The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Daily Lives of Young People in Residential Group Care

This chapter focuses on the impact and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic in residential group care in Germany and is based on the project “Participation in Residential Childcare” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In this regard, the following section illustrates how the metaphors of the socalled magnifying effect and the catalyst have been used across disciplines. Furthermore, it will be shown what has been discussed with the metaphors and what has been demonstrated with them. After introducing the methodology of the project, the idiocultures identified in the project that significantly determine the everyday life and interaction of residential groups are briefly described. Based on this, the results of group discussions with adolescents, which were collected during the pandemic, are presented and analyzed. This allows us to reconstruct existing problems, challenges, and effects of the pandemic at the organizational level in terms of idiocultures, on the one hand, and at the individual level in terms of the subjective experiences of young people, on the other. These findings are therefore based on the perspectives and narratives of the young people themselves and enable further thinking on how to work on these emerging problems and challenges. This chapter was reviewed by Ali Rahimi, who gave important feedback and advice from a care-leaver’s perspective. His remarks can be found at the end of this chapter