Family Metaphor Relations Relationships and Relatedness Andrew Kendrick it is essential that we provide the necessary warmth affection and comfort for childrens healthy development if we are not further to damage emotionally children and young people who have usually had a raw deal ID: 917729
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Slide1
Residential Child Care and the
Family Metaphor:
Relations, Relationships and Relatedness
Andrew Kendrick
Slide2… it is essential that we provide the necessary warmth, affection and comfort for children's healthy development if we are not further to damage emotionally children and young people who have usually had a raw deal from life
(Children’s Safeguards Review, 1997)
Slide3Another Kind of Home – Skinner Report
Children’s Safeguards Review – Kent Report Historical Abuse Systemic Review – Shaw Report National Residential Child Care Initiative
Ongoing concerns about residential child care
Slide4Defensive practice – Kent
’s ‘sterile environment’ Poor outcomes education health
employment
Continued ambiguity about residential child care
Ongoing concerns about residential child care
Slide5Anti-residential bias
Family
Residential
Good
Bad
Safe
Risky
Natural
Unnatural
Homely
Institutional
Slide6the
‘ideal’ of the nuclear family from the nuclear family to the ‘unclear’ family Measured against the cereal-packet norm of the nuclear family, it is complex, with children and resources linking households across space and time, in ways which render the identification of
‘
family’ with a single, discrete household wholly misleading. (Simpson, 1994)
the breakdown of the family
the root of lack of social cohesion
the locus of poverty and social exclusion
Issues with the family
Slide7“
Eddy
’s always been there, but me and Eddy have bonded all well, that’s what I’m saying. I call him, he’s my dad, you know what I mean, but he seemed to have always been there when I was restrained or, anytime I’m angry, I’ve left the building, he always seems to be there.” (young person) (Steckley and Kendrick, 2005)
“
She was like, a, like a sister, because… we… you know, we figured we looked alike and… we were really close. She was like family to me. (young person)(Jim Anglin, 2002)
“
I always regarded this place as my house.. Everybody that was here was part of my family. All I
’
ve wanted for the last three, four years is somebody to be there for me. Somebody I can turn round to and talk to. (young person)
(BBC, Social Workers)
Family as metaphor in residential care
Slide8Cultural definitions of family are very different
Cultures of relatedness biology/nature social structure process/lived experience
Thus the ideas I describe lead me to question the division … between the "biological" and the "social," between kinship as a biological, genetic, instant, and permanent relationship, and social identity as fluid. In Langkawi, ideas about relatedness are expressed in terms of procreation, feeding, and the acquisition of substance, and are not predicated on any clear distinction between "facts of biology" (like birth) and "facts of sociality" (like commensality). (Carsten, 1995)
Linking with kinship studies
Slide9anthropological and sociological studies of gay and lesbian kinship
disruptions to, and severance of, kinship ties experienced by gays who declare their homosexuality to their families. ‘chosen families’ of friends are invested with certainty, depth, and permanence, and spoken about in the idiom of kinship
Families of Choice
Slide10‘
… we have suggested that the imputed dichotomous contrast between given and chosen relationships is analytically shallow and that, in practice, there is a complex process of suffusion between familial and non-familial relationships.
’(Pahl and Spencer, 2004)‘… children who, for whatever reason, are in state institutions may consider certain professional carers, highly committed to them, as ‘given’, although later in life they may recognize that their commitment could not be reciprocal.’(Pahl and Spencer, 2004)
Not simply families of
‘fate
’
or
‘
choice
’
Slide11Not simply families of
‘
fate’ or ‘choice’
High Commitment
Low Commitment
Given
Relationships
‘
traditional
’
family
fictive kin
more distant kin
Chosen Relationships
close friends
Routine relations (of work, etc)
Pahl and Spencer (2004)
Slide12The boundary between
‘
familial’ and ‘non-familial’ relationships is increasingly blurred in everyday lives.There is certainly evidence for an extension of family relationships in terms of the language used so that individuals and practices may be described as being “like family” where it is clear that this is a positive evaluation. It is also evident from some of our studies that these non-familial intimate relations provide practical and emotional support for particular family members in such a way as to enable particular clusters of family relationships and practices to continue.
(Jamieson et al. 2006)
Blurring of boundaries
Slide13a special relationship that
seemed like family with someone who was, geneologically speaking, unrelated to them. children liked the person and interpersonal and interactive elements were relevant shared biography and borrowed relational biographies
creativity
and electivity
Perhaps most importantly, we have argued that children
’
s like-family relationships are forms of
kin relationship
that children value. (Mason and Tipper, 2008)
Children creating
‘
like-family
’
kinship
Slide14We met a number of participants who had experienced feeling accepted, secure and a sense of belonging in residential care. In the best experiences, participants thought of their residential carers as a kind of family… What often characterised the positive relationships in residential care was the continuing sense of security and safety, which could be relied on.
(Happer, MacCreadie and Aldgate 2006, p.17)
Slide15a recent review and meta-analysis of research on residential child care concludes that children and young people, on average, improve in their psychosocial functioning (Knorth
et al, 2008) the limited research on residential child care also found that generally children did better following time in residential care than they were doing beforehand (Forrester, 2008)
Back to outcomes in residential child care
Slide16when the nature of the aims of placements is taken into account, foster placements and residential placements were equally successful in achieving their specific aims (Kendrick, 1995)
if one takes account of behaviour, age and age at entry, children’s homes are not significantly ‘less successful’ than other placements (Sinclair et al.,2007)
Back to outcomes in residential child care
Slide17several of the studies of residential homes explained successful residential care according to the quality of the interaction between young people and adults. Terms used include: empathy; approachability; persistence; willingness to listen and reliability (Berridge, 2002)
attachment theory, resilience theory have highlighted this centrality of relationship
The centrality of relationships between young people and staff
Slide18being ready to listen, both to the evidently momentous and to the apparently mundane
being sensitive to a young person’s readiness, or not, to talk and to share feelings and experiences combining non-verbal or symbolic forms of caring with verbal, explicit ones noticing good or admirable behaviour and crediting a young person for it marking special occasions in a young person
’
s life with a celebration.
Whitaker, Archer and Hicks (1998)
Slide19alongside individual relationships between children and young people and residential staff members
the sense of relatedness brought about by routines, rhythms and rituals of daily living sharing of food involvement in cultural and leisure activities the living space and the environment
Back to cultures of relatedness
Slide20A sense of normality
… it would appear that creating a “sense of normality” for the residents without attempting to pretend that a group home setting is either “normal” or “normative”
is vital for their sense of well-being (Anglin, 2002)
Intimate familiarity …
importance [of] the fact that the relationships were possessed of a particular characteristic. I have come to think of that characteristic as
“
intimate familiarity.
”
(Garfat, 1998)
Slide21It is in understanding children and young people
’
s centrality in the complex mesh of relations, relatedness and relationships that residential child care must find its true potential.
Slide22They didn
’
t treat it like residential, they treated me like family, basically… there was one worker who treated me like a daughter… it was more like a family home than residential (Female, 17)
Slide23Anglin, J. (2002)
Pain, normality, and the struggle for congruence: Reinterpreting residential child care
.Binghampton: Haworth Press.Carsten, J. (1995) The substance of kinship and the heat of the hearth: Feeding, personhood, and relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi, American Ethnologist 22, 223-241.Carsten, J. (ed) (2000) Cultures of relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Carsten, J. (2004) After kinship. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Forrester, D. (2008) Is the care system failing children? The Political Quarterly 79(2), 206-211.
Garfat, T. (1998) The effective child and youth care intervention: A phenomenological inquiry.
Journal of Child and Youth Care, 12(1-2)Happer, H., MacCreadie, J. & Aldgate, J. (2006) Celebrating Success: What Helps Looked After Children Succeed
. Edinburgh: Social Work Inspection Agency.
Jamieson, L., Morgan, D., Crow, G. & Allan, G. (2006) Friends, neighbours and distant partners: Extending or decentring family relationships.,
Sociological Research Online, 11
(3). <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/jamieson.html>.
Kendrick, A. (1995). Residential care in the integration of child care services. Edinburgh: HMSO/Central Research Unit.
Kendrick, A. (ed.) (2008)
Residential child care: Prospects and Challenges.
London: Jessica Kingsley.
Mason, J. & Tipper, B. (2008) Being related: How children define and create relatedness,
Childhood
15(4), 441-460.
Pahl, R. & Spencer, L. (2004)
Personal communities: not simply families of ‘fate’ or ‘choice’. Current Sociology, 52
(2), 199-221.
Simpson, B. (1994) Bringing the
‘
unclear
’
family into focus: Divorce and re-marriage in contemporary Britain,
Man, 29
(4), 831-851
Sinclair, I., Baker, C., Lee, J. & Gibbs, I. (2007)
The pursuit of permanence: A study of the English child care system
. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Steckley, L. & Kendrick, A. (2005)
Physical restraint in residential child care: the experiences of young people and residential workers.
Childhoods: Children and Youth in Emerging and Transforming Societies International Conference, 29 Jun - 3 Jul 2005, Oslo, Norway.
Whitaker, D., Archer, L. and Hicks, L. (1998)
Working in children’s homes: Challenges and Complexities.
Chichester: Wiley.