“Progression in Life, Despite my Circumstances”
Shauna and Simone went to a conference in UCC called “Progression in Life Despite My Circumstances”. They have co-written this article on what they have learned from the conference.
“this research offers invaluable insights into the resilience and determination of care experienced students navigating challenging life circumstances.”
On the 05/02/2025, Simone and Shauna attended the launch of ‘Progression in Life Despite My Circumstances’ in UCC Cork, a piece of research developed by SOAR (Support, Opportunity, Achievement, and Resilience) in collaboration with the HEA (Higher Education Authority) , which marked a pivotal moment in understanding how students from diverse and challenging backgrounds can overcome barriers to succeed in higher education. This research came about as , ‘Care experienced young people’ were named as a target group by the HEA in the ‘National Access Plan 2022-2028' which prompted many questions regarding the support available to these young people in higher education institutions and was marked as ‘the beginning of more and more data collection’. The questions that were explored in this research were as follows:
What Challenges do care-experienced individuals encounter in assessing participating and succeeding in higher education?
What supports them in accessing, participating and completing/succeeding in higher education?
What resources and supports are necessary to increase this number?
The research focused on 8 access practitioners, 48 surveyed care experienced students and 4 individual interviews with care experienced students. It was mentioned many times throughout this talk about how this cohort of students can often be labelled as ‘hard to reach’ groups, however, it does pose one important question: are they ‘hard to reach’ or ‘easy to ignore’?
There were many interesting points which these students took from the talk with particular emphasis on the presentation from SETU’s own Dr.Danielle Douglas who did an incredible job on representing the supports SETU Waterford provides to care experienced students and suggestions of ways we can grow more.
Shauna took particular interest in the title of the conference and pondered on what it means to ‘progress in life’ and this was clarified by Dr. Fiachra O Súilleabháin in how he highlighted what education meant to these students while quoting interviews. One thing that particularly stood out to Shauna was ‘third level is a new beginning’ which was a response from a surveyed student. Shauna also was interested in why there was such a high percentage of care experienced students (32%) have decided to pursue ‘caring’ humanities degrees. Lots of potential reasons around this were discussed and the concluding reason appeared to be that a lot of guidance councillors and teachers etc. tend to push these degrees as a great option to those who have care experience along with the fact that care experienced young people often feel drawn to caring professions, inspired by their lived experience.
Simone also had some interesting observations from the launch. Simone was particularly interested in the survey findings, especially how important peers and friendships were in helping care-experienced students learn about higher education. The survey showed that these relationships were the most effective for these students. Simone also noticed that 25% of respondents saw finance as a major struggle, and 20% received no financial support for their higher education. These results made Simone think more about the challenges care-experienced students face. It also highlighted how valuable the support of friends and peers can be in overcoming these barriers.
The workshop concluded with a heartfelt talk from 3 care experienced students who spoke of their own experience in the care system and the support they have received from both their colleges and Tusla, to aid them through college thus far. These students did an incredible job depicting what it is like to attend college as a care experienced young person.
In conclusion, this research offers invaluable insights into the resilience and determination of care experienced students navigating challenging life circumstances. It underscores the importance of comprehensive support systems within third level institutions and targeted interventions in promoting academic and personal success. It focuses on what these institutions can do to improve the experiences of these young people, which I believe is extremely positive and welcomed as a fellow care experienced student! We look forward to attending the follow-up event in March being held in Dublin!
This research can be found at:
Students with Care Experience and Higher Education “Progression in life despite my circumstances”