The Key Texts are the classics from the past, which helped to shape today’s services. Some are books, some are research reports, some are papers or chapters in books and one is a Government policy document. We have selected a score of texts, and are offering a “digested read”. They are being published at a rate of two a month. The digests cover a standard pattern, setting the context of the text, describing its contents, analysing its impact then and its relevance now, and suggesting further reading.
The digests prepared to date have been written by Robert Shaw, but if any reader wishes to contribute, please get in touch, to ensure that we have not already prepared a digest on the text in question. We are pleased to announce that the series is sponsored by the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care, and we are most grateful to them for their support.
Raissa Page and George A Clark (Eds) (1977) Who Cares? Young People in Care Speak Out London: National Children’s Bureau 0 902817 13 2
A major criticism of many writers about residential work, the key exceptions being Homer Lane (Bazeley, 1928), and Neill (1962), is that they tend to believe that children and young people can only make decisions with the guidance of adults, an assumption fairly comprehensively undermined by the setting up of so many children’s republics in the aftermath of the Second World War (Brosse, 1950). This, coupled with the belief that disturbed or delinquent children are in various ways children who have not grown up, had led many of those working with children in the UK in the 1960s to disregard the views of children and young people about anything that went on in their lives.
The Who cares? project, originally established in the wake of a significant increase in the number of children and young people in care, was one of two projects – the other being the Personal Social Services Council project on adult care which coincidentally was going on at the same time (Personal Social Services Council, 1978) – which questioned the lack of concern for the rights of people in state care.
Key Ideas
- Children and young people come into care through no fault of their own.
- Being in care is stigmatising.
- There are good as well as bad points about being in care.
- There are many costs arising from being in care.
- Young people should know what is happening to them and why.
- Young people should be prepared for when they leave care.
- Children and young people should have specific rights.
Contents
In Chapter 1 ‘How this book came to be written’, the editors relate the study to the doubling in the number of children in care in Britain to 120,000 over ten years. The project was announced in April 1975 as commencing with a one day conference in June for young people in care. 100 children attended and at the end of the day 22 volunteered for a working group of whom 16 eventually attended; one was forbidden to attend by their head of home, one was soon to leave care and four decided they wanted to do something in their own area. The group adopted the title: Who Cares? Young People’s Working Group. They came up with the idea of a book based on taped discussions of which there were ten over the first year.
In Chapter 2 ‘Received into care’, the editors stress that most children are in care through no fault of their own and follow this up with numerous examples in the young people’s own words.
In Chapter 3 ‘The stigma of care’, the editors note that being put in care is often used as a threat and recount, using the young people’s words, many of the misconceptions there are about the reasons why young people are in care and young people’s embarrassment about the fact.
In Chapter 4 ‘Good points and bad’, the young people describe the good and bad points of care including the quality of care, the location of care homes, the fact that it is not ‘home’ (all positives), uncertainties about what to call staff, the various staff they have encountered and their frustration at a system which requires them to get their social worker’s permission to do various things – a system which often replicates the very ‘piggy in the middle’ tensions that had existed between their parents in their own homes.
In Chapter 5 ‘The personal cost of care’, the young people give examples of the cost of being in care including lack of privacy and facilities.
In Chapter 6 ‘Making sense of care’, the young people express their frustration at the way they are moved, changes in their social worker and changes in staff. They are particularly critical about the lack of clarity about their own situations, the lack of communication and the lack of information about their parents and siblings.
In Chapter 7 ‘Discipline, punishment and violence’, the young people describe the sorts of punishments and violence to which they have been subjected in care.
In Chapter 8 ‘The six-monthly review’, the authors note that only one young person knew what a review was and give examples of young people’s experiences.
In Chapter 9 ‘Other kinds of care’, the young people explore their experiences of fostering and the attitudes they encountered, which were by no means always positive.
In Chapter 10 ‘When care ends’, the young people recount their experiences of preparing for leaving care and the editors note the lack of preparation for leaving care.
In Chapter 11 ‘Who cares?’ the editors record how the project enabled the young people not just to share their experiences but also to change their views over the course of the project. For example, many had initially been accepting of adult violence but had shifted to non-acceptance.
The books ends with A charter of rights for young people in care
1. to be treated as individuals
2. to know who we are
3. to make our own decisions
4. to have privacy
5. to have opportunities to handle money
6. to choose who will represent us
7. not to be labelled
and The things we want to change.
Discussion
The overwhelming impression one gains from this book is the lack of care being shown by many working in the care system towards the children and young people in their care. This extended from individual staff who might be cruel to them through social workers who couldn’t be bothered to keep young people informed of their situations to authorities who either made arbitrary decisions or failed to make appropriate decisions about the young people and the staff who cared for them.
The Advisory Council in Child Care (1970) had advocated many of the things the children and young people asked for and the publication of this book led to the establishment of the National Association of Young People in Care (NAYPIC) which, for a number of years, sought to encourage improvements in the care of children and young people. Furthermore, the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act (Scotland) 1995 both provided for children and young people to be consulted about decisions and to complain. However, many of the rather modest proposals in this book have never been formally implemented. For example, children are still routinely denied information about their families, cannot make decisions about where they will live, are not given privacy, opportunities to handle money or the right to decide who will represent them and have certainly not lost the label of being ‘in care.’
Nearly thirty years later the consequences of this lack of care in England were spelled out by Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education and Skills:
‘…for many of the 60,000 children who are in care at any one time, childhood and adolescence are often characterised by insecurity, ill health and lack of fulfilment. This is terribly sad. And we can hardly be surprised that it results in many children in care underachieving educationally and getting nowhere near fulfilling their potential as adults…” (Department for Education and Skills, 2006, p. 3).
References
Advisory Council in Child Care (1970) Care and treatment in a planned environment: a report on the community home project Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London
Bazeley E T (1928) Home Lane and the Little Commonwealth Allen & Unwin, London
Brosse T (1950) War-handicapped children: report on the European situation Publication No 439 United Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural Organization, Paris
Department for Education and Skills (2006) Care matters: transforming the lives of children and young people in care Cm 6932 The Stationery Office, London
Neill A S (1962) Summerhill: a radical approach to education Victor Gollancz, London
Personal Social Services Council (1978) Policy issues in residential care: a discussion document Personal Social Services Council, London