Listen to thisIn this the second of two articles about institutionalisation in residential child care, Jane argues tellingly about the way strict adherence to procedures and age limits (often notionally in place to protect children and young people) can make them more vulnerable. In our view this article written by a residential child care worker engaging directly with children and young people should be read by everyone involved professionally, economically, or politically with the public child care system. It reminds us that even when we are asked to think organisationally or governmentally that we should be concerned with and concerned about real children and not notional ones. You can read the first article in our April issue HERE
In this second article about a residential child care service which publically declares its intention to normalise the life experience of the young people it wishes to serve, I have selected some current aspects of residential child care which demonstrate that processes within the child care system, nominally intended to protect children, only serve to further de-normalise their life experience. I argue that these procedures do not free residential child care workers to provide the concerned care provided by a good enough parent. I come to the conclusion that the problems I highlight, as well as many others, can be overcome firstly by exercising professional flexibility in order to provide a more sensitive concern for the young people and secondly by an increase in the staffing complement of children's homes.
Documentation and written records
The documentation and the records which have to be maintained for each
child who is looked after in a children's home is voluminous and I often
wonder who reads them. I am aware that the reason for keeping all these
records is aimed at the protection of the children though it seems to me
its main purpose is either to inform an investigation after a complaint
is made or it is a method of reinforcing child care practice which is
professionally defensive rather than practice which is focussed on
children's needs for individual care. In order to carry out my work I am
required to complete Looked After Children documentation, record the
giving out of pocket money, record the administration of medicines,
maintain the home’s daily log, keep an individual record of each child's
activities for the day, keep records of expenditure on clothing, record
all meetings with each child, prepare reports for case review meetings,
record complaints, write a record of any investigation I have made about
a complaint, write out a written record of risk assessments I am
required to make of even quite mundane activities the children may be
involved with. Staff are often required to seek permission and to record
that this permission has been given for often quite trivial purchases.
This is not an exhaustive list but just what comes to mind as I list
this. Many of these records might on the face of it seem important but
they are certainly not records which parents might have to carry out in
the “normal” family home.
Privacy
Young people living in a children's home are expected to tolerate a wide
number of visitors which those living in a family setting do not. These
visitors include inspectors, commissioning officers from local
authorities as well as social workers. These visits may be seen as
necessary in terms of child protection but they hardly “normalise” a
child in residential care’s experience of life and neither do they
respect the child's right to privacy. Because of their previous
experiences young people in our care often have little cause to trust
adults and yet we require these young people to “trust” adults “and a
larger number of strange as well as familiar adults “much more than any
child living in a family would.
Unlike young people who live with their families, those who come to live in a children's home have at first to tolerate living with and being cared for by strangers. In a sense this is unavoidable when a young person is placed in a children's home and the task of residential child care staff is to begin to form a relationship with a new member of the group and I have found that in most cases young people soon build relationships with the others in the resident group. Having overcome this period of being a stranger, a child in residential care encounters procedures which though developed with his protection in mind differentiates him from his peers in the wider community. These procedures also prevent the residential child care worker from exercising the kind of discretion that a sensitive, caring and loving parent would.
Living together
Even when relationships with staff are formed and when friendships have
developed there are child protection procedures in place for the young
people which means they cannot experience their relationships with their
friends in the home and their friends from outside the home in the way
they might if they were living in a family. In the interests of “keeping
children safe” and the financial restrictions which limit the number of
staff a children's home, residential child care workers are required to
encourage the young people living in a children's home not to go into
each other’s bedroom, or to visit each other’s family homes . These are
two things which are possible for children who are not in care. Often
young people in a children's home want to do activities together in
their rooms – to play games, to talk to each other about things – which
in a normal family would not be questioned. These restrictions are
difficult for children to understand. They feel they are unfair and
children often comment that they are expected to trust staff but that
staff don’t trust them.
Inviting friends to the home
Other procedures principally laid down to protect children exist in
children's homes which do not help to encourage children to invite their
friends to the children's home. This further differentiates the life
experience of a young person in the children's home from that of a young
person living with his or her family. The friends of young people living
in a children's home have to “sign in” and may only be allowed in the
communal areas of the home which are occupied by other residents and so
no privacy is afforded for a friend's visit because visitors may not go
to a young person's bedroom. This aspect of life in a children's home
discourages a child from inviting friends to the home and so can isolate
some children even more from their home community. In my experience it
can also encourage other vulnerable children to live their entire social
life out on the street. It seems to me this would not be tolerable for
caring parents who like to know where their children are and as much as
possible who their children's friends are. Children who go out every
night are not available to build healthy and necessary relationships
with caring parental adults.
Friends and overnight visits
While most teenagers can occasionally have friends to stay overnight at
their home this is not possible in a children's home. Equally, allowing
young people who live in a children's home to stay overnight with
friends is also for procedural reasons problematic. In order to allow a
child in a children's home to stay overnight at a friend's house it is
necessary for the residential worker to make contact with the friend's
family and to build a rapport with them in order to judge that the
situation is safe for the child. Over and above this permission for an
overnight stay will have to be sought from the child's parents and
social worker. If any concerns are raised then it may be necessary for
further checks to be made concerning a friend's family before a visit
can take place. There may be good reasons for these procedures or “risk
assessments” but in my experience it is possible for these checks to
take weeks to complete. This process is not sensitive to a child's right
to privacy and their right to a normal social life. It can be acutely
embarrassing for a child who may be keen for others not to be aware that
he or she is in care.
Immediate independence
Most of us stay in our family home until we are 18 years and I left mine
at the age of 24 years and even then I still needed the emotional
support of my parents. I don’t think I was exceptional in this. How
extraordinary then that children in residential care “who are quite
frequently but unfairly criticised for their immaturity “as if by magic
at the age of 16 years are considered to be ready for living in a “semi-independent” or “independent” setting. I have never been clear
what the terms “independent” and “semi-independent” mean, not only in
relation to young people who live in the care system but in relation to
all young people. I have indicated already that I do not consider myself
either “independent” or “semi-independent” but I am if anything “interdependent”. I depend on other people and other people depend on
me. I intend that to be the case for the rest of my life. I thought that
reaching this conclusion was what growing up was all about. I may be
wrong but surely this is what being a “normal” member of a community or
a society means. Yet at 16 years of age so many young people in
residential child care are moved from their children's home to a
placement which offers much less support. They are required to do this
at a time when they are in the throes of adolescence and all the
insecurities which that brings along with it, when they are moving out
into the world of work and all the changes that entails or when they are
beginning vocational training or preparing for higher educational study.
I don’t think “good enough” parents would ask their 16 years old
children to move out of their home at this time. It is a difficult
enough period for any young person but so much more so for a young
person who has struggled emotionally and consequently often
developmentally. Our work with the young people is based on our
concerned and caring relationship – one that often has years of history – with a young person. For me it seems cruel and certainly damaging to a
young person to be expected to break off from a supportive and powerful
attachment relationship like this in such an arbitrary way. It only
confirms for a young person what they have experienced earlier in their
lives. Adults let you down. I also think it is damaging to the carers
and robs them of their personal and professional esteem.
In this article I have highlighted some of the ways in which professional procedures if not used flexibly, imaginatively and creatively can stunt the possibilities of residential child care. I believe that residential care if provided in a flexible, imaginative and creative way with sincere concern and thought for each young person can be successful for those young people who cannot live in or manage a family setting. In my view rigid adherence to procedure in order to protect the institution and the system “institututionalises” and “systematises” the very young people the system claims to be “normalising”. I am not advocating that there should be no procedures but that we should be giving due consideration to how procedures if implemented to the letter of the law have a tendency to de-personalise a young person. I also feel we should always be thinking of ways to reduce procedure in order that the milieu of a children's home is more natural and dynamic.
I am aware that the kind of intensity of care such flexibility will call for requires more and better trained staff but if we believe these children are worth our concern then we should be happy to pay the price. If we do not wish to do this, then as a society we should at least be honest enough to admit it.
Those of us who have influence in the field of child
care cannot pretend that living in a children's home can ever be a “normal” experience but we can do a much better job of it by making it a
more warm human experience.
References
Department of Health (2002) Children's Homes : National Minimal Standards : Children's Homes Regulations. London Department of Health. pp. 31-32.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. Harmondsworth. Pelican
This feature: Kenny, J. (2008). Caring Times, 4. Republished here with permission from goodenoughcaring.com
