the four country leads are Dr Kwabena Frimpong-Manso (Ghana), Dr Admire Chereni (Zimbabwe), Dr Paul Bukuluki (Uganda) and Prof Adrian (South Africa). They are supported also by research assistants: Dr John Ringson (South Africa), Dr Ronald Luwangula (Uganda) and Ms Joana Bekoe (Ghana). At Queen’s, Prof John Pinkerton, Dr Olinda Santin and Mr Gerry Marshall are also participating.

The team had their first meeting in Kampala, Uganda on 20-21 June and will be meeting again in Cape Town, South Africa from 2-3 September. Data collection is scheduled for the last quarter of 2019 and will take place through SOS Children’s Villages in each country. The main report is due by March 2020.

We wish the team all the best as they conduct this study. This is, we believe, the first research project initiated by ANCR and involving multiple countries in Africa. This study is also a direct result of the ANCR care-leaving workshop and conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa in January 2019.

L2R: John Ringson (University of Johannesburg, South Africa), Agatha Kafuko (Makerere University, Uganda), Lillian Mabs (SOS Children’s Villages, Uganda), Kwabena Frimpong-Manso (University of Ghana), Adrian van Breda (University of Johannesburg, South Africa), Admire Chereni (Zimbabwe), Paul Bukuluki (Makerere University, Uganda) and Ronald Luwangula (Makerere University, Uganda)

Dinner on the last evening