With one foot in childhood, and one foot in adulthood, the middle years are sometimes described as an “in between” stage of development. This “in between” status has, too often, led to invisibility as far as service providers and policy makers are concerned. Typically, the efforts of service providers and policy makers focus on children or young people, with little attention directed to those that fall in between. Yet there are good reasons for focusing on the middle years. The middle years represent a period in which protective behaviours can be developed or, conversely, when risk-taking and damaging patterns can emerge. There is also evidence that the middle years are a key period for early intervention. Therefore, investing in the middle years can be a crucial means of steering children and young people towards positive life courses. 

Good Shepherd has a longstanding interest in the needs of children and young people in their middle years. In 2008, Good Shepherd undertook work to explore the service gaps that exist for this age group. Following this, Good Shepherd conducted internal consultations with its children, young people and family services practitioners. These consultations explored, from practitioners’ perspectives, the particular difficulties that children and young people in their middle years can encounter, and what service providers can do to better address these needs. The practitioners reported that children and young people are presenting at Good Shepherd’s services at an increasingly younger age, and with increasingly complex issues. The practitioners emphasised that there is a need for more work to be done in this area in order to better understand the issues facing children and young people in their middle years, and what can be done to best support them. 

This report builds on Good Shepherd’s previous work relating to the middle years. It seeks to make a contribution to the evidence in this field by providing a snapshot of recent literature and policy about this topic. The key findings from the recent literature and policy are outlined in the following sections of this report.

Please note: This report forms the foundation for the research report "Bridging the divide: supporting children and young people in their middle years" (2017), in which the findings from the literature and policy review were workshopped with subject matter experts to create a holistic picture of how the opportunities and challenges can be better addressed in research, policy and practice.