Introduction

The previous chapters provided insights into the participants’ care experiences during childhood, teenage years and early childhood. This chapter provides an insight into how the research data was analysed and takes a holistic approach to examine those elements of the care experiences that had an impact on young people's well-being in adult life drawing on identity literature and using dignity as core concept borrowed from moral philosophy and employed in human rights and capabilities.

Altogether, the life histories the research participants have shared cover just over 1000 years of life. Making sense of such a large amount of qualitative data is not an easy task. The purpose of the study was not only to transfer this knowledge to the academic world but also to contribute to a better understanding of the subtleties of care so that policy makers and practitioners who meet children in care can make more sense of what they might like to say but often choose to remain silent. All interviews have been transcribed verbatim into English after running a back-translation with a proficient user, anonymising them at the same time. After reading and annotating 20 interviews by hand (four in each cluster) to get a feel for the emerging themes (Miles and Huberman, 1994), I uploaded all of them in Nvivo. The software gave me the freedom of including many subthemes which were later regrouped under seven themes: the care experience (which included subthemes such as entering care; change of placement; residential care experience; foster care experience; adoption experience; intercountry adoption experience; abuse; food; contact with birth family; feelings; belonging; child consultation; love and attachment); family relations (mothers; fathers; grandparents; siblings; parenting styles); self and others (stigma, discrimination, chosen, positive discrimination); school experience (relations with peers and teachers); life stages (home before care; early childhood memories; adolescence; leaving care); outcomes in adult life (becoming and reflection on the impact of care; current life of foster care experienced participants; current life of residential care experienced participants; current life of adoptees; current life of intercountry adoptees; aspirations and future plans; mental health; values and spirituality).