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Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care Current Issue
Contents
Alan Macquarrie
Call for papers: Special edition on attachment and resilience
A brief history of (residential child care) ethics
Mark Smith
When I started working in residential care in 1981 I considered my job to bea vocation. By the time I left in 2000, ideas of vocation had become suspect,as had personal relationships. Instead, a host of ‘technologies of care’ (Webb,2006) and ideas of ‘evidence-based practice’ or ‘best practice’ had reduced therelational and holistic nature of care to a series of administrative tasks. Thisbrave new world was said to represent progress, modernisation, professionalismand a host of other ‘hurrah’ terms. I could not help but think we had lost muchalong the way.During my time as course director of the MSc in Advanced Residential ChildCare at SIRCC, I discovered Moss and Petrie’s (2002) book, From children’s servicesto children’s spaces. It began to make sense of the unease I felt about the directionof residential child care. It was something of an epiphany; we were playing onthe wrong ballpark altogether. Moss and Petrie argue that residential child careis fundamentally, irredeemably, a moral endeavour, yet it has, over time beenreframed as a technical-rational one.Getting students to accept the notion of residential child care as, primarily,a moral task was not always easy. I remember, in the course of my earlyattempts to introduce such ideas, being told by a seasoned campaigner that Iwas going too far this time. He had a point; rethinking residential child care asa moral endeavour can be almost counter-intuitive, leading us to seek rationaland prescriptive solutions to human problems. Reframing these problems asmoral ones requires that we challenge dominant narratives that would have usbelieve that warmly persuasive ideas of ‘improvement’ and ‘modernisation’can be achieved through ever-more prescriptive practice standards, codes ofconduct, and regulation. It also requires that we put aside the conceit and thefalse certainty promised, by such technical-rational fixes. Paradoxically, it beginsto implicate the quest for such fixes in many of the problems encountered inresidential child care. This position is increasingly recognised in the social workliterature, where there has been a discernible turn to ethics as a counterweightto technical and managerial ways of working (Meagher and Parton, 2004; Webb2006) and indeed in the literature on residential child care (Smith, 2009).
The Ryan Report in Ireland: Before and after
Noel Howard
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Government of Ireland, 2009)is the official name given to what we now know as the Ryan Report. It is socalled because Sean Ryan, a justice of the Irish High Court took over fromJustice Mary Laffoy in September 2003 to complete the work begun by her.The Ryan Report is about children, church and state. As for church and statethe report shows how those two unquestioned pillars of Irish society criminallyneglected the poorest and most vulnerable children and failed in their duty ofcare.The report is also about human nature at its worst. Yet there are occasional,rare chinks of light, compassion and humanity in this sad and sordid story.Perhaps it is on those that we may ultimately need to concentrate if the past isnot to repeat itself in some other way. As always in such reports, those chinksof light only prove that good work was and is being done all the time.Part of this paper is a resume of residential child care in Ireland over 40 yearsprior to the publication of the Ryan Report. That resume reflects my own viewthat the sense of optimism which permeated the residential care scene fromthe early 70s to the late 80s was diluted and fractured as revelations of abusegained in number and notoriety throughout the 90s. That sense of optimismhas been dealt a devastating blow in the wake of the Ryan Report.The Ryan Report from which I will draw in this paper runs to five volumesand 2,600 pages. Names and references abound in the report but I will refer inparticular to a man called Peter Tyrrell whose story in many ways encapsulates allthe best and worst that emanates from the report. And of course the questionmust be asked… what has happened since the report’s publication and wheredo we go from here in terms of Irish residential child care?
‘Raising’ children: A character-based approach to residential child care
June Jones
Traditionally, we tend to think about ethical behaviour as that which concernsour actions towards others. Training children and young adults to behaveethically is a notoriously difficult endeavour, partly because we are not livingtheir life, we are observing it from an outside perspective. People choose tobehave in a variety of ways, not all of them exemplary. A different way toapproach ethics is to consider what sort of people we ought to be. If we developcharacter traits that are beneficial to ourselves and others, we find that individualactions will tend towards ethically decent behaviour. This paper will explore acharacter-based approach to residential child care, where the aim is to develop achild’s character so that right action will flow more readily than focusing on therights and wrongs of individual acts. The aim is not to prescribe a set characterthat children ought to aim for, but examine how moral character develops andhow those with responsibility for the child can aid the developmental process.The role of characterAristotle discusses the importance of moral character by linking it to the conceptof flourishing, translated from Eudemonia. Eudemonia is related to how bestsociety flourishes, where individuals within a society contribute to flourishingfor all, rather than selfishly seeking their own flourishing at the expense ofothers. Aristotle believes that in order to flourish, we must develop ‘virtues’such as wisdom, justice, courage, temperance (Barnes and Thomson, 2002).Wisdom is a capacity for knowledge mixed with the predisposition to usethat knowledge rightly and with experience. Wisdom comes with age and lifeexperience; we do not tend to think a five year-old being wise, though they maybe clever. Justice is the capacity to act so that everyone in society can flourish.Courage involves making the right moral decision and right moral choices andfacing the consequences. Temperance involves self-control, making choicesabout how we live our lives and how we respond to the things that tempt us.For Aristotle, virtues are a disposition to act, feel and judge in accordance withright reasoning, where emotions, thoughts, feelings, experience and rationalityto combine to assist in the development of our character. He divides virtuesinto two types. Intellectual virtues are those that can be learnt in an academicsense through study, such as educational wisdom that affects the practical realm.
Catherine Hanly
This paper documents a summary of research which was conducted as part ofthe requirements for the completion of an MA in Child, Family and CommunityStudies at Dublin Institute of Technology. The aim of the study was twofold;to explore the practices of residential child care centre managers in vettingstaff for employment in residential child care, and to explore the attitudesof these managers towards current vetting requirements in the Republic ofIreland. A wide range of literature exists documenting all aspects of residentialcare provision for young people under the age of eighteen in state care. Thematerial examined for the purposes of this research covers both Irish andUK perspectives as well as international practice and experience in the area.This literature has consistently highlighted the particular vulnerability of thisgroup of young people. Also highlighted in within the literature is the needfor a range of safeguarding measures for these young people because of thisidentified vulnerability. Not least amongst these measures are comprehensivevetting practices which have been highlighted particularly through variousInquiry reports both in the UK and Ireland (Warner, 1992; Department ofHealth, 1994; Department of Health 1996; Corby et al., 2001). The literaturereview undertaken for this study demonstrated that there has been little directresearch conducted on vetting either in Ireland or elsewhere and, in particularresearch that examines the views of those responsible for this task.
Hannah Dale and Lorna Watson
Service provision for children and young people who are looked after shouldbe evidence based, as far as possible, in order to improve their health andwellbeing. This evidence base comes from literature and research. Yet researchwith young people who are looked after is scarce despite their poor outcomes(For example, Dale and Watson, 2010). This paper provides some reflectionson the research process of a health needs assessment in Fife, in which theexperience and views of young people was critical (Dale, 2009). It will exploresome of the barriers and facilitators in research relevant to health, and makesa plea for a more facilitative approach, within the existing regulatory systems.Barriers to conducting research with looked-after young peopleProcedural barriersOur research project relating to the sensitive topic of sexual health of lookedafteryoung people had senior support from NHS, social work, and experiencedacademic input. Nonetheless, it took approximately five months for ethicalapproval to be granted and several months to recruit just ten looked-afteryoung people. It is correct that research should be open to scrutiny particularlyto ensure that vulnerable people will not be harmed; however it has beendiscussed more generally in health that the need to seek ethical approvalmay discourage investigators from researching certain groups, in part due tothe lengthy procedures (Hedgecoe, 2008; Schnitzbauer et al., 2009). Furtherjustification and procedures may also be legitimately needed when researchingvulnerable groups; this may mean fewer researchers and practitioners willcarry out research with young people in the care system for fear of rejectionby ethical committees, avoidance of lengthy ethical approval processes andpoor projected sample sizes.
Elizabeth Kohlstaedt
Children whose earliest relationships have been marred by violence, chaos, abuse,neglect and loss find that these experiences are ‘hard-wired’ into their brain.As a result, they will grow up believing that these negative experiences reflectwhat future relationships will be like. Their way of seeing and interacting withthe world has been permanently altered by their earliest adverse experiences.Treatment – with a known healing agent, administered in adequate dose andfor adequate time and with adequate intensity – can bring those children backinto relational health. The curative factor is a relationship with direct care staff.In this paper, the author will describe a developmental/relational approach toresidential care for children which has been used at Intermountain, a treatmentfacility in Helena, Montana, USA, for 27 years. A description of the approach,a case example and the necessity of supervising and monitoring staff areprovided. Outcomes of this approach are also detailed.The need for relational interventionsIn 2008, almost 15,000 children in Scotland were looked after by social servicesand more than half of these children could not remain in the care of their birthparents. Eleven percent of the looked-after children were in residential centresacross Scotland (Scottish Government, 2008). They came to these places fora variety of reasons, but the common denominator of their referrals was thatthe adults in their lives could not care for them safely in a family setting. Thismeans that something about the parents’ relationship with the children wasamiss, and that led to the removal of the children and the placement of thosechildren into alternate care.
Creating a space for strangers
Kirsty Hamilton and Kathleen Mulvey
For those of you fortunate enough to have experienced a SIRCC annualconference then you will also know that it is an opportunity for so much morethan experiential workshops and guest speakers. It is an opportunity for peoplefrom all across the residential child care sector to come together, share theirknowledge and practice and support each other on the journey.As authors of this paper, we are both students at Glasgow School of SocialWork, and we are undertaking our degree in social work under the residentialpathway which is funded by SIRCC. As individuals we are opposites in so manyways. While one of us is focused and well organised, the other is an ‘Olympicprocrastinator’ who tends to wander off on a tangent. We have differentbackgrounds. One of us returned to learning after having spent time raisingher family and working in administration in a busy social work department.The other returned to learning having spent the majority of the last nine yearsworking directly with vulnerable young people. While we differ in so manyways we realised that the conference was an important experience and that wehad shared in something that is either the cause or effect of a feeling emergingfrom the residential child care workforce. We hope by trying to capture ourexperiences that our voices will resonate with everyone working with ourchildren and young people. We also hope to convey the role that the conferenceplayed in creating a space for two strangers who felt welcomed and includedby the end of the experience.
Book review
George Hollowell reviewing: Promoting healthy childhood development today by James R. Harris, Jr., Ph.D.
Leon Fulcher reviewing: Kinship care: Fostering effective family and friends placements by Elaine Farmer and Sue Moyer
David Lane reviewing: Residential care: A positive future by Terry Philpot (Ed.)