About the project

StePLife was a longitudinal study conducted by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW and the OST – Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences between 2021 and 2025 in German-speaking cantons in the field of residential care. The study focused on the question: How do young people change their personal lives through residential care?

^{Video von Michael Mittag www.michaelmittag.ch}

Residential child and youth welfare services, particularly the field of residential care, have increasingly moved into focus in both society and the social sciences over the past two decades. Research on coming to terms with the history of residential care, together with heightened societal sensitivity to children’s rights and child endangerment, has contributed to this development. These developments point to the need to understand and involve young people in residential care as active agents of their own personal lives.

Personal life (Smart 2007) refers to a nexus of social relationships and places of residence through which a sense of identity, belonging, and connectedness is established by a person. Findings from previous studies point to the high significance of social relationships and places of residence, although the potential for change inherent in these dimensions has not yet been sufficiently analyzed. This is where StePLife comes in, examining how adolescents aged 12–17 change their personal lives as a result of residential placement.

Within the framework of a two-year longitudinal panel study, young people in residential child and youth welfare services in German-speaking Switzerland were surveyed using standardized instruments across three waves. In addition to the dimensions of social relationships and places of residence, the study also assessed the conditions shaping personal life (current residential group, family of origin, previous placements, behavioral patterns, etc.) and the consequences for young people’s well-being (life satisfaction, etc.). The study thus contributed to a better understanding of the changes in young people’s personal lives, to identifying which conditions influence these changes, and to showing how their well-being changes as a result. This was an important prerequisite for further developing residential child and youth welfare services in a way that can adequately address the complexity of personal life.

The StePLife research project was conducted under the direction of Prof. Dr. Stefan Köngeter (Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, OST) and Prof. Dr. Dorothee Schaffner (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, FHNW), in collaboration with five research associates from both institutions, and was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).