Exploring Young Residential Care Leavers’ Participation In Care Leaving Decisions In Ghana: An Interpretive Analysis Using Hart’s Ladder of Participation

Background and Purpose:
Each year, a substantial number of children transition out of residential care in Ghana into family-based or other alternative living arrangements. This transition is often fraught with economic, relational, educational, and employment challenges that adversely affect care leavers’ well-being and long-term outcomes. In Ghana, these vulnerabilities are compounded by inadequate preparation for care leaving, limited aftercare support, and broader structural weaknesses in the child welfare system. Evidence from global literature suggests that meaningful participation in care planning enhances young people’s self-efficacy, agency, and psychosocial well-being. However, there remains a critical gap in understanding how young residential care leavers in Ghana experience participation in decisions regarding their transition out of care. This study aims to examine the extent and nature of care leavers’ participation in care leaving decisions, guided by Hart’s Ladder of Participation. The primary research question asks: To what extent are young residential care leavers in Ghana meaningfully involved in decisions about their transition from care?

Methods:
This study employed a qualitative interpretive design. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with ten young adults who had recently transitioned from residential care settings. Participants were purposively sampled to capture diverse post-care experiences. Interviews explored participants’ involvement in decision-making processes related to their care exit, perceptions of agency, and experiences of inclusion or exclusion. Data were analyzed using a thematic interpretive approach, with Hart’s Ladder of Participation serving as an analytic framework to categorize levels of participation and interrogate the nature of engagement in decision-making processes.

Results:
Findings reveal that, despite Ghana’s formal commitments under international conventions such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and national child protection policies, meaningful participation of care leavers in decision-making processes is limited. Participants consistently reported minimal involvement in key decisions regarding their transition, with many describing experiences of exclusion, tokenism, or manipulation. These experiences correspond to the lower rungs of Hart’s Ladder, indicating non-participatory or minimally participatory practices. The absence of structured mechanisms for incorporating young people’s voices further constrained their ability to influence decisions affecting their futures.

Conclusions and Implications:
This study highlights a significant disconnect between policy commitments and lived experiences of participation among care leavers in Ghana. The findings underscore the need for child welfare systems to move beyond symbolic inclusion toward genuine, rights-based participation that positions young people as active partners in care planning and transition processes. Strengthening participatory frameworks, institutional accountability, and practitioner capacity is critical to improving care leaving outcomes. Future research should examine scalable interventions and policy reforms that embed meaningful participation within care systems in low- and middle-income country contexts.