Highly vulnerable teens: a social justice imperative

In 2016 -2017, the Social Action and Research Centre (SARC), Anglicare Tasmania, undertook to investigate and document why and how some teens in Tasmania come to experience extraordinary trajectories of high vulnerability from early childhood into adolescence. The research explores the life histories of a cohort of teens (aged 10 to 17 years) whose needs for care have fallen outside families, between government agencies and between non-government services. This paper introduces some of the findings of that investigation and considers both contexts of individual vulnerability and available support systems and services. It unravels the fundamental paradox that those most vulnerable - both developmentally and in terms of the layers of adversity they experience - seem to be, at best, retained and, at worst, entrenched in vulnerability. As such, young people’s experiences of high vulnerability are framed as a key social justice imperative for Tasmania.