Listen to thisInstitutional language has no place in children's homes
‘On shift’, ‘key worker’, ‘risk assessment’, ‘LAC review’ … how can young people in care ever really feel at home?
The words spoken to us in childhood are the first we hear and follow us as we grow up. The words of encouragement and caring. The words of negotiation. These words come back to us when we have our own children. From the back of our memory we find words to calm a crying baby, to encourage the first steps.
As a children’s rights worker for children in care, I deal with advocacy and empowerment. I’m no stranger to the challenges these children face. They lack privacy, growing up with so many people (teachers, social workers, care staff) knowing everything about them.
One conversation I had with a young person, Toni, living in a children’s home, led me to think about the importance of the language used by staff. Toni hated being in care, and said everything around her reminded her she was in care and not at home.
We looked at what triggered this. We sat in the young people’s room by the noticeboard. Information on bullying, sexual health and drugs was pinned to the board, something you’d never have in your own home.
Toni then highlighted the language used all around her. Her room was next to the staffroom, and she was currently “on site”. She questioned whether she lived in a home or a work place. Do people come to help her in her house, or does she live where people work?
How would she be able to bring up her own children if this is what she has known of childhood? She had to fit in with the home, rather than the home being run around her. It wasn’t an unsupportive home but still, there was a system, forms to complete, meetings to hold.
Toni had been moved from where she had been brought up to a place unlike her hometown. Everyone in the area knew the place was a children’s home, so from the start her identity to those around her was a child in care, with all the associations that brought. Like many young people in care she felt that the general public viewed children in care as troublemakers, there because of their own behaviour.
The reminder that you are different is never far away for a child in care. This is then reaffirmed with every request, conversation, rule and limitation. The fight needed to change how you see yourself and to feel empowered is huge. The feeling that “it’s pointless going to my review”, “they never listen”, “nothing will change” is a common one.
A lot of children placed outside of their home town find they have a reputation, that they are a case handed down to other social workers. There is an underlying suspicion that the young person is placed where they are because they were difficult. It’s a hard reputation to lose, especially when you’re stuck in the same system.
My work is often about finding small things to support the young person to change. In Toni’s case it was questioning the noticeboard, looking at what the regulations were, helping her to have a say in some small way on where she lives and how she is treated.
Over the next few months we both collected the terms used at the home and Toni used them in a poem.
On shift, offsite
Menu planner, pathway plan
Full care order, section 20
Grateful, lucky
Welcome pack, clothing allowance
Health and safety, sanctions
Staff rota, staffroom
Sign for, key worker
Your file, care plan
Back to the unit
Semi independence, comply
Risk assessment, activity
Stat visit, staff
Looked after, leaving care
Pep, hand over
Contact, siblings
Aftercare, LAC review
Notice board, negative behaviour
Residential, engaged.
The terms are cold. They speak nothing of a relationship or emotions but of institutions and military language, and you wonder why they are used in raising children.
I see the development of such language as a consequence of the accountability of homes, which has ensured places are more safeguarded than in previous years. The concern is that this is passed from the staffroom to language used with young people.
At another children’s home, a young person was told by staff that they couldn’t buy cotton buds due to health and safety – hardly the language of a home. It’s the risk-averse response of “not on my watch”. Again, it makes the young person feel different because they are in care.
The ability to change one aspect of their situation builds confidence for children in care that they can have a say on other areas of their life. I have seen this first hand in many young people, using these skills to question their care and relationships. Empowering the young person to feel their views are credible, by open listening and supporting, can make a huge difference to their feelings of self and confidence in the future.
Rod Kippen
Wednesday 26 August 2015
Acknowledgements to The Guardian
