Transition from care experiences of youth aged 13 to 23 living with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in Canada: A scoping review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is a full body, lifespan diagnosis resulting from prenatal alcohol exposure that affects people differently. Children and youth living with FASD are an important sub-population within child welfare services. Yet, knowledge about youths’ transition from care is limited. Policy may be implemented before understanding evidence for supportive programming like ensuring early and consistent prenatal care, remedial education, etc. In 2023, Ontario mandated child welfare transition planning begin at age 13. While youth are valued decision-maker participants, research on the lived experience of child welfare involved youth living with FASD is a gap. To map the extant research on the experiences of child welfare-involved youth living with FASD in Canada preparing to leave care. This literature scope may help to minimize or address risks, and identify strengths, during this transition. Peer-reviewed Canadian articles in English about child welfare-involved youth with a confirmed history of prenatal alcohol exposure, FASD diagnosis, or both were eligible for inclusion. Child welfare-involved youth from early adolescence to adulthood represent the age captured in included studies. A systematic scoping review using JBI guidelines was conducted, and four databases (Embase, Medline, PsycINFO, and Social Work Abstracts) searched using a librarian supported search strategy. Reviewers independently completed title/abstract, full-text screening, and data extraction. PRISMA-Scr, descriptive and narrative analysis were used to understand risks and protective factors. Six studies met inclusion criteria. A substantial minority of youth experienced comorbidities. Contextual factors were inconsistently described, and several outcomes minimally reported on. Positive outcomes, protective factors, resilience pathways, and youth voices were absent. Four main themes highlighting the complexities of living and planning for youth with FASD were identified. Related policy, research, and child welfare practice implications are discussed. While this subpopulation must leave care by early adulthood, their experience is missing from the literature. We recommend investing in foundational research on pathways of exiting care, updating policy and practice to ensure youth voices are integrated, and optimizing, standardizing, and tracking protective factors throughout child welfare engagement. • Six studies, all secondary data analysis, met inclusion criteria. • A substantial minority of youth experienced comorbidities. • Contextual factors like abuse and health status were inconsistently described. • Educational, housing, self-care, and relationship outcomes were minimally reported. • The voices of youth, and factors supporting resiliency, was missing from the data.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".