On 10 September 2021, during the Global INTRAC 2021 meeting, nine papers were presented on edgy topics regarding care leaving, in relation to groups of care leavers, methods of care leaving research and theories of leaving care. Collectively, we called this symposium ‘living on edge’ to emphasise both the liminal state of care leavers as they transition from care towards young adulthood and the efforts of the presenters to take up cutting-edge topics in care leaving research.

Below you will find the papers presented in each of the three streams linked to a video of the presentation in YouTube. Each video starts with some setting up of the session and ends with time for questions. Videos range in length from 17 to 32 minutes.

Stream 1: Groups of care leavers living on the edge
(Chair: Samuel Keller)

High time to develop policy and practice for care leavers: Early beginnings in Portugal (Francisca Pimentel, Joana Antão, João Pedro Gaspar)

Street youth and their erratic path out of care towards adulthood in Bolivia (Marcela Losantos Velasco and Natalie Guillén Aguirre)

Stream 2: Methods of care leaving research
(Chair: Inger Oterholm)

Trauma-informed approaches to research with young people transitioning from care: Balancing methodological rigour, empowering practice and available resources (Jade Purtell)

Institutional ethnography: Bridging the individual and the institutional (Ingri-Hanne Brænne Bennwik and Inger Oterholm)

Methodological issues when interviewing disabled care-leavers: Lessons learned from South Africa, Norway and Northern Ireland (Wendy Mupaku, Ingri-Hanne Braenne Bennwik, Berni Kelly)

Naming it and changing it: Addressing the power imbalance present in research with care leavers (Róisín Farragher, Natalie Glynn, Annie Smith, John Paul Horn, Petra Göbbels-Koch)

Stream 3: Theory in leaving care research
(Chair: Adrian D. van Breda)

A systematic review of the place of theory in care-leaving research (Adrian van Breda)

Getting by and getting ahead in Australia: A conceptual approach to examining the individual impact of informal social capital on care leaver transitions (Jacinta Waugh, Philip Mendes and Catherine Flynn)

Living an unstable life: Exploring facets of instability in the lives of care leavers in Denmark (Anne-Kirstine Mølholt)