Young women employed as a civil servant after leaving state care: Cases of Afyonkarahisar and Ankara

Adulthood is the final stage at the transition process to adulthood that individual established their own lives and stand on their own feet. The transition to adulthood, which corresponds to a longer process than the 1960s, now requires material and moral support of families. Affordable families live together until their children can stand on their own feet, even continue to provide financial support, and continue to emotionally motivate and guide them. Therefore, those receiving their family support in all aspects are able to come through this process more easily and successfully. However, young people who do not have a resourceful family are experiencing both material and moral deprivation and are experiencing difficulties and struggles. Considering that state protection age has changed between the ages of 18 and 21 around the world, from this age onwards, the young people who leave state care and who cannot get support their family or relatives are completely alone. This loneliness brings some negative situations such as housing problems, unemployment, mental health disorders during the transition to adulthood. In addition to all these negativities, young women leaving the state care have to struggle with problems such as early and wrong marriages, prejudice and harassment. However, the number of studies on women leaving state care is limited and does not provide much information on the problems women experience. Therefore, there was a need for a study of young women leaving state care. Thereby, in this study, it is tried to understand the problems that young women leaving state care before they became civil servants and how these problems changed after becoming a civil servant and their skills such as adaptation to working life and socialization. In addition, this study includes solutions to the problems these young women have experienced. Moreover, the study conducted in one small and one large province reveals the diversity of experiences. It was a qualitative study carried out with twenty-five civil servant young women who leave state care in Afyonkarahisar and Ankara provinces with snowball sampling. In qualitative researches, the obtained findings are evaluated by their own natural environment. Therefore, generalization of the findings is not possible. Since this study is also qualitative research, the obtained findings and results are limited to the natural environment and they are not generalizable. According to this study, after protection order has been removed, young women who leave the state care face the problems such as wrong and early marriages, lack of educational qualification, conflict with work and colleagues, not learning vital responsibilities, insecurity, lack of social life, exclusion, prejudice or given others' an evil eye. Key Words: Transition to Adulthood, Young Who Under The Protection, Young Women Leaving State Care, Turkey