The transition to adulthood: A participatory study of care leavers’ experiences with pathway planning

Every year, over 13,000 young people in the United Kingdom (UK) transition from care to independence, often facing significant challenges compared to their non-care-experienced peers. Pathway plans are statutory documents designed to support this transition, outline young people’s needs, aspirations, and future goals. Although much has been written in the literature about the broader experiences of leaving care, there is limited understanding of the role of pathway planning within this context. Furthermore, while the benefits of involving care-experienced communities in research are known, they remain underexplored. To address this, this paper explores how care leavers experience pathway plans using a participatory research (PR) approach. Five care leavers, aged 20-23, were actively engaged as co-researchers throughout the research process. Their contributions included selecting data collection methods, designing interview questions, participating in interviews, giving feedback on the analysis and informing decisions about dissemination. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) to deepen understanding of their perspectives. This study provides a unique contribution to understanding pathway planning in the transition from care to adulthood. It argues for the importance of relational working, personalisation and co-production, highlighting the central role care leavers must play in shaping decisions around their future, pathway plans and wider leaving-care processes. Through its design, this paper situates itself within the emerging PR literature involving care-experienced populations, examining the value of PR in promoting inclusion, challenging traditional research hierarchies, and advancing emancipatory principles of empowerment and social justice. Practical implications for stakeholders, including Educational Psychologists working within the corporate parenting model, are discussed, emphasising the need to increase care leavers’ participation in both research and practice, while recognising them as autonomous, competent and capable. Finally, the study’s strengths, limitations, and future directions for research are examined.