Earning a Hoodie, Voyager Capital

Abstract

Most children in Ontario, Canada, who are involved in child protection services receive services while living with their family or kin; are temporarily placed in the custody of child protection services and live in foster homes, group homes, or kinship care homes; or are placed permanently in the care of child protection services. Until April 2018, this last group of young people were legally designated Crown Wards. This chapter describes a peer-led strategy which sees current and former Crown Wards in Ontario, Canada, plan their own educational journey while at the same time reaching out to other young Crown Wards to encourage them to do the same. Bourdieu’s field theory—specifically the concepts of social capital and habitus—are applied to the project. Fostering social capital, network mapping, and peer-centered practice are emergent models useful to the engagement process and essential as relational practice methods.