The voices of young care leavers are routinely discounted, ignored or excluded from conversations that directly affect their lives. Their knowledge, insights and expertise about navigating complex systems are rarely centred in policy, practice or research. Led by Prof Mandi MacDonald (Queen’s University Belfast) and Lucy Jamieson (Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town), the Amplifying the Voices of Young Care Leavers project built an international learning community between care-experienced youth, researchers and practitioners in Northern Ireland (VOYPIC) and South Africa (Mamelani Projects).
Through online discussions, international
exchanges in Cape Town and Belfast, and participatory filmmaking, young people
shared their experiences, identified priorities for leaving care research and
developed advocacy messages alongside researchers and service providers to
change policy and practice.
Despite living more than 10,000 kilometres
apart, participants found striking similarities in their experiences.
Conversations repeatedly returned to the importance of relationships,
belonging, identity and being listened to. Young people spoke about the
challenges of securing stable housing, employment opportunities, financial
support and mental health struggles before and after leaving care. They also
highlighted a less visible need: the desire to feel seen, heard and supported
over time rather than only during moments of crisis.
What made this project particularly
significant was its commitment to recognising young people as knowledge producers.
Participatory filmmaking enabled care leavers to tell their own stories rather
than having them interpreted by others. The resulting documentary, United & Unique:
Separated by Geography, Connected by Community, foregrounds
perspectives that are often marginalised and challenges stereotypical
narratives about young people with care experience.
From an epistemic justice perspective, one
of the most powerful messages to emerge was that young people are experts on
their own lives. The project demonstrated that when care-experienced youth are
given meaningful opportunities to participate, they generate valuable insights
into what works, what does not, and what change is needed. As participants
reflected, leaving care is not a single event but an ongoing process requiring
sustained support and strong relationships.
The project's impact continues beyond the
documentary. In South Africa, the findings are supporting advocacy for stronger
policy commitments and funding for aftercare services beyond the age of 18. In
Northern Ireland, the project is helping to highlight gaps between policy
commitments and implementation. More broadly, it has created a platform where
care-experienced young people can influence public understanding and policy
conversations.
For those of us concerned with epistemic
injustice, the lesson is clear: meaningful change begins when young people are
not only invited to speak but are recognised as credible knowers whose lived
experience is vital to shaping the systems that affect them.
The young people have produced a report to
accompany the film, which you can download: McCallin_et_al_25_United_Unique_youth_report.pdf
Watch the film:
About the authors
Lucy Jamieson and Prof Wiedaad Slemming, from the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town visited the University of Bristol to foster a partnership with the Centre for Childhoods and Social Justice. When planning international research with children consideration of decolonisation and epistemic justice assume particular significance. Epistemic justice asks who is doing the research, with whom, about what, through what means, to what ends, in whose interests and requires reflection on power imbalances to ensure genuine and equitable partnership across cultures and generations. International partnerships between the Global North and the Global South are especially challenging due to inequities in resources to produce knowledge, recognition of expertise, and the platforms to have that knowledge heard. Lucy presented on participatory methods used in two international research projects including the co-production of the documentary United and Unique.
