An Innovation Process:
Youth Transitioning out of Foster Care

The transition from foster care to adult life is a very vulnerable and complicated process for the young people going through it. Often, these at-risk youth are all alone as they turn 18 – lacking the support that most young people have at this stage. Many of them end up on the edges of society without jobs, education, a place to live, and a social network. It has been like this for decades. 

It’s a wicked problem – and it remains unsolved to this day.

The Challenge: Creating a safer passage

Bikubenfonden – together with partners in the social field – has identified three key challenges or opportunities for the young people transitioning from foster care to adult life: 

1. How might we increase the likelihood that the existing resources and relations of the young people accompany them throughout the transition?
2. How might transition support acknowledge the potential of the young to feel important to others?
3. How might we create a more needs-based choice of accommodation for young people?

These challenges are systemic – as they are rooted in several factors and involve a diverse set of stakeholders from different sectors. The solutions, therefore, must also be systemic, aiming at changing and reinforcing the support system around at-risk youths.

The Approach: Redesigning the system

As partners in the project, we contribute by creating and facilitating an ambitious innovation space, where actors from different sectors and the end-users – the young people – work together on creating new and tangible solutions. The solutions will be tested in local partnerships. We place specific emphasis on bringing in the voice of the end-users in this process; the youths transitioning from foster care to adult life.

DDC aims to demonstrate how an end-to-end design process can act as the framework and the driver for innovative solutions to further the thriving of young people. A framework that inspires and demonstrates how working with very tangible solutions can address immense and complex systemic challenges.  

Stay tuned

We – and Bikubenfonden – communicate continuously about the project. Our aim is to work out loud. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date.