Courts,care proceedings and outcomes uncertainty: The challenges of achieving and assessing “good outcomes” for children after child protection proceedings

The professed aim of any social welfare or legal intervention in family life is often to bring about “better outcomes for the children.” But there is considerable ambiguity about “outcomes,” and the term is far too often used in far too simplistic a way. This paper draws on empirical research into the outcomes of care proceedings for a randomly selected sample of 616 children in England and Wales, about half starting proceedings in 2009–2010 and the others in 2014–2015. The paper considers the challenges of achieving and assessing “good outcomes” for the children. Outcomes are complex and fluid for all children, whatever the court order. One has to assess the progress of the children in the light of their individual needs and in the context of “normal” child development, and in terms of the legal provisions and policy expectations. A core paradox is that some of the most uncertain outcomes are for children who remain with or return to their parents; yet law and policy require that first consideration is given to this option. Greater transparency about the uncertainty of outcomes is a necessary step towards better understanding the risks and potential benefits of care proceedings.     

Managing the Family: Productivity, Scheduling and the Male Veto

This paper argues that research, analysis and policy innovations focused on how households combine paid work with care responsibilities are driven to too great a degree by preconceptions of “the problem” that do not take sufficient account of how families themselves understand their work and care roles and the choices they are making. The evidence of 246 SOCCARE interviews across five European countries (Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the UK) is that the variables that are conventionally accepted as having fundamental significance (family‐friendly policies and generous care services, flexible working hours, women's work–life preferences, family type, national labour markets, cultural differences) are less important than is often suggested. More important are time pressures and the idiosyncratic factors that constrain the work and care timetables that families are able to construct. We characterize these as “scheduling problems”. They occupied a large part of the accounts of their lives provided by our respondents and are a primary dimension within which their combinations of paid work and care responsibilities need to be understood. The difficulties our respondents faced in coordinating the work and care activities of their families bear a striking similarity to the problems described in the operations research literature on small businesses. Within the context of these scheduling problems a second important factor emerged: the preferences and behaviour of men who played a critical, though often passive, part in the construction of work and care timetables of the families. We characterize this effect as the “the male veto”.     

Who Takes Care of Education? Looked after children's perceptions of support for educational progress

This paper documents the views of a sample of 80 children and young people, aged 10–18 years, living in foster and residential care placements in England, regarding their educational experience whilst being looked after. The children were interviewed as part of an ongoing evaluation of the Taking Care of Education project, a development programme designed to facilitate improvements in the education of looked after children, co‐ordinated by the National Children's Bureau and funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Interviews with the sample asked children to assess their current educational progress and identify individuals who supported or hindered their education, as well as the availability of educational support in care placements. Teaching staff were frequently mentioned as providers of support, whilst social workers were often associated with hindering educational progress. Children and young people had access to a range of educational supports in care placements, and these were more widely available in residential settings than in foster care. Children offered a range of pertinent suggestions as to how the educational experience of those in the public care system might be improved.     

The education of children in care and children in need: Who falls behind and when?

We seek to explain the development of the educational gap between children in “out‐of‐home care” (CLA), children deemed in social need (CIN), and other pupils. A cohort of 642,805 pupils aged 16 in 2013 was used to chart the educational progress of the full cohort, the CLA (n = 6,236), the CIN in 2012 or 2013 but not CLA (n = 20,384), and a sample individually matched with the CLA (n = 11,084). At age 7, attainment of the CLA and CIN was approximately 1 standard deviation lower than the cohort average and predicted attainment at 16. At this point, the persistent “CIN” (those with earlier and persistent needs) had the lowest attainment relative to others, and this declined further during secondary school. Those entering care before or during primary school had very low attainment at age 7, but their relative attainment did not decline. Attainment of CLA and CIN at age 16 likely reflects early environment, special educational needs, and poor relationships with secondary school. Policy, research, and intervention should focus on CIN as well as CLA, do so before entry to care, and take account of the onset of, and probable reasons for, educational difficulties.     

Engaging on the ‘front line’: exploring how family support teams construct meaning in their work with young mothers

This paper explores the provision of family support services for young mothers within a Sure Start Children's Centre, drawing on data collected within a larger study. It identifies how the family support team attempted to build supportive relationships with young mothers between the ages of 16 and 19 years. The findings presented here draw on narrative interviews (n = 10) and focus group interviews (n = 2) with the family support team that included early years workers, family support workers and their managers. The findings captured how the participants actively resisted the stigma (Goffman 1963) of teenage motherhood in order to support young mothers in gaining the necessary skills and knowledge to care for their child. Drawing on the findings, this paper argues that the building of a supportive relationship enables a young mother to construct positive counter‐narratives about her parenting experience. This suggests that the family \to offer informal early support to young mothers who are at risk of more formal intervention. However, the complexity of this task should not be underestimated because in doing this, the family support team must at all times ensure the well‐being and safety of the child.     

“Roll back the years”: A study of grandparent special guardians' experiences and implications for social work policy and practice in England

Growing numbers of grandparent special guardians (GSGs) are assuming responsibility for increasing numbers of children in the care system in England. Special guardianship arrangements are increasingly used as a permanency option as they allow children to remain in their kinship networks rather than in local authority care or be adopted; yet there is a scarcity of research on GSG carers' experiences. This paper reports a small qualitative research study where 10 sets of grandparents were interviewed to explore their journey to becoming GSGs and to theorize their subsequent experiences. Two themes emerge. First, experiences of the assessment process are elaborated, decisions often being made at a time of family crisis, impacting on GSGs: financial, employment, and relational. Second, GSGs' experiences of managing often challenging relationships and contact arrangements between the grandchildren and the parents reveal three main relationship management approaches emerging: containing‐flexible, containing‐controlled, and uncontained/defeated approaches. Anthropological concepts of affinity help theorize the GSGs' ambivalent responses to becoming carers in later life, enabling reconfigured kinship relationships in new family forms. Family policy and social work practice is critiqued as GSGs appear often left alone to “roll back the years,” to heal previous harms done to the grandchildren who end up in their care.     

Defining Success: The Perspective of Emerging Adults with Foster Care Experience

Youth with experience in the foster care system are often more susceptible to negative outcomes in adulthood due to higher levels of cumulative risk; however, there is little research on perceptions of resilience among this population. This mixed-method pilot study presents results from a modified prototype analysis that examined both qualitative and quantitative aspects of how emerging adults (ages 18–25; n = 18) with foster care backgrounds viewed the concept of “success.” Specifically, the approach involved a demographic questionnaire, modified prototype analysis, Developmental Assets® assessment, and focus group discussion providing valuable insight into the perceptions and experiences of emerging adults who have spent time in the care of foster families. Results share youth's perspectives of how their foster families contributed to resiliency and successful adult development. Findings indicate that the definition of “success” is complex and subjectively defined based on personal goals and that specific Developmental Assets® are important for foster families to promote youth resilience. This deeper insight into perspectives of former foster youth gained through the modified prototype analysis can guide agencies, advocates, and parents, permitting a more intentional promotion of success, and maximizing opportunities for resiliency.     

Caregiving in Transition in Southern Europe: Neither Complete Altruists nor Free-riders

In the framework of the SOCCARE Project, focusing on families dealing with a double front of care for children and frail elderly people, similarities can be found in Italy, France and Portugal beyond their different welfare regimes. The comparison of family histories and caregiving strategies, by the methodology of case‐matching, gives an interesting overview of the relationship between the debate on social care and that on the intergenerational contract. The paper aims to understand which are the available combinations of family, informal and institutional resources making a heavy burden of care “acceptable and still normal”: this focuses both typical situations of each country and common features through the countries. The results show how changes in the representations of obligation and duty in the intergenerational pact produce different outcomes and demands in welfare systems. The analysis of shifting boundaries between the public and private spheres in care provides useful policy recommendations, aimed at improving choices and “sustainable” responsibilities of individuals, families and social networks. Sustainable policies seem to be more dependent on family and structural types and resources of networks than on different welfare and services support.     

“Nothing goes as planned”: Practitioners reflect on matching children and foster families

Matching children with foster carers is an important step in every nonkinship family foster care placement. Although guidelines for matching are provided in several studies, the case‐specific context of the decision can influence the practitioners' ability to adhere to these guidelines. Therefore, this study answers the following question: “How does the case‐specific context influence the practitioners' decision‐making process regarding matching in family foster care?” Using a qualitative design, 20 semistructured interviews were conducted with practitioners matching children with foster families. Three themes emerged representing different layers of practitioners' everyday decision‐making: matching as planned, matching being tailored, and matching being compromised. The results show that exceptions are part of practitioners' daily work, either due to the belief that it might benefit those involved or because of obstacles presented during the decision‐making process. When the decision is compromised, matching practitioners lower their standards, while at the same time safeguarding the quality of the match. This proves that matching in practice is more than choosing a family, and guidelines are needed to determine what “good‐enough” matching should entail.     

The turn to optional familialism through the market: Long‐term care,cash‐for‐care,and caregiving policies in Europe

Cash‐for‐care (CfC) schemes are monetary transfers to people in need of care who can use them to organize their own care arrangements. Mostly introduced in the 1990s, these schemes combine different policy objectives, as they can aim at (implicitly or explicitly) supporting informal caregivers as well as increasing user choice in long‐term care or even foster the formalization of care relations and the creation of care markets. This article explores from a comparative perspective, how CfC schemes, within broader long‐term care policies, envision, frame, and aim to condition informal care, if different models of relationships between CfC and informal care exist and how these have persisted or changed over time and into which directions. Building on the scholarly debate on familialization vs. defamilialization policies, the paper proposes an analytical framework to investigate the trajectories of seven European countries over a period of 20 years. The results show that, far from being simply instruments of supported familialism, CfC schemes have contributed to a turn towards “optional familialism through the market,” according to which families are encouraged to provide family care and are (directly or indirectly) given alternatives through the provision of market care.     

A Conceptual Model of Family Surrogate End-of-Life Decision-Making Process in the Nursing Home Setting: Goals of Care as Guiding Stars

An increasing proportion of dying is occurring in America's nursing homes (NH). Family members are involved in (and affected by) medical decision-making on behalf of NH residents approaching the end of life, especially when the resident is cognitively impaired. This article proposes an empirically derived conceptual model of the key factors NH family surrogate decision-makers consider when establishing or changing goals of care and the iterative process as applied to the NH setting. This model also establishes the importance of family social role expectations toward their loved one as well as the concept, “stance toward dying,” as key in establishing or changing the main goal of care. NH staff and physicians can use the model as a framework for providing information and support to family members. Research is needed to better understand how to prepare staff and settings to support family surrogate decision-makers, in particular around setting goals of care. The model can be generalized beyond nursing homes.     

Family contact in foster care in Portugal. The views of children in foster care and other key actors

This is a pilot study on the sensitive issue of how children and young people experience family contact in foster care, and the views of key adults in their lives on the same issue. There is a special focus on the children's experiences, opinions, and feelings. The study is a response to the relative scarcity of literature on family contact based on the experiences of children and adults in caring roles. This is a qualitative and exploratory study, with a sample of 10 children and young people in care in the district of Porto, aiming to identify key issues and areas for further examination. The results allow us to conclude that the possibility of maintaining contact is positively evaluated. However, perspectives on the relationships involved, and on the reactions to and difficulties associated with visits, revealed considerable disagreement among the actors. A possible set of implications drawn from the findings pointed out to the importance of developing a monitored cooperation that improves communication processes in order to take into account the children's and young people's views in the decision‐making process; and to develop more attentive and open working relationships with parents throughout the foster care placement.     

Exploring the mechanisms explaining the quality of sibling relationships when children are taken into care: A qualitative study of Norwegian children

Sibling relationships are potentially central in children's and young people's lives. Research has shown that the quality of sibling relationships changes in a variety of ways when a sibling(s) moves into care. There is limited understanding of the mechanisms that cause these changes. This study addresses this gap by reanalysing a dataset of 25 semistructured interviews with young people (16 to 23 years) drawn from a municipality in Southern Norway. The original study explored the changes in sibling relationships when the young person moved into care. This reanalysis of the data set explores specifically, using a template analysis, the mechanisms that children describe when exploring why these changes occur. Findings show the intricacies of the young person's social identification with the biological and/or foster family and how sharing a common identity may be key to the development of the sibling relationship when the young person(s) is taken into care. Our findings also show how key adults, such as foster parents and social workers, influence the relationship. The paper concludes with recommendations for social workers on how they may strengthen sibling relationships in families where children have been taken into care.     

Siting Praxeology. The Methodological Significance of “Public” in Theories of Social Practices

The concept of “site” is at the center of current debates in theories of social practices as well as in cultural anthropology. It is unclear, however, how to assess the associated methodological assumption that overriding social structures or cultural formations can manifest themselves in sites. The article draws on the conception of social practices and introduces the notion of “publicness” in order to explicate how and why sociality and social structures can be accessed through “siting”. Sites as well as social practices, it is claimed, have to be conceptualized as essentially public and thus principally observable phenomena. This assumption of publicness implicit to both site ontology and theories of social practices is unfolded on the basis of a praxeological reformulation of the paradigm of joint attention elaborated in developmental psychology. To avoid presentist misinterpretations, we then conceptualize sociality as chains of practices across time and space, drawing on the works of Theodore Schatzki, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Anthony Giddens and Bruno Latour. The public carriers of practices (artifacts, symbols, media, bodies) and the translocal structures they establish acquire particular significance in these approaches. In a further step, we present some methodological consequences of the “publicness assumption” and support our arguments by referring to Pierre Bourdieu's study on Distinction.     

The Roots of “Radical Interactionism”

A plea has been made for replacing the perspective of “symbolic interactionism” with a new interactionist's perspective—“radical interactionism.” Unlike in symbolic interactionism, where Mead's and Blumer's ideas play the most prominent roles, in radical interactionism's, Park's ideas play a more prominent role than either Mead's or Blumer's ideas. On the one hand, according to Mead, the general principle behind the organization of human group life was once dominance, but it is now “sociality.” On the other hand, according to Park, this general principle is now and has always been dominance. Blumer takes a position much closer to Mead's than Park's arguing that the general principle underlying the organization of human group life is sociality. Under certain special conditions, however, it can become dominance. Although like radical interactionism, symbolic interactionism is rooted in pragmatism, unlike in radical interactionism, symbolic interactionism is still plagued with strains of utopian thought, among which the notion of sociality is the most virulent. Sociality may be the principle on which human group life is organized in heaven, but, down here on earth, it remains organized on the basis of domination. Thus, radical interactionism provides a much‐needed antidote to the idealistic overtones still found in symbolic interactionism.     

Putting the child at the centre of inter‐professional cooperation in out‐of‐home care

A large part of most children's childhood is about taking part in educational and leisure‐time activities together with other children across various contexts. However, children in out‐of‐home care do not always have easy access to these possibilities for participation. In general, parents coordinate their children's everyday lives, but in the case of children in out‐of‐home care, the responsibility of care is distributed between several professionals and institutions. Research often recommends that inter‐professional cooperation should put the child at the centre and be more child focused. But what does that mean? The paper investigates theoretical understandings of ‘child centredness’ in inter‐professional cooperation. It also includes an empirical example taken from a research project that followed four children in their everyday lives in two residential homes in Denmark. The research explored how professionals work together across contexts in order to support children to take part in school and leisure‐time activities. The overall reasoning leads to the point that for children in out‐of‐home care, the possibility of exercising personal agency in their everyday life constitutes a difficult but vital issue. How children in out‐of‐home care learn how to conduct their everyday lives, is closely related to the ways professionals cooperate across contexts. It points to the need for close inter‐professional cooperation in order to encourage and support children's initiatives and engagements in activities in communities with other children.     

Changing paradigms in measuring national well‐being: How does Korea rank “beyond GDP”?

Academics, politicians, and citizens around the world are calling for multidimensional measures of national well‐being to be included in public policy‐making. Under the motto “The Future of Well‐Being,” the 6th OECD World Forum recently pushed forward this debate in Incheon, Korea. Comparing multidimensional well‐being measures across countries, Korea ranks well in income and health, but shows deficiencies in social support, perceived freedom over life choices, air quality, and work‐life balance. Multidimensional measures of well‐being are increasingly being adopted by policy‐makers around the world to improve people's lives.     

“Build a friendship with them”: The discourse of “at‐risk” as a barrier to relationship building between young people who trade sex and social workers

Young people in statutory care and protection interact with social workers, who hold potential to provide a supportive adult role in their lives. Many however, run away at an early age and end up on the street trading sex for money or other favours. There is potential to improve outcomes for young people in care if the relationship between young people and their social workers is better addressed. This paper uses data from a qualitative study of 14 young people who traded sex and who had experienced interactions with social workers. A thematic analysis identified three themes: the rigidity of social work practice; contesting the family situation; and resisting the at‐risk label. We argue that to have any impact on outcomes for young people in care, social workers need to prioritise relationship‐building above the need to conform to organizational protocols and guidelines. Such guidelines assist the social worker in assessing whether family situations pose high risk for a young person, but the “at‐risk” label is contested by young people, which results in a lack of trust and a barrier to relationship building.     

Longing to belong: children in residential care and their experiences of peer relationships at school and in the children's home

Resilience literature has stressed the potential of both children's educational experiences and their friendships to act as protective factors against adversity. However, less is known about how children living with adversity navigate these ‘everyday’ aspects of social terrain and the particular challenges that they face. This paper explores the meaning and experience of peer relationships to one group of children living in residential care in Ireland. Drawing on a larger study of school and care, it explores data gathered from 16 children, aged 8 to 18, who were living in eight different children's homes on the east coast of Ireland. The findings suggest that the children were acutely aware of their ‘care’ status and developed a number of strategies to manage this identity in school. It appears that more often than not, children described being left to their own devises to manage friendships and peer relationships. Thus, despite being a crucial source of both stress and support, peer relationships did not appear to be regarded as an issue that adults should be involved with. This raises questions for practice about what children should be supported with and the way in which peer relationships are potentially overlooked by social work, residential and school staff.