Young People and the Care Experience

Research, Policy and Practice

Julie Shaw, Nick Frost

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415665223
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136680519
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The care system looks after the most vulnerable young people in society – those who are, for a variety of reasons, unable to live with their parents. Young People and the Care Experience examines what can be done to support young people to remain at home, and if this is not possible, how they can be supported whilst in care and on leaving care. The book explores the range of options – foster care, children's homes and adoption – and how these options interact. Using the latest research and framing the issues through both psycho-social and legal perspectives, the book provides an in-depth analysis of young people's experience of the care system, and how it can be improved.

Examining the challenges faced by children on their journey from initially entering care to living independently after care, the book places these issues in a global context. Specifically, it discusses

• how to support children and young people at home
• an analysis of the history and demographics of children placed in care
• the challenges faced by children living in foster care
• the challenges faced by children living in a children's home.
• the challenges faced by children being adopted leaving care

The book will be of interest to all those working with children in care, or those who have experience of the care system as a professional, carer or young person. It will also be of interest to researchers and students of developmental and social psychology, social work, and also to policy makers.

1 Supporting children and young people at home

Prevention, family support and the care system

I lived with different parts of the family. I loved it at granddad's cos he brought me up.

Laura, in care late 1990s and 2000s

It is not possible to examine the care system without looking at the available support in the community, which often has a stated and explicit aim of preventing the reception of young people into the care system. Family support for children living at home will be examined and critically analysed, and its relationship to the care system considered. The usefulness and deployment of the concept of ‘children on the edge of care’ will be explored.

The care system cannot be considered in isolation from the systems of ‘family support’ that exists in each national situation. The concept of ‘family support’ varies considerably in each nation but usually has a link with the care system through being conceived as preventing the need for reception into care. The structure of the care population is therefore partially structured by the nature of the family support system: theoretically, at least, the number of children in care will depend at least to some extent, on the effectiveness of the family support system.

‘Family support’

‘Family support’ comprises a range of differing practices and theories and thus it is difficult to both define and theorise. Family support may be community-based or centre-based, it can be highly professionalised or sometimes it can draw mainly on volunteers, it may be inspired by community development or therapeutic principles. For these reasons family support can be seen as a ‘slippery concept’ (Frost, 2003, p. 7) or as containing so many meanings ‘it is difficult to disentangle them’ (Penn and Gough, 2002, p. 17).

Despite the multi-faceted and wide-ranging nature of family support it has a key role within the child welfare system as a whole and an intimate connection with the care system in particular. In many social and political systems family support is based in a legislative framework which draws on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: ‘Children should not be separated from their parents unless it is for their own good (UNICEF, 2011).

As we have seen, the care system occupies a complex social space between the state and the family, in some ways family support and ideas about ‘early intervention’ (Allen, 2011) also suggest controversial theoretical challenges about the relationship between childhood, families and the state (Frost, 2011).

No state system wants large numbers of young people ‘in care’, for a series of practical, economic and political reasons. The care system is expensive to operate and is often perceived as having negative outcomes. Thus it follows that governments would want to do what they can to offer family support, with the aim of minimising the number of children in care. However there are a number of barriers that present themselves:

• Family support requires investment. A comprehensive family support system arguably existed in some totalitarian societies (the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Cuba in the 1960s and China during the early years of their socialist revolution) but these were expensive systems, driven by investment in services and in these contexts had authoritarian overtones (see a fascinating discussion by Bronfenbrenner (1974) comparing the US and Soviet Union).
• The technology of family support is uncertain: in other words the operation of family support raises the ‘what works?’ problem. Should a given society invest in large universal programmes or more specific, targeted programmes, or a mix of the two? Whilst research is suggestive (see Allen, 2011) it is too uncertain to give definitive responses.

There are also ideological challenges. Fox-Harding (1991) has outlined the differing ideological stances the state can take towards family policy:

• The laissez faire approach – largely leaving the family to be self-regulating and self-monitoring, within the normal parameters of the law. This is a low investment, but high-risk position.
• A parental rights/family support stance which emphasises the rights of the parent to raise their own children, and offers support in carrying out this task. This position is ‘pro-family’, and suggests some investment in supportive services.
• A protectionist stance where the state places an emphasis on ensuring children are safeguarded from parental abuse and violence. This position suggests some investment in protection services and has political costs in terms of being potentially seen as undermining family autonomy.
• A children's rights position where the focus is on the child and their need to be full participants in their own lives. (Fox-Harding, 1991)

An example of a specific ideological stance is provided by communitarianism which offers an approach to family support which perhaps reflects the second, parental rights position in the Fox-Harding framework. Communitarians argue for a partnership between state and family with rights and responsibilities on each side of the equation. This position was extremely influential during the periods in office of both the Blair British government and Clinton US administration (Driver and Martell, 1997). Two academics, one on each side of the Atlantic, were particularly influential in terms of communitarian thinking – Anthony Giddens (1998 in the United Kingdom and the theorist Amitai Etzioni (1993) in the United States. The latter represents a trend within communitarianism that places a strong emphasis on the responsibilities of parents in raising their children. Etzioni states that: ‘Making a child is a moral act. Obviously it obligates the parents to the child. But it also obligates the parents to the community’ (1993, p. 54).

This is clearly relevant to the care system – it asks the parent to take their responsibilities seriously and thus to ensure that they do everything that is possible to raise their own children. Etzioni argues that the needs of children should be prioritised over the needs of adults: ‘parents have a moral responsibility to the community to invest themselves in the proper upbringing of their children, and communities – to enable parents to so dedicate themselves’ (1993, p. 54). Giddens argues that the state has a more prominent role in family support than that proposed by Etzioni.

Communitarianism therefore provides a potential framework for reflecting on how the state and the family relate to each other, and the crucial role that family support practice has at the interface between the two. The British version of communitarianism embodied by then Prime Minister Tony Blair took the form of many state-led initiatives such as Sure Start, a locally-based family support programme, and Child Trust Funds, which encouraged financial saving in children's names.

Family support: a theoretical and research base

The effectiveness of family support is difficult to measure and researchers have struggled to demonstrate its impact (see Rutter, 2007). Perhaps the preeminent example of a positive impact is the widely acknowledged United States project known as the High/Scope Perry Pre-School Program. The programme operated in an inner city area of Michigan in the United States during the 1960s. It consisted of a family support programme that worked with African American children aged between three and five. The programme was made up of two-and-half hours per day of centre-based day care for the children during the week, which drew on an active learning model. This day care was supplemented by a home visiting process. The programme itself was similar to many projects that operate around the world but what makes the project stand out is that it was accompanied by an extensive research project which followed up the children at 15, 19, 27 and 40 years of age. The children involved in the study were allocated to the intervention group, High Scope group and a control group: there were 58 children in the intervention group and 63 in the control. The dropout rate is notably low for such an ambitious study with the researchers being in contact with around 90 per cent of the group at the 40th birthday follow up.

The findings of the High/Scope Perry research have been extensively reported. The data analysis is both complex and sophisticated and, in some respects, very much contested.

Using the High Scope data, Heckman and colleagues undertook a secondary analysis of the statistics, which is critical of some of the original research methods, but they nevertheless conclude that, ‘crime reduction is a major benefit of this program’ (Heckman et al., 2009, p. 11). An example of the facts that back up this assertion include the following:

The program group had fewer arrests overall than the control group (averages of 1.3 versus 2.3 arrests per person), fewer felony arrests (averages of 0.7 v. 2.0 arrests per person), and fewer juvenile court petitions filed (averages of 0.2 v. 0.4 petitions per person). (Parks, 2000, p. 2)

This is highly relevant to this book as the youth crime system is a major entry point to institutional care in the United States, particularly for black youth. Bellfield et al. (2006) undertook a cost benefit analysis of this data and make an estimate that $12.90 was saved from the public purse for every single dollar invested in High/Scope Perry arguing that these gains came mainly from reduced crime by males. Cunha and Heckman (2006), drawing from this High/Scope Perry Pre-School Program data and from other programme data argue that: ‘the most effective supplements supply family resources to young children from disadvantaged environments’ (2006, p. 1).

This data, therefore, provides strong evidence to establish the efficacy of family support programmes. Many of the analysts, including Cunha and Heckman, argue the social gains are related to educational change so that, using American terminology: ‘completing high school is a major crime prevention strategy’ (2006, p. 60).

Whilst the data presented here seems to be very persuasive, the impact of such programmes remains a topic of debate and controversy – as with many issues discussed in this book. This point is clearly demonstrated by the arguments emerging from the High/Scope Perry Pre-School Programme evidence. Indeed one commentator asserts that as a result of High/Scope Perry Pre-School Programme:

… the children from this program have in reality become welfare moms and hardened criminals

(Idaho Coalition of Home Educators,
http://www.iche-idaho.org/issues/34)

This position draws on the same data discussed by Bellfield, Heckman and others: it reflects the powerful impact of ideology and how perspectives are influenced by the differing value positions outlined by Fox-Harding (1991) and discussed earlier in this chapter.

Despite the differences and controversies it is indisputable that the US research base is extensive, which is certainly in contrast with the research profile of other parts of the world. The English Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), for example, argues that:

primary research in the areas of early intervention and of integrated working are in their infancy, and there is, therefore, limited direct evidence. (2007, p. 3)

The evidence challenges in relation to family support were illustrated by the experience of evaluating Sure Start – which was powerfully critiqued by Sir Michael Rutter (2006). The evaluation evidence was mixed, with some negative impacts being identified following Sure Start intervention. Rutter argues that the entire Sure Start enterprise was flawed as the way in which each local programme was undertaken varied considerably thus making the research task a very complex undertaking. We can see therefore that the exact nature of family support is difficult to research and analyse and that the exact relationship with the care system remains uncertain. We return to this question throughout this book.

Theoretical approaches to family support

Having outlined some of the research findings relating to family support, we now move on to explore its theoretical base. In the presentation of the High/Scope Perry programme data earlier in this chapter we see some of the features that are required to help us build a theory of family support and how it may contribute to preventing children and young people coming into care. Family support, it can be argued, has the following characteristics:

• family support is based on the idea of ‘early intervention’. This means that programmes can be relevant early in the life of the child or early in the emergence of the identified social issue in the family. Thus family support can be relevant to young people, and not only to young children, for example by addressing children on the ‘edge of care’.
• family support is a pro-active process which engages with the parent and/or young person in the process of change. It suggests active attempts to bring about change by the worker and the family network.
• family support attempts to prevent the emergence of family and social problems and to promote better outcomes for young people through family coherence.
• family support is based on theories of change. The aim of any intervention is to result in some desirable change and is based in a belief that change is achievable.
• family support generates wider social benefits. Such benefits may be savings in public expenditure, decreases in social problems or a reduction in the number of children coming into care (see Allen, 2011).

The English National Family and Parenting Institute (NFPI) has identified four principles of family support which reflect our discussion above. The NFPI argues that:

There is no single policy that can meet the many needs of Britain's families. And help needs to be sensitive to the subtle distinctions in people's feelings and values. A balance between the needs of children and the broader needs of families should be maintained; alth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Adolescence and Society
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Supporting children and young people at home
• 2 Who is in care and where do they live?
• 3 Living in foster care
• 4 Living in a children's home
• 5 Being adopted
• 6 Leaving care and the transition to adulthood
• 7 Being in care: A global experience
• 8 Promoting positive outcomes for children and young people in care
• 9 What future for children and young people in care?
• Bibliography
• Index