Residential Child Care and the
Family Metaphor:
Relations, Relationships and Relatedness
Andrew Kendrick
… it is essential that we provide the
necessary warmth, affection and
comfort for children's healthy
development if we are not further to
damage emotionally children and young
people who have usually had a raw deal
from life
(Children’s Safeguards Review, 1997)
Ongoing concerns about residential child care

Another Kind of Home – Skinner Report

Children’s Safeguards Review – Kent Report

Historical Abuse Systemic Review – Shaw Report

National Residential Child Care Initiative
Ongoing concerns about residential child care

Defensive practice – Kent’s ‘sterile environment’

Poor outcomes




education
health
employment
Continued ambiguity about residential child care
Anti-residential bias
Family
Residential
Good
Bad
Safe
Risky
Natural
Unnatural
Homely
Institutional
Issues with the family

the ‘ideal’ of the nuclear family

from the nuclear family to the ‘unclear’ family
Measured against the cereal-packet norm of the nuclear family, it is
complex, with children and resources linking households across space
and time, in ways which render the identification of ‘family’ with a
single, discrete household wholly misleading. (Simpson, 1994)

the breakdown of the family

the root of lack of social cohesion
 the locus of poverty and social exclusion
Family as metaphor in residential care
“Eddy’s always been there, but me and Eddy have bonded all well,
that’s what I’m saying. I call him, he’s my dad, you know what I mean,
but he seemed to have always been there when I was restrained or,
anytime I’m angry, I’ve left the building, he always seems to be there.”
(young person)
(Steckley and Kendrick, 2005)
“She was like, a, like a sister, because… we… you know, we figured we
looked alike and… we were really close. She was like family to me.
(young person)
(Jim Anglin, 2002)
“I always regarded this place as my house.. Everybody that was here
was part of my family. All I’ve wanted for the last three, four years is
somebody to be there for me. Somebody I can turn round to and talk to.
(young person)
(BBC, Social Workers)
Linking with kinship studies
 Cultural definitions of family are very different
 Cultures of relatedness
 biology/nature  social
 structure  process/lived experience
Thus the ideas I describe lead me to question the division … between the
"biological" and the "social," between kinship as a biological, genetic,
instant, and permanent relationship, and social identity as fluid. In
Langkawi, ideas about relatedness are expressed in terms of procreation,
feeding, and the acquisition of substance, and are not predicated on any
clear distinction between "facts of biology" (like birth) and "facts of
sociality" (like commensality). (Carsten, 1995)
Families of Choice

anthropological and sociological studies of gay and
lesbian kinship

disruptions to, and severance of, kinship ties
experienced by gays who declare their
homosexuality to their families.
 ‘chosen families’ of friends are invested with certainty,
depth, and permanence, and spoken about in
the idiom of kinship
Not simply families of ‘fate’ or ‘choice’
‘… we have suggested that the imputed dichotomous contrast
between given and chosen relationships is analytically shallow
and that, in practice, there is a complex process of suffusion
between familial and non-familial relationships.’
(Pahl and Spencer, 2004)
‘… children who, for whatever reason, are in state institutions
may consider certain professional carers, highly committed to
them, as ‘given’, although later in life they may recognize that
their commitment could not be reciprocal.’
(Pahl and Spencer, 2004)
Not simply families of ‘fate’ or ‘choice’
Given
Relationships
Chosen
Relationships
High
Commitment
‘traditional’
family
fictive kin
close friends
Pahl and Spencer (2004)
Low
Commitment
more distant kin
Routine
relations (of
work, etc)
Blurring of boundaries
The boundary between ‘familial’ and ‘non-familial’ relationships
is increasingly blurred in everyday lives.
There is certainly evidence for an extension of family
relationships in terms of the language used so that individuals
and practices may be described as being “like family” where it is
clear that this is a positive evaluation. It is also evident from
some of our studies that these non-familial intimate relations
provide practical and emotional support for particular family
members in such a way as to enable particular clusters of family
relationships and practices to continue.
(Jamieson et al. 2006)
Children creating ‘like-family’ kinship

a special relationship that seemed like family with
someone who was, geneologically speaking,
unrelated to them.
 children liked the person and interpersonal and
interactive elements were relevant
 shared biography and borrowed relational
biographies
 creativity and electivity
Perhaps most importantly, we have argued that children’s like-family
relationships are forms of kin relationship that children value.
(Mason and Tipper, 2008)
We met a number of participants who had experienced feeling
accepted, secure and a sense of belonging in residential care. In
the best experiences, participants thought of their residential
carers as a kind of family… What often characterised the positive
relationships in residential care was the continuing sense of
security and safety, which could be relied on.
(Happer, MacCreadie and Aldgate 2006, p.17)
Back to outcomes in residential child care

a recent review and meta-analysis of research on
residential child care concludes that children and
young people, on average, improve in their
psychosocial functioning (Knorth et al, 2008)

the limited research on residential child care also found
that generally children did better following time
in residential care than they were doing
beforehand (Forrester, 2008)
Back to outcomes in residential child care

when the nature of the aims of placements is taken
into account, foster placements and residential
placements were equally successful in achieving
their specific aims (Kendrick, 1995)

if one takes account of behaviour, age and age at
entry, children’s homes are not significantly
‘less successful’ than other placements (Sinclair
et al.,2007)
The centrality of relationships between young
people and staff

several of the studies of residential homes explained
successful residential care according to the
quality of the interaction between young people
and adults. Terms used include: empathy;
approachability; persistence; willingness to
listen and reliability (Berridge, 2002)

attachment theory, resilience theory have highlighted
this centrality of relationship
Whitaker, Archer and Hicks (1998)





being ready to listen, both to the evidently momentous
and to the apparently mundane
being sensitive to a young person’s readiness, or not, to talk
and to share feelings and experiences
combining non-verbal or symbolic forms of caring with verbal,
explicit ones
noticing good or admirable behaviour and crediting a young
person for it
marking special occasions in a young person’s life with a
celebration.
Back to cultures of relatedness

alongside individual relationships between children and
young people and residential staff members

the sense of relatedness brought about by




routines, rhythms and rituals of daily living
sharing of food
involvement in cultural and leisure activities
the living space and the environment

A sense of normality
… it would appear that creating a “sense of normality”
for the residents without attempting to pretend that a
group home setting is either “normal” or “normative” is
vital for their sense of well-being (Anglin, 2002)

Intimate familiarity
… importance [of] the fact that the relationships were
possessed of a particular characteristic. I have come to
think of that characteristic as “intimate familiarity.”
(Garfat, 1998)
It is in understanding children and young people’s centrality in
the complex mesh of relations, relatedness and relationships
that residential child care must find its true potential.
They didn’t treat it like residential, they treated me like family,
basically… there was one worker who treated me like a
daughter… it was more like a family home than residential
(Female, 17)
Anglin, J. (2002) Pain, normality, and the struggle for congruence: Reinterpreting residential child care.Binghampton: Haworth
Press.
Carsten, J. (1995) The substance of kinship and the heat of the hearth: Feeding, personhood, and relatedness among Malays in
Pulau Langkawi, American Ethnologist 22, 223-241.
Carsten, J. (ed) (2000) Cultures of relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carsten, J. (2004) After kinship. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Forrester, D. (2008) Is the care system failing children? The Political Quarterly 79(2), 206-211.
Garfat, T. (1998) The effective child and youth care intervention: A phenomenological inquiry. Journal of Child and Youth Care,
12(1-2)
Happer, H., MacCreadie, J. & Aldgate, J. (2006) Celebrating Success: What Helps Looked After Children Succeed. Edinburgh:
Social Work Inspection Agency.
Jamieson, L., Morgan, D., Crow, G. & Allan, G. (2006) Friends, neighbours and distant partners: Extending or decentring family
relationships., Sociological Research Online, 11(3). <http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/jamieson.html>.
Kendrick, A. (1995). Residential care in the integration of child care services. Edinburgh: HMSO/Central Research Unit.
Kendrick, A. (ed.) (2008) Residential child care: Prospects and Challenges. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Mason, J. & Tipper, B. (2008) Being related: How children define and create relatedness, Childhood 15(4), 441-460.
Pahl, R. & Spencer, L. (2004) Personal communities: not simply families of ‘fate’ or ‘choice’. Current Sociology, 52(2), 199-221.
Simpson, B. (1994) Bringing the ‘unclear’ family into focus: Divorce and re-marriage in contemporary Britain, Man, 29(4), 831-851
Sinclair, I., Baker, C., Lee, J. & Gibbs, I. (2007) The pursuit of permanence: A study of the English child care system. London:
Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Steckley, L. & Kendrick, A. (2005) Physical restraint in residential child care: the experiences of young people and residential
workers. Childhoods: Children and Youth in Emerging and Transforming Societies International Conference, 29 Jun - 3 Jul 2005,
Oslo, Norway.
Whitaker, D., Archer, L. and Hicks, L. (1998) Working in children’s homes: Challenges and Complexities. Chichester: Wiley.