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Purpose– The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to report results from a quasi-experimental study of outcomes of a leaving care project for youth placed in secure unit care and second, based on the (zero) results, to analyse and discuss the interplay between organisational boundaries, social work and the target group when implementing a project such as the one studied.Design/methodology/approach– The outcome study had a quasi-experimental design. The young people in the leaving care programme were compared with a matched reference group who did not get the special leaving care services. Data were collected (structured Adolescent Drug Abuse Diagnosis-interviews) when the young people entered secure units and on follow-up (registered crime and re-entry into care).Findings– The outcome study showed that the leaving care project had no effect on the young people's situation at follow-up regarding re-offending and re-entry into secure unit care. This is understood and discussed in relation to the poor implementation of the leaving care project along with an inbuilt conflict between state and local municipality that overshadowed the good intentions of the project.Research limitations/implications– The effect study has a quasi-experimental design, and hence differences between the project group and the comparison group at T1 cannot be fully precluded, although nothing is pointing in such a direction. The unclear content of the intervention makes it difficult to decode how the variation in the support given to the young people eventually impacted the results. The zero-results apply to group level, but that may not be valid for each and every one in the project.Practical implications– According to earlier research, a key person following young persons through different phases of the care trajectory may be of importance. Learning from the CoC project, one can conclude that such a key person should preferably take the role of advocate for the young person, and not be an administrator mainly concerned with coordinating other professionals. Further, when planning and financing is split between organisations, that split hinders efforts to actually mobilise support for young people leaving secure unit care.Originality/value– Few leaving care services are designed for youth with severe behavioural problems and hence, the research is scarce. This study contributes with important knowledge about leaving care interventions for the target group.

AbstractThis article analyzes the transformation of Swedish residential care for children from a regionally coordinated, public social service system into a thin, but highly profitable, national spot market in which large corporations have a growing presence. Marketization and privatization are theorized as complex processes, through which the institutional structure and logics of this small, but significant, social policy field changed profoundly. Using official documents, register data, media reports and existing research, three consecutive phases in the development of the children's home market are identified since the early 1980s. Change was driven on one hand by policies inspired by New Public Management, which shifted public authority horizontally to the private sector, and vertically to local authorities (funding) and to the state (regulation). On the other hand were the responses of local authorities and private actors to the changing incentives that policy shifts entailed. During the first two phases, both the proportion and size of for‐profit providers increased, and the model of family‐like care was replaced by a professional model. Cutting across the trend of privatization in the third phase was establishment of a parallel system of homes for unaccompanied refugee children – mostly in public ownership. Similarities with privatization in the English system of children's care homes are noted. By showing how the Swedish market for residential care has been created by policy and by actors' responses to those reforms, the article provides a foundation for thinking through how the predictable, significant and well‐documented problems of such care markets might be addressed.

AbstractIn what has become quite a turbulent quasi‐market for residential care for children and youth, providers now compete for public contracts. To create visibility and attract customers, many providers use marketing activities to project the desired impression of themselves to maintain or strengthen their market position. In this article, we analyse how companies that provide residential care for children manage the impressions they project on their websites and in advertisements. The results reveal that residential care providers use a range of impression management strategies to enhance their organizational image and to respond to potentially damaging or threatening images. The information providers choose to disclose leaves customers—in this case, the social workers responsible for choosing and purchasing care on behalf of clients—with rather limited opportunities to evaluate the quality of care. This is a significant problem considering other, more reliable, sources of information are difficult to access.