African American Studies Commons^™

Improving Child Welfare: African Canadian Youth's Postcare Options, Irene Elizabeth Mcintosh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Thousands of youth exit Ontario's Child Welfare System (CWS) each year and perform poorly after returning to the community. However, understanding African Canadian youths' perspectives about their experiences and needs was problematic because no outcome data was available in the Canadian database. Using a phenomenological design grounded in a constructivist framework, the purpose of this study was to explore the meaning(s) that African Canadian youth ascribed to positive outcomes on exiting the CWS. A purposeful sample included 10 participants (6 females and 4 males, ranging in age from 19-24). The data collection method was face-to-face interviews with hand coding used …