Introduction

The ‘lived’ and ‘shared learned experiences’ of children and young people across Europe most clearly define and reflect the condition and contours of the European public realm. Largely shaped by the dynamics of institutionalised social solidarity and delivered through universal education and welfare services, their integration within and across European society pivot on a definitive balance between public and private responsibility (Lorenz, 1998; Lister, 2006; Midgely, 2008). For children in care across Europe, lived and learned experiences lie at the intersection of this balance, revealing how states mediate the relationship between the ‘dis-welfares’ (Gough, 1979) generated by the global economy and the national ‘particularisms’ which shape the implementation of childcare law, policy and practice. Within this context the crises experienced in welfare in recent decades can be regarded as a crisis in social solidarity, with a deleterious impact on the public realm across European settings (Lorenz, 2001; Offe, 2003; Clark, 2004). The majority of children who become ‘looked after’ by the state have experienced various levels of poverty and deprivation (Lister, 2006; Garrett, 2010). Equally, the link between family crises and poverty is also well documented (Madge and Attridge, 1996; Munday, 1996; Munday and Ely, 1996; Lister, 2006; Ellison, 2007). Indeed, contours of inequality across European countries mirror the levels of children taken into public care:

In Britain, where levels of inequality are among the highest in Europe (UNICEF, 2007), the recent austerity measures introduced by the Coalition government are forecast to lead to ‘an increase in absolute poverty in 2013–14 by about 300,000 children’ (Joyce, 2010). As a result, rising numbers of children are living in alternative care in Britain, with an unprecedented increase between 2008 and 2009 (Fostering Network, 2010). Across Europe, the number of children in institutions is stable or even rising in several EU countries.