Unaccompanied young people and transition to adulthood: Challenges for child care services

•Becoming adult implies a precarious stage for unaccompanied minors.•Border control and fostering policies hold up opposite aims.•Best practices of coordination between local agents become highly transferable.•Scholars involved in technical spaces of social services make a difference. The transition to adult life of unaccompanied foreign minors together with the role of specialised child care services in their caring is one of the least investigated stages of the itinerary on these minors’ migration. The article identifies the challenges and difficulties those specialised services in care of unaccompanied minors face, once their fostering ends. The study design is qualitative exploratory. The fieldwork in a southwestern European region involved working groups with specialised professionals and workshop sessions with unaccompanied foreign minors, coming mainly from the African continent. The results detected three major institutional, contextual and legal difficulties. Programs to support the transition to adult life lack a stable and standardised organisation, with sufficient financial and technical resources. An approach based on the social fabric of the community becomes essential. Finally, a planned transition pathway strongly requires legal (residence permit) and social (education and employment opportunities) supports. The research concludes that the observed local authorities are adopting a proactive position and that the technical relationship spaces for professionals have become a stable good practice.