A Project Report

On

Advocacy, Research and Training –

Interviewing Care Leavers with Udayan Care

Submitted by:

Shubham Bhaskar Badhe(10C)

Social Awareness Program (SAP)

Under the guidance of

Lalit Kumar – Udayan Care

Master In Business Administration

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi

Batch: 2021-2023
Acknowledgement
This project consumed huge amount of work, research, and dedication. Still, its implementation
would not have been possible if I did not have a support of many individuals and organizations.
Therefore, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all of them. First, I am thankful to
Udayan Care as an organization for their institutional and logistical support and for providing
necessary guidance concerning the project’s implementation. I am also grateful to Mr. Lalit
Kumar & Ms. Aditi Shrivastava for providing expertise, and technical support in the
implementation. Without their superior knowledge and experience, the project would have
lacked in quality of outcomes, and thus their support has been essential. I would like to express
my sincere thanks towards other volunteers who devoted their time and knowledge in the
implementation of this project. Furthermore, I express my gratitude towards my family and my
colleagues for their kind co-operation and encouragement which helped me in completion of this
project.

Work Summary

Our work involved understanding the network of Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in India, the
various rules and regulations concerning it through secondary research. We also learned about
Udayan Care and Its various Programs by going through the Annual Report (2019-20) and
gained an understanding of the NGO and its operation, previous work done and policies ( CPP,
CPS, JJA-2015 etc.). We engaged with mentors and guides from Udayan Care got to know about
Udayan Ghar, Alternative Care, Aftercare and the care leavers- why they need special attention.
We were working specifically with the Advocacy and Research (A.R.T) department of Udayan
care and got to know how it explores different aspects of policies and practices around
Alternative Care for children and youth through research, training, seminars, publications,
consultations and workshops. And helps in bringing necessary reforms in these policies for more
effective results. The most important aspect of our work though was to understand YERS -
Youth Emotional Resiliency Scale which intends to measure the resilience of young people as
they were about to disengage from care, and use it to assess the care leavers. This involved
coordinating with various POCs to schedule interviews in which we interacted one on one with
care leavers and asked them several questions about their life to gather important data about the
youth’s current state of being.
Background of the Work and brief profile of NGO
My work was in the Child and Youth Care division. For children who are separated from their
family and hence lack parental care, Udayan Care provides them ‘Udayan Ghar’. These children
grow up under homely care until they turn 18 years of age. But when they turn 18, suddenly the
safety net is removed and they are left unattended as under the law of Juvenile Justice ( Care &
Protection of Children) Act, 2015, which does not permit him/her to stay in such settings any
further. The child who just turned adult could have got a chance to complete his/her education,
find a decent job, and could have trained to become completely independent. But is now
withdrawn of all support, counseling, probably facing an identity crisis, on his/her way to
becoming deviant and thus, may end up losing his/her aspirations and the resources put in a line
that once aimed at making him/her a responsible productive being.

The transition of these young adults, from a state of complete dependency to the state of
complete independence is a delicate one where they go through emotional, psychological and
situational turbulences. Therefore, Udayan Care has its Aftercare programme to help these
youths or the Care Leavers during this transition. These young adults need a great deal of
support, probably more than ever, in matters like higher education, accommodation, stress
management, and employment, etc.

The importance of a comprehensive Aftercare programme for all youth leaving Child Care
Institutions (CCIs) and other kinds of Alternative Care at the age of 18 is the emphasis of
previously done research. It is based on a research on Aftercare practises undertaken by Udayan
Care with support from UNICEF, Tata Trusts, Shri Deep Kalra, and the state governments of
Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan, titled "Beyond 18: Leaving Child Care
Institutions - Supporting Youth Leaving Care." The study includes the perspectives of 435 Care
Leavers and over 100 Key Informants from across the five states, including child protection
officials.
The study proposes the 'Sphere of Aftercare' as a comprehensive conceptual framework for
Care Leavers on their journey to self-sufficiency, and separates the scope of Aftercare into eight
distinct but interdependent domains that are necessary for mainstreaming. Its goal is to ensure
that they have a smooth transition into adulthood.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2015, its Rules of 2016, and the
Child Protection Scheme (formerly known as the ICPS) provide a broad legal framework for
Aftercare, but it has yet to reach Care Leavers in its entirety. Because the State is the guardian of
these Care Leavers, the State's relationship with them is that of a parent and ward. However, as
the study shows, Care Leavers confront high vulnerabilities and re-traumatization when they
reach adulthood, which has a negative impact on their future, necessitating immediate assistance.
Care Leavers statistics-
Key Findings from Previous Study-

 Transitioning out of foster care re-traumatizes adolescents who have previously been
through several traumatic childhood experiences.
 Because there are gaps in information, access, skills, expertise, and training on transition
planning, human resources, and financial investments, the juvenile justice system is
unprepared for Aftercare.
 Child Care Institutions' employees and child protection bureaucrats have a poor
conceptual knowledge of aftercare and lack the ability to establish Individual Care Plans.
 There is no database of Care Leavers who have left Child Care Institutions, and there is
no follow-up on these young people to monitor their health and rehabilitation. Care
leavers do not have a single point of contact for information and services related to
aftercare.
 The existing per-youth funding under the Child Protection Scheme budget of INR 2,000
per month is insufficient.
 In the current gendered approach to rehabilitation and actual socioeconomic realities,
female Care Leavers are at a bigger disadvantage than male Care Leavers.

Work allocated (Objectives and Contribution)

Project Title: Conducting Interviews of Care Leavers (CL) as a part of data collection for
Research, Policy & Advocacy (A.R.T.) Team of Udayan Care

Advocacy efforts are aimed at ensuring and enhancing the rights of children who are not cared
for by their parents. While Udayan Care's Child & Youth Care (CYC) practise is based on India,
the NGO's advocacy efforts are mostly focused on South Asia. Udayan Care believes in people-
centered advocacy, which empowers members of the civil society and organisations to take
action to better the lives of these children. Over the last 25 years of the NGO's existence,
consistent efforts on this front have yielded several lessons as well as influenced the lives of
children, women, and youth. As child and adolescent care practitioners, the NGO believes in
evidence-based practise and, as a result, practice-informed advocacy and research.

Objectives of Collecting Data Through Interviews of The Care Leavers-

 To understand the current level of physical, mental, and financial preparedness of the
Care Leavers to leave alternative care centre and live his/her life on his/her own
 Influence policy and decision-makers by using persuasive and consistent methods such as
seminars, consultations and networking, on different aspects of Alternative Care for
children without parental care.
 Use the data for Research and Publications purpose
 Training to increasing capacities of stakeholders for better standards of care in alternative
care practices
 To develop demonstration models of care at the state level in order to work with local
organizations and functionaries to improve their capacities toward a non-institutional care
approach and to assist Aftercare services by focusing on the continuum of care approach.

Expected Contribution-

 Collate the details about the youth to be interviewed

 Understand the techniques involved in the overall interaction with the youth and follow
the expected method of questioning the youth
 Contact with the youth and the centre where they are currenty staying
 Schedule meeting with the youths
 Interact with the youth and collect important data as they respond for further research and
analysis
Process followed to complete the work
Resiliency is a concept that refers to a person's healthy, adaptive, or integrated productive
functioning throughout time in the aftermath of adversity. Vulnerability and resilience are both
addressed in resilience theory (or protective factors).
Resilience as an outcome: When a person is able to display positive adaptation despite
substantial hardship, they are said to be "resilient" or "having resilience." Well-being,
psychological functioning, intellectual competency, economic independence, and so on are all
examples of resilience.
Resilience as a process: refers to the factors that allow some people to overcome adversity, and
includes the ones already mentioned: sense of coherence, learnt resourcefulness, and so on.
Resilience:
1. is an individuals' ability to find psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that help
them establish and maintain their well-being.
2. is their ability to negotiate for these resources to be delivered and experienced in culturally
meaningful ways on an individual and community level.
Thus, it is an individuals' abilities to locate and mobilize (or, in his words, to navigate to and
bargain for) resources in the social context. Resilience is thus found not within individuals or
surroundings, but rather at the interface between both, i.e., in the person-in-environment.
Children and teenagers growing up in Alternative Care with early childhood adversities, trauma,
attachment and trust issues require resiliency to help them get successful in life and overcome
these challenges. Care Leavers have numerous problems throughout their transition period, and
their emerging adulthood (18 to 21 years) is spent adjusting to the new environment after leaving
their childcare settings and establishing themselves as self-sufficient individuals. Resilience is
especially important during this time.
Care Leavers are young people aged 18 and up who have lived in out-of-home care settings as
children, primarily Child Care Institutions in India, and have experienced childhood trauma. In a
study with Care Leavers conducted by Udayan Care in 2019,1 it was discovered that over 61
percent of CLs experienced recurring emotional distress, that 78 percent of CLs did not seek
professional help for emotional distress, and that transitioning out of care had a negative impact
on CLs' emotional well-being. It also revealed that female CLs experience a more negative
impact on their emotional wellness than male CLs, that access to mental health services
decreases throughout transition, and that the number of CLs seeking professional mental health
care is extremely low.
This is acceptable, especially given the fact that the majority of children in alternative care have
come from broken families and homes, poverty, orphanhood, abuse, and neglect.
Udayan Care's AOP seeks to coach and guide these young people during their transition time in
order to make it as seamless and supportive as possible. Supporting kids in developing resiliency
is a vital programming intervention that helps them achieve their overall developmental goals of
being self-sufficient and independent.

Development of YERS:
Prof. Adrian D. Van Breda, Department of Social Work, University of Johannesburg, South
Africa, created the original version. The scale was created in 2012 as part of a wider study on
young people transitioning from residential care to self-sufficiency. It was created as part of an
ongoing longitudinal study on care-leaving to assess young people's resilience as they
approached disengagement from care and to predict favorable transitional outcomes at annual
intervals thereafter. 2015 (Van Breda & Dickens).
Given CLs' high vulnerability, Udayan Care created this customized YERS as a reliable
instrument for measuring their resiliency and effectively planning for its improvement.
The YERS is a useful instrument for social service workers to measure and analyze young
people's resilience, allowing them to identify the AOP youth's specific strengths. It can assist in
identifying youth who are particularly susceptible and require further psychosocial support. It
can also be used to assess the impact of AOP interventions on the development paths of the
youth.
In 2020, Udayan Care collaborated with Prof Breda to adapt the scale for usage in India and
received authorization to deploy it with its Care Leavers.
About scoring:
This section contains instructions for manually scoring the entire YERS (including the questions
on young people ready to leave foster care).
 1. A new column called 'reverse score' has been added. Items with an asterisk should be
scored backwards, thus 5 becomes 1, 4 becomes 2, 3 remains 3, 2 becomes 4, and 1
becomes 5.
2. A new column called 'IMI' has been added. The Impression Management Index is a
validated scale that measures social desirability responses. Items highlighted with an
asterisk contribute to a second scale called the Impression Management Index (Van
Breda & Potgieter, 2007).
To manually score the YERS, follow these steps for each subscale:
1. Score the elements in reverse order, so that 5 becomes 1, 4 becomes 2, 3 remains 3, 2
becomes 4, and 1 becomes 5.
2. Add up the scores for each individual's responses.
3. It's fine if someone skips one or two questions, but after more than a couple of responses
are skipped, your confidence in the final score diminishes, and you should avoid scoring
that subscale.
4. Subtract the total from the number of questions answered correctly.
5. Deduct one from the total.
6. Multiply the result by 25 to produce a percentage score (i.e., the scores might now range
from 0 to 100).
7. A higher score suggests greater resilience in that construct, while a lower score indicates
less resilience in that construct.
To manually generate composite YERS scores, perform the following steps for each domain:
1. The domains are the YERS questionnaire's key headings, such as
 Relationships.
 Social environment (in the questionnaire, referred to as "my position")
 Interactions (sometimes known as "my interactions with the outside world")
 Personal
 In-care ('feelings about Girls and Boys Town')
2. Add the final scores for each of the constructs in each domain (for example, in
relationships, the scores for family, friends, school (if they are in school), community,
role models, and lovers) (if they are in a love relationship).
3. Take the sum and divide it by the number of subscales they finished.
 4. For that domain, a composite score (measured as a 0-100 percentage) is generated.
5. You may also take the average of all the composite scores to generate the 'Global
Resilience' score, which combines all of the YERS components.
To manually compute the IMI score, follow these steps:
1. There are ten items in the IMI. 7 things are highlighted with an asterisk (*), while 3 are
marked with an asterisk (**).
2. Responses of ‘strongly disagree' or 'disagree' are scored 1 for the 7 items listed with an
Asterisk, while all other responses are rated 0.
3. Replies of 'strongly agree' or 'agree' are scored 1 for the three items marked with **,
while all other responses are rated 0.
4. Add the ten scores together.
5. To acquire an IMI Index score that ranges from 0 to 100, multiply by 100.
6. According to the IMI's validation, a score of more than 70% indicates impression
management, which could indicate that the YERS responses aren't a real reflection of the
respondent's self-perception. They may be portraying themselves in a more favorable
light than they are.
Following the above instructions, we coordinated with various after care facilities in Delhi
and Hyderabad to schedule meetings with the youths and surveyed them to understand their
well-being and held one on one interviews with the care leavers to understand their
requirements and grade them on a scale of 1-5 depending on the questions and their
responses. The questions revolved around their relationships with their birth families, with
Udayan Care, school/workplace relationships, their financial situation, activities they were
involved in, their coping skills, teamwork skills, their personal feelings, expectations about
themselves, how they dealt with stressful situations, their experiences with the staff and peers
at Udayan Care, etc. Then, we calculated the scores for individual domains like relationships,
personal interaction, financial situations, etc. Each domain had a sub-scale and the composite
score was calculated by taking the weighted average of each sub-scale score. Following this,
we calculated the Global Resilience score which was the weighted average of all the
domains. There was also a separate section for IMI – Impression Management Index which
measured whether the youth was giving socially desirable responses or not.
 We then collected all the interviews and created a google drive to share with the employees
of the Udayan Care. We also gave a presentation about our experiences and work with
Udayan Care.

Result
We were allotted 26 care leavers. We took interview of them based on YERS scale which had
different sections like . There were 150 questions and they were aimed at understanding more the
care leavers and their mental health and how they are going to serve the society hence forward
after leaving the facility. These children are very much important part of the society and to help
and caring them is very much essential part of the system. We asked them different questions
based on the YERS scale which consists of sections like relationships with family, friends,
partners, birthday, school, administration and role models. Also we trie to access their financial
situation and activities theya re involved in and also how is their perception of their surrounding
world, how they are coping with it. We tried to find out the problem solving skills, aer they able
to make decisions of their future, do they have the befief which is required and the required
coping skills when they get into the real world. Also are they empathetic enough towards people
and able to understand their feelings and are they able to work in a team. We tried to assess the
overall mental health through various dimensions in a amicable and homely environment so that
they give they honest answers and the reasons why they think it is.

We gave scores to each question from 1 to 5 based on the type of question.It can be positive or
negative based question. After marking the care leavers, we got their scores. We had divided the
questions in five domains mainly, relationships, situations, interaction, personal and incare. Also,
each domain had subsections. After evaluating the care leavers, we got their score for each
subsection and then we got their composite score for each domain. After calculating the scores
for each domain, we got the global resilience score for each individual. We will judge each
individual on the resilience score.

The motive of this exercise was to check the resilience power of each individual so that they can
serve the society in the most efficient way in the future and if they have some problems in any
particular domains, we as a society can work on those areas and make them a better version of
themselves.
After interviewing all the 6 participants, we got their resilience scores and all the care leavers
scored more than 65% in their assessment. The range of scores was 67.2%-82.3%. This shows
that all the care leavers have a high quotient of resilience and a stable state of mind. Also their
outlook is positive towards the society and they are very much ready to be in real world and
work as responsible

Benefit to NGO and Society

The scale was designed in 2012 as part of a larger research project on young people transitioning
out of residential care towards independent living. It was intended to measure the resilience of
young people as they were about to disengage from care,and to be used to predict positive
transitional outcomes at annual intervals thereafter, as part of an ongoing longitudinal study on
care-leaving.

Given the high vulnerability of CLs, this customised YERS has been developed by Udayan Care
as a robust tool to measure their resiliency and be able to strategically plan for its
improvement.The YERS comes in as a handy tool to assist social service professionals to
measure and assessthe resilience of young people, thereby identifying the unique strengths of the
AOP youth individually. It can help identify particularly vulnerable youth who require
additional psychosocial support. Additionally, it can be useful in evaluating the impact of AOP
interventions on the youth’s development pathways.In 2020, Udayan Care worked closely with
Prof Breda to customise the scale in the Indian setting and got approval to use this scale with its
Care Leavers.

As a concept, Resiliency refers to a healthy, adaptive, or integrated positive functioning of a

person over the passage of time in the aftermath of adversity. Resilience theory universally
addresses both vulnerability and resilience (or protective factors). Resilience as an outcome: a
person is deemed to be ‘resilient’ or as ‘having resilience’ when they are able to demonstrate
positive adaptation despite facing significant adversity. Here resilience is defined as well-being,
psychosocial functioning, academic competence, economic independence, etc.Resilience as a
process: refers to the factors that enable some people to rise above adversity, and includes those
mentioned previously: sense of coherence, learned resourcefulness, etc.

Resilience is

1. the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the psychological, social, cultural, and
physical resources that build and sustain their well-being,

2. their individual and collective capacity to negotiate for these resources to be provided and
experienced in culturally meaningful ways.
Thus, It is the capacities of individuals to identify and mobilise (or, in his terms, to navigate to
and negotiate for) resources in the social environment. Resilience is thus located neither within
individuals or nor within environments, but rather in the interface between these, that is, in the
person-in-environment.

For children and youth growing up in Alternative Care, with experiences of early childhood

adversities, trauma, attachment and trust issues, resiliency is needed to assist them in getting

ahead in life and rise above such adversities. For Care Leavers, their transition phase is full of

challenges and their emerging adulthood (18 to 21 years) is spent in adjusting to the new world

after exiting their childcare settings and establishing themselves as independent adults. It is

during this period that resilience is most critical.

Care Leavers are young persons, 18 years and above, who as children have lived in out of home

care settings, mostly Child Care Institutions in India and who have experiences of childhood

trauma. A study conducted by Udayan Care with Care Leavers in 20191

revealed that over 61%

CLs faced recurring emotional distress, 78% CLs did not seek professional help for emotional

distress and that transitioning out of care had a negative impact on the Emotional Wellbeing of

CLs. It also showed that there is a greater negative impact on the emotional wellbeing of female

CLs than male CLs, access to mental health services declines during transition and the number

of youth seeking professional help for mental health is extremely low in CLs. This is

understandable especially in the situation where most Children placed in alternative care have

experienced adversities such as broken families and homes, poverty, orphanhood, abuse, and

neglect.

Udayan Care’s AOP aims to mentor and guide these young persons to make their transition
period smooth and supportive. Supporting the youth towards resiliency is a key programmatic

intervention that further aids the overall developmental goals of the youth to make them

independent and job ready towards self-sufficiency.

Work Summary

Our work involved understanding the network of Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in
India, the various rules and regulations concerning it through secondary research.
We also learned about Udayan Care and Its various Programs by going through
the Annual Report (2019-20) and gained an understanding of the NGO and its
operation, previous work done and policies ( CPP, CPS, JJA-2015 etc.). We
engaged with mentors and guides from Udayan Care got to know about Udayan
Ghar, Alternative Care, Aftercare and the care leavers- why they need special
attention. We were working specifically with the Advocacy and Research (A.R.T)
department of Udayan care and got to know how it explores different aspects of
policies and practices around Alternative Care for children and youth through
research, training, seminars, publications, consultations and workshops. And
helps in bringing necessary reforms in these policies for more effective results.
The most important aspect of our work though was to understand YERS - Youth
Emotional Resiliency Scale which intends to measure the resilience of young
people as they were about to disengage from care, and use it to assess the care
leavers. This involved coordinating with various POCs to schedule interviews in
which we interacted one on one with care leavers and asked them several
questions about their life to gather important data about the youth’s current state
of being.