2026 Theses Doctoral

Bending the Arc: Exploring Well-Being and Success Among Individuals with Foster Care Experience

Pekcan, Burcu

The majority of youth in foster care face structural and systemic barriers that adversely affect their long-term well-being and success. Yet, many beat the statistics and achieve positive outcomes. Using a mixed methods design, this study centered the lived experiences of individuals with foster care backgrounds to better understand how they conceptualize well-being and success and the personal, social, and systemic factors that contribute to their desirable outcomes.

Well-being was conceptualized holistically, encompassing health, relationships, financial and career stability, and personal growth. Success was defined as the accomplishment of goals and as a combination of meeting material needs and emotional achievement. The pathways were found to be idiosyncratic. Supportive relationships contributed to well-being by providing emotional support and material resources; they also influenced success by providing confidence and opening up opportunities. Resilience and coping skills were associated with well-being, while intelligence, determination, and optimism helped focus on goals.

Economic stability nurtures well-being by moving beyond survival mode. Financial and structural supports create conditions for success by building up capacity to achieve self-sufficiency. PERMA profiler was used to assess well-being, and a new composite measure of success was developed to capture success holistically. The 7-item success composite demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .80) and strong concurrent validity (rs = .55, p = .001), confirming its reliability as a measure of success. The findings suggest that there is no nomothetic solution to improve foster youth outcomes; instead, programs should be individualized.