One reason residential group care has been subjected to much critique in recent years, and even to calls for its abandonment altogether across many jurisdictions, is that in comparison to the mantra that ‘every child deserves to grow up in family’, any suggestion that institutional or quasi-institutional care could be a reasonable substitute or even be reflective of family and family dynamics, seems like a stretch. Embedded within this critique is an absurd binary that pits narratives of family against narratives of institution. I consider this absurd for three reasons: First, all narratives constructed around binaries are absurd and empirically if not impossible then at least highly implausible; second, because family is an institution, and therefore pitting family against institution is nonsense; and third, because neither family nor institution are monolithic concepts, and therefore, phrases like “family-based care is preferable to institutional forms of care” don’t actually carry any inherent meaning.
The argument itself is also ahistorical and runs counter to the hegemonic movements over the past 2000 years (at least) toward shifting concepts such as relationship and belonging away from family and toward institutional entities, such as the state, the head of state, the Party (particularly under communism), the religion and its institutions, and, in these times of unfettered capitalism, the corporation, the brand, and the product. One might argue that particularly in the rhetorically most conservative and family-oriented contexts and geographies, such as the evangelist fanaticism in the United States, for example, the movement is hardly one toward family relationships and belonging and much more oriented toward finding one’s place in patriarchy, racism, white supremacy, ableism, and socio-economic status (or more simply, class).
At the same time, however, I am growing a little weary of simply rejecting the arguments against residential care and asserting its usefulness and value. In truth, a great deal of residential care I have come across over the years is in fact destructive and harmful to young people, and young people themselves have consistently and repeatedly expressed serious concerns about this form of care. Currently, the response to these concerns has been centered around the concept of quality standards. Essentially, the argument is that while there have been major issues and problems in many residential care settings, these are the result of poor practice and a lack of organizational commitment or competence (including profiteering from and exploiting the vulnerabilities of young people in need of out of home care). If we raise the quality standards of residential care service provision, bad actors will fall by the wayside, and good actors will not only remain but become even better actors.
I worry that this is not a particularly innovative position to take, and perhaps more problematically, it is a position that may not fully capture what is actually difficult about being cared for in residential care. The family-based care lobby is not entirely wrong; it is in fact true that residential care settings are ‘hard places to call home’ [1]. While we may not like to acknowledge it, residential care are spaces in which power is imposed quite significantly on the young people who live there, and all the relational practices in the world cannot undo this. All residential care is imposing, containing, and includes strong surveillance and control cultures, even if there are huge variations across different settings. All these settings are ‘expert-driven’ settings, and the experts are generally adults ranging from rarely seen psychologists and psychiatrists to the ever-present child and youth care practitioners. And all these settings construct young people’s lives by narrating them through clinical and behavioural reports, daily logs and incident reports, and ultimately discharge reports that come with recommendations (by the professionals) about what the young person might need next.
It is of course also the case that residential care settings are physical settings, surrounded by walls, doors and windows that create a clear separation between the world ‘out there’ and the world ‘in here’. To the extent that relational practices can mitigate the security apparatus that is ever-present (through control, programs, and expert judgment of behaviours, needs, vulnerabilities and strengths), this does not really address the structural context of the setting. Quality measures are good and we hope for the experience of young people in residential care to be positive at the inter-personal level (relational practice) and in material ways (good food, comfortable beds, nice aesthetics). But in the end, increased quality simply means that sites of control and surveillance become more palatable and less exploitative and destructive.
What if one were to re-think the possibilities associated with residential care from an entirely different perspective? What if we were to suspend our ideological commitments to longstanding concepts of containment, and we moved on from the idea that the only ‘normal’ way of growing up is in family, or, if family is not available, in settings that attempt to replicate the dynamics of family life as much as possible?
Sketching out some alternatives can help us to move away from core assumptions that typically are based on fairly white and fairly liberal, and most certainly very gendered concepts of safety, security, social values, and economic productivity. What if, for example, youth were to be placed not in one residential setting, but across a range of residential settings, with the ability to spend time in whichever one feels right in the moment. What if care giving relied much more substantially on the relationships between youth themselves, as well as between young people and community members, and professionals were in place simply to guide and foster possibilities in the development of such relationships. What if there were no time limits at all on how long young people spent in residential care (multiple sites), and instead their ‘discharge’ were a function of them no longer choosing to be there (even better, what if we just never discharged them)? What if the relationships between child and youth workers and young people were primarily driven by considerations outside of the setting rather than the focus on helping young people conform to programs? What if young people paid rent for living in residential care? What if young people’s education were based on their connections to community members and the sharing of their wisdoms and skills rather than school or school-like classrooms in the basement of the setting? What if all training and education for child and youth care were to be offered jointly to young people and those hoping to become child and youth workers? What if all residential care settings offered ownership shares to young people and their families to the physical resources based on family participation in the experiences of their young people in residential care (multiple settings)? What if all residential care settings had to be responsive to a circle of advisors of parents and caregivers of young people?
One might ask a thousand more questions of this nature. The point is that the question we should all be considering more carefully is ‘what is normal’? Why do we assume that a substitute family setting is the most normal way for young people to grow up if they cannot grow up physically in their original family? And to what extent is this suggestion that family-based care is more normal than group care (in whatever form) really just an artifact of times long gone? Almost nothing these days is place-based; between virtual relationships and online counselling, migration patterns and online learning, and so many other things (banking, shopping, playing, etc.), the patterns of the 21st century clearly is one in which place-based and static institutions (such as family) are hanging on, but not always successfully. Why then do we accept residential care at best as a temporary placement option but with a view of finding family-based care instead?
Normal means different things to different people. One way of living a normal life for young people we typically have placed in residential care settings as a placement of last resort may be to live their lives through much more differentiated, dispersed, and fluid relationships that allow them to become whatever they need to become. Such relationships don’t have to be tied to a singular place or a particular kind of institution (family). Meaningful innovation in residential care is not about quality standards; it is about questioning whether the things we aim to expose to quality standards are part of the solution or part of the problem. Surveillance, control, professional impositions, and contained and performance-based relationships can surely be improved with higher standards, ensuring safety for young people better than before. And yet, one wonders whether safety in the way we think of it has any liberating potential embedded within it. Perhaps this version of producing safety is the problem, not the solution.
Lots to think about and ideally we do that thinking before we commit to yet another round of fortifying our oppressive systems with an aesthetic of ‘quality care’.
[1] In the interest of full disclosure, this is the title of my 2019 book A Hard Place to Call Home: A Canadian Perspective on Residential Care and Treatment for Children and Youth. Canadian Scholars.
