What did we find out?

1
The (extra)ordinary lives research project
What was the research about? 4 researchers
worked with 8 young people to find out about
their everyday lives. The research was about the
lives of young people in care. None of the young
people who took part lived with their parents.
Some lived with their grandparents, some lived
with foster families and some of the older ones
lived on their own or with friends. We helped
them make their own projects about their lives at
the me, myself and I group. We wrote about the
stories they shared with us, the things they made
and about what they thought of the project. We
also made some short films which you can watch
today.
The me, myself and I group ran from October
2006 to July 2007. 8 young people aged 10-20 took
part. Activities on offer included photography,
making videos, animation, music-making and arts
crafts. The young people used these to share
details of their everyday lives with us. They
chose what they wanted to do and they decided
what, if anything they wanted to share with us
from what they had made.
Who are we?
What did we find out? Because the young people
had lived with more than one family they could
tell us a lot about the ways that different
families do things. Young people wanted their
social workers to get to know them, be
interested, listen, do what they said they would
do, and get things done. They didnt like it when
they had lots of different social workers. Young
people wanted their carers (the people they lived
with) to love them, care for them, know the
ordinary, everyday stuff about them, treat them
like one of the family, and look out for them
till they had grown up. Some worried about how
long they would be able to stay with their
carers. Some people think that young people who
are in care will have problems at school. The
young people told us about their experiences in
school. The older ones told us how theyd
surprised their teachers when they passed lots of
their exams. We thought the way we did the
research was a good way to find out about the
lives of young people in care because it gave
them lots of choice about what to do and what to
share with us about their lives, the good and the
bad, the personal and the everyday. But to keep
things private we are careful about what we share
with other people about this.
We all work at Cardiff University
Alex
Nicola
Emma
Sally
Why did we do this? We wanted to give young
people in care the chance to tell us about their
daily life and what mattered to them in the ways
they wanted to. We hoped that what they shared
with us would help make a difference to how
people think about and make decisions about young
people in care. Youll find out more about our
research on our website www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/q
ualiti/dp4.html or contact us at
qualiti_at_cardiff.ac.uk or telephone [phone].