Introduction: This work studies the situation of young people after leaving residential care when they become of age. We have analysed, specifically, one of the most relevant factors for the emancipation: the perception of the social support network. Method: This is a descriptive quantitative study. To this end, a questionnaire (C4) was created and validated with experts, it has open and closed questions distributed in eight dimensions: housing and accommodation, family, social and affective relations, health, training, labour integration and economic management and residential life. The participants of the study are included in the Preparation Plan for Independent Living of the Community of Madrid and are equivalent to the 70% of the total population. Results: The results show that the social network comes from the centre and other care institutions, followed by friends from the neighbourhood and schools and high schools; there are some cases of social isolation. In regard of the social support that they identify, they perceive help from educators and friends, to a lesser extent from the family, whose support is mainly material, and from the couple; both being valued as unstable sources of help. New networks appear with the creation of a new family through maternity, considering that it undermines their autonomy much more than it facilitates it. The quality of the relationships with those who live with them has special relevance in their subjective well-being evaluation. Discussion or Conclusion: Young people look up for figures who have a real interest in their lives, people who listen to them and accompany them with relative independence of the context from which they come: family, community, school, residential, etc. Therefore, with regard to educational intervention, facilitating interdependence and working towards the attainment and maintenance of a social network, even if it is made up of only one or two people, are guarantees of a satisfactory intervention that favours their well-being.

The construct of autonomy appears in literature associated with individual psychological wellbeing. In Ryff's model, autonomy is presented as one of the dimensions of wellbeing, along with self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. The present study compared the levels of autonomy and psychological wellbeing between Spanish and Colombian young people. Ryff's Scale of Psychological Wellbeing and the Transition to Adulthood Autonomy (EDATVA) scales were used on a sample of 1,146 young people aged between 16 and 21; 506 Spaniards and 640 Colombians. Results showed differences in autonomy and in two of the four dimensions proposed by the EDATVA: self-organization and critical thinking. Similarly, important differences were observed in the subscales of positive relations and purpose in life. The importance of contextual factors in the development of psychological well-being and autonomy in young people in transition to adulthood is discussed.

Psychological well-being manifests itself in all aspects of human activity and is essential to understanding whether young people experience life satisfaction and whether, as they mature, well-being can be associated with different levels of personal autonomy. This quantitative study was developed within the framework of international research on young people’s autonomy in the transition to adulthood. Its main objectives were to analyze the relationship between psychological well-being and autonomy and examine potential variations between the two variables according to age. To this end, Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being Scale and the Transition to Adulthood Autonomy Scale (EDATVA) designed by Bernal et al., were used with a sample of 1,148 young people aged 16–21 from Madrid, Spain, and Bogotá, Colombia. The results show that almost all the dimensions on the Psychological Well-Being Scale correlate significantly and positively with the dimensions on the EDATVA scale. Specifically, moderate correlations were obtained between self-organization on the EDATVA scale and purpose in life (r = 0.568; p = 0.01) and environmental mastery (r = 0.447; p = 0.01) on the Psychological Well-Being Scale. In turn, autonomy on Ryff’s scale obtained the highest correlation (r = 0.382; p = 0.01) with understanding context on the EDATVA scale. It was also found that the older 18–21 age group obtained higher scores than the younger 16–17 age group in all dimensions on both the EDATVA and the Psychological Well-Being Scale. Earlier studies endorse the results found in this research, especially the differences in the scores for both scales according to age groups. This opens avenues for future research to analyze the relationship between psychological well-being and autonomy as independent variables in other sectors of the population.

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