At a time of heightened international debate about youth precarity, how do we understand and support transitions to adulthood for people who have been in care? This paper reports on a qualitative longitudinal study of 75 young adults (aged 16-32 years) from Norway, Denmark, and England. All had been in care during childhood and at the time of their recruitment to the study all were in education, employment or training. Against the context of a literature largely focused on transitions specific to 'leaving care', our analysis addresses aspects of early adulthood which are not specific to being care experienced; some (such as romantic breakups, or moving home) might be considered normative, whilst others (such as changing course or dropping out of university) are less common. Cross-national analysis shows how care and wider welfare systems intersect with informal networks in everyday lives, functioning to scaffold young people, or to exacerbate precarity, as they navigate biographical transitions in early adulthood. The research shows the importance of developing socially and culturally located biographical accounts of 'transition' that recognise the complexities, uncertainties and essential interdependence of everyday lives and emerging adulthoods.

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The main objective of this paper is to investigate the role that the Norwegian Child Welfare Services (CWS) can play in assisting care leavers with their transition to adulthood. Our point of departure is that timely and effective aftercare services must be understood from a relational perspective centred on the quality of the relationship between young adult and caseworker. The paper analyses in-depth interviews with 16 Norwegian young adults aged 20-32 who were either students or in stable employment at the time, and thus considered to be doing well according to common indicators in studies of care leavers' outcomes. Two kinds of relationships between the young adults and CWS were identified: those who thought that CWS had recognized their needs and provided services accordingly and those who had either not been offered support or had been offered inadequate support. Our analysis indicates that a positive relationship between young adults and their caseworker facilitates both agency on the part of the young adult and provision of flexible support according to their needs. Implications for policy and practice will be discussed.

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