Young peoples’ experiences and understandings of ‘home’ and ‘family’ living in safety homes, Khayelitsha, Cape Town : exploring the strengths and limits of the ‘social family’.

This dissertation draws on qualitative research conducted in 2012 with foster mothers and young people living and having lived in three household-style ‘safety homes’ in the township of Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Unlike large formalised residential care facilities, with high staff turnover and high ratios of children to caregivers, these settings are intimate long-term spaces of care that provide stable parenting. This finding of stable parenting and of proper care of young people in the safety homes forms the crux of this thesis and challenges the dominant view that care other than within the biological family is inferior and ‘out of home’ and ‘out of family’ care. The research highlighted that the social (non-biological) family has both strengths and limitations.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Social Development

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Woolley, Anya

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Seekings, Jeremy

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11168

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/11168