The found family that is a children’s home is recognised by the Minister – life long links. However there is an irony …
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-backs-family-reunions-for-children-in-care
What has been happening as standard in many children’s homes, that children stay in contact throughout the years as residential child care workers accompany them through life stages, relationships, setting up home, birthdays, coming of age parties, introducing life partners, births, jobs, moving, sunday dinners, illness, and so many more usually experiences of those parenting and being parented, is now being recognised.
Until now the Minister has been trenchant in saying these do not exist in residential care.
As NCERCC has written so many times before residential child care can be a found family, not unlike many across the country.
For example, NCERCC-for-Parliament-Reconsidering-family-and-group-care.pdf,
“A while ago a train journey sitting opposite 4 unknown teenagers encouraged me to follow a thought I’d had for along while. This is what they said I’ve got a sister, two step-sisters and a half brother I’ve got a brother, and two step-sisters This got me thinking about varieties of families. There are birth, created and constructed families. These are all present in the everyday. They are not unusual. What makes any of the varieties become unusual is when they are omitted from thinking, or given a special status, or where one form is given greater validity than the others. What makes a family? It is what happens in the everyday. Clearly from the above, or from the ties that unbind in separation, it is not blood. The ties that bind, that make a family, is the experience of parenting and being parented, the experience of living together as a group. This group might be as small as two, but often with extended others, supporters, relations, that we might take as an extended family. When we start to look for what is common and we make for a wider and deeper definition of ‘family’ than the shorthand for which it is used”.
Government are funding a scheme to support children reconnect with relatives, trusted adults, former carers, teachers, other important people in their lives, as part of what they call ‘family finding’, part of the Enduring Relationships programme, aiming to build their support network and sense of identity, and to thrive into adulthood.
The Minister announces what has been happening all along, enduring relationships a central priority of residential child care.
It is confusing to read the words of the Minister in the press release, “lifelong relationships that most of us rely on for love, support and stability throughout adulthood” as new when this is something residential child care has been doing overcoming the barriers elsewhere in the system. It is not new. It is not old. It is just something that the sector has always done.
The irony is that the Minister’s vision for residential child care is precisely the short-term risk management he describes as curtailing the making of relationships. In the Reset document he sees use of residential care as ‘short’. He wants to move from crisis intervention and towards stronger families, stable homes and lasting relationships. This is done by residential settings. Something gets in the way of it being recognised and celebrated.
