Moving to a new form of living, even if it is primarily for help and support, can bring new challenges and negative feelings. I noticed this during my practice in residential youth care. Therefore, I wanted to look into it further and point out any shortcomings perceived by the young people. In my graduation thesis, I first focused on theory, introducing the period of adolescence, describing the role of social contexts in adolescent development, introducing the emotional and behavioral problems that are the most common reasons for entering residential youth care, describing the legal basis for the placement of children in residential youth care, describing the role of social work in the placement, presenting good practices from abroad in supporting young people with emotional and behavioral problems, and describing the characteristics of residential youth care. In the empirical part, I focused on the experience of the proposal of a residential youth care placement (reasons for leaving and presented proposal, reactions to it). I also explored how much the voice of young people was taken into account and how they experienced living in residential youth care. I wanted to know what possible difficulties the young people faced in adjusting to their new living arrangements, what support they received, and what improvements they saw in terms of parental and educator cooperation. I explored their suggestions for improving their well-being in residential youth care and how they were preparing to leave it. The qualitative research was carried out on a convenience sample of six adolescents, aged between 12 and 18, living in residential youth care, using individual semi-structured interviews. Institutional forms of support for children with emotional and behavioral problems had sought to get closer to them and their specific needs, to give them what they had not received throughout their development. Through my research, I found that this is not always the case. Adolescents especially missed the relational aspect, which many did not have in their families. In addition, the transition to group housing evoked negative feelings for many. It was hard for them to come to terms with the new way of living. Everything was on the fast track, not everyone wanted to do it, and it also made them feel lonely because they did not know anyone. It was easier for the adolescent, who had been in a youth home before. Thus, she was used to the routine and was still geographically close to her parents. Residents had mainly sought support from their roommates. In residential youth care, adolescents perceived positive changes, both in terms of better school performance and improved behavior and self-care. However, not all of them knew the reason why they (still) had to stay there. I found that they felt responsible about leaving the housing group so that they could go somewhere else as soon as possible. Based on the findings, I made some suggestions for practice. Only from the perspective of the users, we can design approaches that benefit them.
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