Placement Instability Through the Lens of Lived Experience: Why We Must Act Now
One of the best gifts received this year was when we had this very good article recommended to us – and now we are recommending it to you!
It’s by Ashleigh Searle. Find it on LinkedIn (November 23rd 2023)
Unless you have lived experience, it can be tremendously difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of the children and young people we support, to be alongside them and be grounded in the reality of their experience. There are some techniques and exercises that allow us to step closer to lived experience perspectives and for the start of this article, there is one below for you try, please be kind to yourself and seek support if required.
Lens of Lived Experience
Think of your first ever sleepover. The first time you stayed over at someone else’s home. Remember the feeling of being a stranger in someone else’s house. Imagine that you have woken up before your friend, you stay there silent, not sure what you are allowed to do, waiting for permission to go to the toilet or even to get some water. Remember the feeling of being uncomfortable and alert to the feeling that this is not your home. Now think of a loss. It could be a parent, friend, grandparent. Imagine that you are experiencing that loss on the night of your very first sleepover, but it isn’t one loss, and it isn’t one sleepover, and it is not a friend’s house, it is everyone and everything you feel attached to, it is multiple first sleepovers and they are strangers not friend’s where you can’t call a parent to come and pick you up and take you home. This is the realty for many of our children in care.
In 2021 a study was undertaken deep diving into the experiences of children in care and care leavers up to the age of twenty-five. The twenty-five young people in the study represented 176 moves around the care and leaving care systems with half of the young people that were interviewed experienced a higher number of moves than the number of years they were looked after and receiving a leaving care service combined.
Pressures have continued to increase with many local authorities sharing challenges with securing homes appropriately matched to children and young peoples needs and a reliance on shorter term placements while they explore future options that may better meet their needs.
Moving home has been categorised as one of life’s most stressful experiences, because it involves having to cope with change, our young people are managing these changes frequently. From the perspective of the child, each move – no matter how long it lasts – is a new home, new people, new rules, and a new area to get used too. Attachment theory teaches us that children in care already have increased likelihood of issues with secure attachment, which can be heavily exasperated by being forced to move home multiple times once in care.
Promoting Stability Best Practice
Stability is essential for children and young people, it provides a secure base for them to build on and enables them to feel well enough supported to work through past trauma and begin a journey of healing. There are ways that we can promote stability even in the context of shortages of homes for our young people, which can also increase the number of available homes by having children in the right place at the right time and reducing moves:
Detailed and Comprehensive and Accurate Referrals
Many foster carers and children’s homes have shared experiences of receiving information about children and young people that does not truly represent their needs, both in that they were too critical and that they were not realistic enough about some of the challenges the young person may be working through. By ensuring prospective homes have up-to-date and detailed information about young people, matching can take place on the true presentation of their needs with someone appropriately prepared to support them.
Involving Children in Placement Processes
Involving children in placement processes enables them to be coproducers in their care, feeling as though they have a sense of agency over where they will live and who they will live with. Children should be actively involved in their referrals, either through collaborative writing of referrals or child-owned referral forms that accompany the main referral giving unique insight into them, their personality and hopes and aspirations. Additionally, they should be enabled to visit prospective carers or homes and have input into decisions affecting their lives, giving them a chance to feel positive about where they are going before they arrive.
Challenging Stigma and Bias
Children from black backgrounds are more likely to be described in ways that use critical language to describe behaviour or needs and are more likely to be considered ‘gang affiliated’ for association with a group of friends. This unconscious stigma and bias in language leads to increased difficulties in giving them the best chance at securing a stable home and increased likelihood of them being deemed ‘complex’. By ensuring writing is descriptive but not assumptive we can ensure fairer representation in placement processes and increased chance of positive long-term placement matching.
Preparing Those Supporting Children for The Realities of Caring
It is important that those supporting children are prepared for the realities of caring for them, many will be experiencing ongoing grief and loss and may find it difficult to bond with care-givers in the earlier days – this is not always a sign that it is not working. Additionally, many children regress once they feel comfortable and secure and a small-spike in behaviour may be a sign of them settling and feeling safe to work through their trauma. If this is understood and prepared for, it is less likely moves or breakdowns will happen in the earlier days.
Wrap-Around Support
Serving notice is a last resort, but it is important that we are able to say we did all we could to make a home work for a young person. It is much better to wrap-support around a home or family, as we would with families in need. Consider mediation, additional training, increased incentives and targeted support to promote stability and encourage homes to work through issues as we would expect with their own children.
What’s Right Instead of What’s Available
Avoid waiting for placement breakdown to start placement processes and searches. Whilst it is important to promote stability wherever possible, it is important to acknowledge that sometimes it is just not going to work. Know the signs and address them earlier on, by planning in advance it is more likely you will secure a home that is right instead of just what is available in a crisis situation.
Homes Not Placements
Challenge desensitising language to ensure acknowledgement that each move is not a move of placement but a loss and move of home. By being accountable to the reality of these moves, we will subconsciously work harder to prevent them.
Map Each Child and Young Persons Journey
Ensure data and monitoring tracks the total number of moves children experience while in care, no matter the length of time they are there. Through the lens of a child, a move is a move and will impact them regardless. By being accountable to children’s total number of moves we can see and understand the long-term journeys of our children in care and work towards ways to improve them.
Every child in care deserves stability, care and to feel supported to thrive. It is important we challenge the acceptance of multiple moves as a part of care experience and work towards ensuring children and young people have the least possible moves through out their journey in our care. By acknowledging the places they live as their homes and actively working to promote stability, we can ensure that fewer numbers of children and young people experience the high-levels of instability we are seeing at present.
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