No exposure of cooking while staying in Rainbow homes. Therefore, girls faced challenges in cooking food and survived on packaged and easy to cook foods. Challenge in money management from YAs’ own contributions and financial supports from Rainbow. Many YAs mentioned about spending money lavishly in the beginning of the month and struggling at the end of the month. Challenge in taking all decisions by themselves without adult supports, guidance and advice. Challenge in time management to do household chores apart from studying. Chances of getting exploited financially by the job consulting firms. Many of the girls across cities reported paying money to consulting firms but got target based sales jobs. Not able to mingle with the community and hence have poor networks in job market.
Perceptions and challenges of the staff Keep motivation up for retaining jobs: One of the major challenges faced by the staff across cities have been keeping the motivation of YAs in retaining part time or full-time jobs. Young adults are choosy about jobs despite not being capable of anything better they are placed into. Despite too much of efforts in placing YAs into jobs after series of negotiations with companies, arranging skill-based training at concession rates, YAs do not value the efforts and are not able to retain their jobs. Despite trainings on work ethics as part of Rainbow’s ‘Future’ program, many YAs take impulsive decision of leaving jobs and not ready to compromise even for a few days to learn and gain experience at workplace. Some young adults have serious medical conditions and health issues for whom sustaining stressful job or work demanding long working hours seems problematic. Future program support for such YAs’ basic living expenses and medical expenses till they find suitable job after completion of studies. For example, one of the girls in group living arrangement in Delhi had to leave job due to her throat problem whereas another group living girl
in Hyderabad mentioned about losing part time job as the company closed down. However, some of the YAs leave their jobs for trivial reasons such as petty conflicts with line managers, extra working hours etc. Tendency to hide problems among young adults in Group Living: Despite future team’s efforts in maintaining regular contact with young adults in different living arrangements to know their health conditions, emotional wellbeing, regular happenings in their lives and guiding them to manage their day-today affairs or supporting in any kind of contingencies and emergencies, young adults tend to hide their problems from staff. Staff across cities mentioned that most of the time, YAs in different living arrangements do not inform about the challenge they face in their community or living spaces. Young adults, mostly, in group living arrangements have tendency to hide their problems such as health issues, conflicts among inmates or problems faced in communities because they opt for group living on their own preference despite alternative choices being given for social welfare hostels or other living options. For example, in one of the group living arrangement in Kolkata, neighbourhood faced conflicts between two political parties and incidences of bomb throwing happened during election time. Girls got terrified due to the political violence but did not inform Youth Mentor or state future team at that point. Similarly, in another group living arrangements, one girl was suffering from poor appetite and did not menstruate since long time but none of the girls in the group informed state team or the mentor even during the routine follow up. Most of the time, YAs across cities do not proactively share the problems being faced in group living and issues are identified only from surprise visits in their living arrangements. On the contrary, YAs in hostels keep regular contact with mentor or future focal persons in case any small problem they face which is quite positive as state team can have close monitoring on them. Challenge to keep contact in regular intervals: Due to the distance of different group living spaces, team visits the living arrangements on weekly basis. Despite the future focal persons across all states Different Shared Living Arrangements for Care Leavers
41
