A NARRATIVE EXPLORATION OF THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF STREET-CONNECTED YOUNG PEOPLE IN INDIA

Street-connected children and young people are a marginalised population who experience multiple incidents of violence, hostility, and abuse. In this study, I aimed to document Indian street-connected young peoples’ accounts of their experiences, based in two Non- Governmental Organisations in Delhi and Bangalore. I created a safe place for participants to tell me their stories and aimed to draw implications for the development of psychologically-informed interventions for street-connected children and young people. I used a narrative research design, incorporating a multilingual element to my research to enable participants to tell their stories in the language they preferred, and analysed the transcripts using thematic analysis, within a holistic-content based approach. I identified five main themes structuring the narrativised understandings of the young people: (i) factors contributing to difficult circumstances; (ii) facing risks in developing street- connections; (iii) impact of difficult circumstances; (iv) connecting with services; and (v) street-connected young peoples’ retrospective thoughts. Informed by my analysis of their narratives I found that street-connected young people experience social inequalities as well as family related and systemic factors that contribute towards the development of difficult circumstances and accumulatively push them towards developing street-connections. Once street-connected, young people face potential risks related to violence and exploitation from different perpetrators and develop a range of coping strategies to deal with the impact of historical experiences and the current risks they face. Connecting with services may be challenging for street-connected young people in relation to adjustment and transition issues. I argue for the importance of attending to engagement issues as central to work with street-connected children and young people and propose a psychologically-informed multidisciplinary approach towards their care that is driven by psychological formulations. I draw implications for Counselling Psychology theory and practice, Non-Governmental Organisations working with street-connected children and young people, and state services.