Les recherches sur les enfants placés par les services sociaux indiquent qu'ils ont des difficultés scolaires plus fréquentes et plus importantes que le reste de la population. Cette recherche comparative entre la France et l'Angleterre se concentre sur les accueils en établissement : la suppléance familiale est ici exercée par une équipe de professionnels. Nous analysons cette reconfiguration sociale et familiale afin de mieux appréhender les logiques et les processus qui sous-tendent les parcours scolaires des enfants placés et leur accompagnement dans le cadre du placement. Notre approche, interactionniste, adopte une démarche compréhensive qui permet d'affiner l'analyse et donc les connaissances sur la population, et notamment de comprendre pourquoi certains réussissent malgré le cumul des difficultés rencontrées. Nous nous appuyons sur le concept d'accrochage scolaire comme le point culminant d'un ensemble de processus longs et complexes qui se combinent entre eux. La partie principale de notre corpus est composée d'une centaine d'entretiens individuels et semi-dirigés et d'observations participantes menées sur plusieurs mois au sein de huit établissements en France et en Angleterre. Cette recherche permet d'avoir une meilleure compréhension de ce nouveau cadre de socialisation. Nous étudions les pratiques des professionnels, leur investissement sur la question scolaire et sur l'élaboration des projets professionnels. Le placement tend à confirmer et consolider les carrières scolaires des jeunes dès leur entrée dans la prise en charge et à entretenir les inégalités scolaires par sa structure et par des modes de socialisation éloignés des modes scolaires. / Research has regularly pointed at the poor achievement of Looked after children in comparison with the rest of the population. This comparative research between France and England focuses on residential care: the main dimensions of parenting are attributed to a team composed of professionals. We analyse this social and family reconfiguration in order to apprehend the logic and processes which underlie the educational pathways of children in care and their support when under care. Our interactionist approach uses a comprehensive methodology in order to enhance the analysis and the knowledge on this population, particularly to understand why some of these children achieve success at school despite the accumulation of difficulties. We develop the concept of school persistence as the peak of a set of long and complex processes which are combined. The main part of our data is obtained through a hundred of semi-structured face-to-face interviews and observation work into eight long-term children's home over a period of several months. This research improves the understanding on this organization as a new frame of socialization. We study the practices of, their commitment in education and towards the development of professional perspectives for children. Care in children's homes tends to confirm and reinforce the children's underachievement from the beginning of the care placement in the sense that it maintains educational inequalities due to its structure and socialization processes that are distant from those which can be observed at school.

Background: The implementation of the Care Matters: Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care Green Paper (Department for Education and Skills, (DfES) 2006) and the subsequent Care Matters: Time for Change White Paper (DfES, 2007), witnessed the consolidation of a universal ambition to improve the opportunities for all children living in care. Arguably, the most important recommendation in this pursuit is reflected in the need to provide people who have lived in care as children with independent support, which enables them to discuss their experiences, and suggest ways in which the care system might be improved. However, whilst this recommendation has been implemented with a diverse range of care leavers, the impact of the experience of living in care and the associated disadvantage experienced by Travellers and Gypsies remains under researched, understated, and unacknowledged (Cemlyn et al., 2009). Methodology: Guided by the philosophical assumptions of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), this study represents and constructs the experience of living in public care by focusing on the voices 10 Travellers and Gypsies who lived in care as children. Testimonies were collected through a wide variety of methods that included face-to-face interviews, focus groups, telephone interviews, blogs, emails, letters, song lyrics, and poems. Findings: Following a considered application of IPA, six main themes emerged from the analysis. These were social intervention; an emotional rollercoaster of separation, transition, and reincorporation; a war against becoming settled; leaving care and the changing relationship with the self and others; inclusion and strength; and, messages for children living in care. In line with the tenets of phenomenology, these findings are presented in such a way to as to invite the reader to move away from their own personal understanding of the world in order to enter the ‘lifeworld’ (Husserl, 1970, 1982) of Travellers and Gypsies who lived in care as children. However, to assist in this sense making activity, this study also provides a discrete interpretation of the findings before developing this knowledge to form a more detailed theoretical construct entitled ‘the model of reflective self-concepts’. Taken together with the testimonies of each person who took part in the study, the thesis enables an understanding of how the experience of living in care is inextricably linked to a process of social and psychological acculturation. By staying close to the experiences provided, it reveals how a process of change is determined, more often than not, by a sense of personal resilience directly related towards a Traveller or Gypsy self-concept. In attempt to move towards service improvement, this thesis offers a series of recommendations and conclusions which aim to support social workers and carers empower Traveller and Gypsy children to develop a secure Traveller and Gypsy self-concept thus enabling them experience improved outcomes including those opportunities set out in Care Matters social policy agenda (DfES, 2006; 2007).

In research, the transition from foster care to adult life has been pointed out as a significant and problematic period in young people´s lives. However, we know less about how this transition is handled professionally. Through qualitative interviews, this study examines social worker´s views and experiences of this transition process. The research questions focus on what needs social workers see in young people´s transition, how they describe their own work, and what strategies and tools that may promote the transition. The results are analyzed using the following theoretical concepts – discretion, emotional support, informative support,instrumental support and evaluative support. The study shows that young people need long-term relationships, certain practical skills and each type of support. Work with the transition is based on these needs. Here, social workers have an exploratory and coordination role thatconsists of many tasks. While they describe some specific strategies and tools, the results show that there are difficulties within this work. The roles of foster carers and social workers in young people´s transition to adulthood are discussed.