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16 SEPTEMBER 2009
NO 1488
Residential child care
Residential care in general and child
care in particular has a long and powerful history. This backdrop casts
long shadows and shapes perceptions and attitudes about the service.
Parker (1988) points out that residential child care is very much
connected to its poor-law roots and that there remains a "persistent
public image of institutional care as `repugnant' " (p. 8). In the same
publication Parker refers to this long-standing negative attitude that
spans past and present as a "historical continuity" (1988, p. 8). Frost
et al. (1999) subject residential care to a rigorous historical
and sociological analysis and conclude that a number of key themes are
woven into the fabric and
history of residential care that make it a political activity. The
themes that they identify areas follows.
Subtle and not so subtle comments and observations reveal perceptions and views of "institutional" child care. Norman Warner (1992) reports a senior manager who commented in evidence to the Warner Committee that "residential child care is a necessary evil", not that it is a "positive choice" (Wagner, 1990) selected by many young people as a preference to living at home or in foster care (Frost et al., 1999). In a similar vein, a now retired Chief Executive of one of Northern Ireland's Health and Social Services Trusts said on viewing a soon to be opened new build residential facility for troubled teenagers, "It's far too good for them"! Ten years after Parker's (1988) analysis, Frost et al. (1999, p. 1) suggested that the public image of residential child care has changed little. They report a crisis of confidence in residential childcare and that the public view of children's homes is that they are places where children are ... victims, being sexually or physically abused, or villains, who are beyond control, involved in prostitution, crime or going missing" (Frost et al., 1999, p. 1).
With the exercise of power comes the risk of dis-empowerment. Children and young people who enter the care system may be dis-empowered already. Typically, they have been let down and neglected or abused emotionally and sexually by family and community, they may have had multiple placements in foster care, and they may have experienced societal intolerance about their unique characteristics such as disability or their life circumstances such as being in care. They will certainly be young people who are both "innately and structurally vulnerable" (Goldson, 2002, p. 153); the former concept refers to characteristics of the individual and the specifics of their immediate family and social environment, the latter refers to societal structures such as unemployment and poverty. Thus, a prerequisite to a real understanding of residential child care is a broad perspective that sees this substitute to family care in the context of a temporal, social, political and economic climate. And that, secondly, frames the core tasks of care as being about achieving a balance between empowering the dis-empowered alongside providing for them and, with them, "good experiences of comfort, care and control" (Winnicott, 1971, p. 31). As we have already seen early in this article, it is not just the "looked after" who know and experience disempowerment, care staff and managers can equally end up not knowing what to do, where to turn or contemplating extreme actions in order to exercise power and selfcontrol. At the conclusion of their sociological and historical analysis of residential child care, Frost et al. (1999) rightly argue and illustrate that good practice in this arena of social work practice requires a philosophical and practical orientation that works toward empowering carers as well as the cared for. We agree.
JOHNNIE GIBSON, MARCELLA LEONARD AND MENA WILSON
Gibson, J.; Leonard, M. and Wilson, M. (2004).
Changing residential child care: A systems
approach to consultation training and development. Child Care in
Practice, 10, 4. pp. 348-350.
REFERENCES
Frost, N., Mills, S., andStein, M. (1999). Understanding residential child care. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Goldson, B. (2002). Vulnerable inside: Children in secure and penal settings. London: Children's Society.
Parker, R. A. (1988). Residential care for children. In I. Sinclair (Ed.), Residential care: The research reviewed. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
Wagner, G. (1990). Residential care. A positive choice. London: National Institute of Social Work, HMSO.
Warner, N. (1992). Choosing with care. Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the selection development and management of staff in children's homes. London: HMSO.
Winnicott, C. (1971). Child care and social work.
London: Bookstall Services.
