Abstract
The journey out of residential care towards independent living in South Africa is significantly
under-researched. This article draws on data from the only longitudinal study on care-leaving in
South Africa. It uses resilience theory to explain the differences observed in independent living
outcomes of care-leavers, one year after leaving the residential care of Girls and Boys Town. A
sample of 52 young people completed the Youth Ecological Resilience Scale just before
disengaging from care between 2012 and 2015 and participated in a follow-up interview one year
later, focused on assessing a range of independent living outcomes. Nonparametric bivariate
analyses were used to determine which resilience variables predicted better outcomes for the careleavers.
The results reveal that resilience processes help to understand transitional outcomes related
to housing, education, employment, well-being and relationships with family and friends. The most
prominent resilience processes for promoting better outcomes are located in the person-inenvironment
domains of the social environment (community safety, family financial security and
social activities) and social relationships (with family, friends and community), with fewer in the
interactional (teamwork) and personal (optimism) domains, and, surprisingly, none in the in-care
service domain. This supports a social-ecological view of resilience, and has important implications
for child and youth care practice.