« Previous | Contents | Next »
Listen
3 Having people who care about you
Twenty three of the 32 participants, when asked what helped them to be successful, immediately identified a person who cared about them:
My foster carers trust me, and they love me like I was their own daughter. (Tanya)
For many participants, there were several people who cared whose influence had been critical. People who cared provided support that was tangible to children and young people. It was expressed through their attitudes and their actions. Participants described adults who provided them with positive parenting and meaningful childhood experiences:
We were always involved…going along with my foster mother to dances and stuff like that which was actually great fun and a big treat … and there were holidays … it was a family situation. (Shona)
The people who cared for the participants were found in different contexts and in different roles. Most participants identified foster carers and residential staff as key people. Seven identified their social worker as having been particularly influential or helpful. Five specifically mentioned the support they had received from throughcare and aftercare services. Three participants had received services from voluntary organisations which they judged had made a very significant difference to the course of their lives. Several of the participants spoke of their positive experiences at school and helpful teachers, with one young person mentioning a guidance teacher as the most helpful person she had encountered. Another participant named the local authority children's rights worker as the most consistent professional person in her life and someone who she felt had contributed to her achievements.
Toni went to so many different schools that she couldn't remember them all. When she moved to secondary school, she began to miss school, until she was hardly attending. Her mother had problems with substance misuse and was unable to help her get to school or give her the parenting she needed. Toni asked a children's panel to find her a place in residential care, where she was living when we met her. She was going to school every day and was working towards seven standard grades. She talked about the importance of her key worker and the team of people who looked after her in residential care:
They've actually been alright here, made me feel safe, just helped me, because if I wasn't here I would just be running about with my pals outside and getting into trouble - that's no good for me. It feels like a family, because they all treat you the same.
Analysis of the discussion with participants about people that cared suggested that there were four important aspects to these relationships. These were:
- feelings of attachment between the child and the adults
- feelings of warmth, safety and being nurtured
- feelings of belonging and being included
- feelings of being trusted and trusting others
Feelings of attachment
Attachment to significant adults is important for all children. For looked after children, who may have already experienced adults who are unable to give consistent care or provide parenting that meets their needs, positive attachment is particularly important.
Claire was 16 when she took part in the study. She had been living with her current foster carers since she was 11 and said:
From when I first came here I enjoyed it. It was like the atmosphere in the place. They were really nice to us.
Before this placement Claire had moved between her mother, who had a drink problem, and foster carers and could not remember all her placements or how many there were. Moving between foster carers and her mother's care meant Claire had been to a lot of different schools, before moving to her current foster carers.
We know that it is possible for children to recover from separation from their family when they receive continuing and sensitive care (Aldgate 1990). Research on attachment suggests that children are able to develop new attachments, and in fact will be able to have many different attachments while they are growing up (Fahlberg 1991). We now know that patterns of attachment are not fixed and permanent for children. These patterns can change. Children and adults can also change the way they have learned to see others.
The way children's attachment needs are met will affect how they see the world around them and how much they trust and turn to others for support. One participant talked about how his foster carers treatment of him affected his feelings and behaviour:
I've got a good relationship with them - they treat me like their own child so I return it, you know? (Ross)
How children are able to manage and return feelings of attachment is important because learned patterns of attachment and trust are likely to affect an individual's ability to sustain relationships in adult life. Positive experience of attachment helps promote positive relationships in adult life. In addition, positive sustained relationships with others can be a factor in promoting success in adulthood (Rutter and Quinton 1984).
Participants in the study gave several examples of how they had been able to make new and lasting attachments to carers because of the sensitive and affectionate care they had received.
Daniel is a young boy with physical disabilities, and has limited communication skills. We met with Daniel, his foster carers, Simon and Anne, and their daughter Celia. Daniel was moved to foster care as his own parents were not able to care for him. Before living with his current foster carers, he had been with another set of foster carers and in respite care. Since being placed with Simon and Anne, Daniel's health has improved, as has his emotional and physical development. Those working with Daniel think that his significant progress is due to the quality of care he now has, along with a strong bond with his foster carers. Anne said:
He's one of our own, always has been and always will be.
This attachment also included Celia, who talked about her experience of friends at school suggesting Daniel was not her real brother. She told us:
He feels like a proper brother and always will be.
Many participants described the people who gave them direct care (foster carers or residential workers) as being their family, or like a family:
They treat you like part of the family. They're like parents, basically - substitute parents, good parents. You can speak to them about anything. (Ross)
Feeling trusted and trusting others
Participants said that knowing that someone genuinely cared about them was the most important factor in helping them regain a sense of trust.
Liam was 17 when we met him and was at college full-time, where he was studying for an HNC in social care. He also works part-time as a DJ, which he really enjoys. Liam was successful at school and achieved eight standard grades before going to college. Liam had been looked after since he was three, and had three foster care placements. Liam thought that the foster carers he was now living with were the best he had and said living there felt:
Like my own home.
Liam told us about his experience in a previous foster care placement, when he had been treated differently to the other children in the family. He contrasted this with his current foster carers, who had happily given him keys to the house.
Participants told us about how being shown trust by an adult gave them a message of confidence and optimism and boosted their self-esteem. Over time, provided the adult was skilled enough to go at the young person's pace and not to expect more than they were able to give at that time, this had a very positive impact on a young person's attitudes and behaviour.
I think the most folk need is trust. If you can see that somebody trusts you it makes you feel happier, it makes you feel as though you want to get it right in your life. It makes you want to get your life sorted out and basically get on with it. (Darren)
Feelings of warmth, safety and being nurtured
Before they had become looked after, many of the participants had lived in environments where they had experienced poor parenting. In these earlier experiences, participants described poor physical environment, a lack of emotional care and other difficulties. This contrasted with participants' experience of being looked after, like Carrie, who described the contrast between her neglectful home life, and her experience in the children's unit to which she moved when she was 13:
Having nice things and not being dirty and cold and hungry all the time. And not having to do work all the time, being at some adult's beck and call … having privacy, having your own room, having simple things that others take for granted, like deodorant and sanitary towels when you needed them.
This experience, of a marked change in the quality of life and care when being looked after, has been found in other studies, for example Aldgate and McIntosh (2006). Participants talked positively about their experience of this kind of change and the impact it had on their life:
Things were pretty bad. My mum was always drinking. We never really had much. Being in care changed my life so much. From having this really, really unstable environment to this family environment where everybody took a shower every night and we had decent food to eat. It was just great. (Fraser)
Several participants had stayed with their foster carers long-term and had become integrated into their families. The sense of belonging that emanated from these long-term relationships was one of the factors that promoted confidence and self-esteem. The participants learned that they were wanted and that they, in turn, had the ability to fit into the family or home in which they had been placed. These attachments often lasted into adulthood, as Matthew told us:
I'm still with our foster parents because although they're our foster parents, they are our folks.
Feeling included and a sense of belonging
The issue of feeling included or excluded was particularly important. Participants were very conscious of their different status within the family as a looked after child and had been very alert to being treated differently from the 'own' children:
To be honest, they never really did anything special, they were just … just being as fair to us as they would to their own children. Like, they never really treated us any differently. They took us on holiday to Florida because they didn't want us to feel left out. (Fraser)
Those living with foster carers who had children of their own spoke most affectingly of this. Feeling included and not 'different' was extremely important to them:
They don't leave you out or nothing … you feel like you are part of the family. They just treat us the way they treat their own son. (Liam)
Being accepted by the foster carers' whole family was also seen as very important by a number of participants. Participants talked of how sharing a room with the foster family's own children made them feel welcome and part of the family. Certainly acceptance by everyone in the household was very important to participants as a sign of their inclusive status:
So it was the whole family that fostered you, it wasn't just the mum and dad. It's really got to work that way, I think. (Jennifer)
Contact with foster carers extended family was no less important. It was seen as a sign of belonging, providing attachments across generations and access to experiences which were seen as enriching. Several participants talked about the importance of this:
It's been a natural family environment where I've always had the support of parents and I've always had the backing of, say, aunties and uncles. (Fraser)
My foster sister, who's the same age as me, she's actually got a daughter and when I see them, whenever I see my nieces and nephews it's like 'uncle Liam' and it's cool. (Liam)
In some cases, especially where children had spent most of their childhood in a foster carer's family, it was clear that bonds of attachment and caring relationships had developed over time between child and carers. Participants described how this bond manifested itself through feelings of belonging to their new family, feelings which were clearly reciprocated by the foster family accepting the child and making them feel loved. In some cases, the relationship became as if this had always been the child's family, and participants talked about how their carers were their real family:
I would class them as my substitute family, if you know what I mean. I would rather fall back on my foster carers, than I would my own family. (Luke)
Some participants continued to live with, or remain strongly connected to, their foster families long after they had stopped being looked after. Foster carers continued to be committed to children when they grew up.
Ross was 16 when we met him. He was studying for his highers, and had already passed eight standard grades, getting excellent results. He has lots of friends and a steady girlfriend. Ross gets on really well with his foster carers and said:
I look on them as my family so I can treat them as a mum and dad.
Ross became looked after when his mother was unable to care for him properly because of her alcoholism. He first lived with foster carers for respite when he was three months old. He has now been living full-time with foster carers since he was nine, having two longer term placements, one for two and a half years and one for four and a half years. Ross plans to go to university and join the forces. He is confident in his ambitions and wants to do well for himself, and the people who care about him. His foster carers plan to foster more children but have chosen to add an extension onto their house so that they will still have space for Ross for as long as he needs it.
We also found that the strength of attachment between the child and their carers could bring tension and worry as the child grew up. One participant told us about her concern that she would have to leave her foster carers where she was very happy before she was ready to. The foster carers shared this concern. In most ordinary families, children are not expected to leave home until they are ready to do so and both parents and child are confident that moving away from home will be successful. We discuss arrangements for supporting young people leaving care (throughcare and aftercare) in more detail later in this report.
It might be thought that it is easier to create a sense of belonging in foster care, which more closely replicates an ordinary family setting, than it is in residential care. However, 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.
The home that I was in, it was just a giant family. (Thomas)
What often characterised the positive relationships in residential care was the continuing sense of security and safety, which could be relied upon. Sometimes this was found in an individual member of staff.
Theresa told us about her experience of this. She was 34 years old at the time of the study and works as a social worker with a local authority. Theresa was separated from her younger brothers and went to live in residential care, where she was moved around a number of times. She formed a close relationship with one member of staff in residential care who gave her a lot of practical and emotional support. Theresa thought this to have been an extremely important relationship which has continued to the present day, and has provided an anchor in times of stress:
During all of my times of homelessness and all of my times of adverse circumstances, she has been the mainstay of my life and without her I wouldn't be here.
Some participants placed emphasis on the ethos of the home and the reliability of the staff:
If I ever broke down, if I ever needed any help at all they would help me. I know for a fact they would help me. (Darren)
At least one participant, having experienced both foster care and residential care, preferred living in residential care. The residential care team offered good parenting without making him feel different from other children or an outsider:
The staff in the home are great. For me it was better than being in foster care because though they [foster carers] act like they're your family, it's still someone else's family but in the children's home I just felt more accepted. (Thomas)
The positive feelings that participants had about their carers and other stable adults in their lives had, in their views contributed to their success. They added and reinforced confidence and self-belief to children as they grew into adults. A number of participants had experienced these close positive attachments over an extended period of time. Others who had experienced a higher number of placements talked about their eventual long-term placement as very influential. Those who had continued to move around in care were of the clear view that this was not good for them, or for any children.
« Previous | Contents | Next »