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Review meetings for children in care: insights informed by

Bourdieu

Karen WinterESWR conference 2013

Current context

Parental and child involvement in review processes for children in care a legal requirement

An essential mechanism through which needs of children identified and plans for their care drawn up

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Research evidence

Significant improvements in law, policy and practice to secure greater involvement

Some positive parental and child experiences Significant barriers remain Lack of practice near research and lack of

theoretical conceptualization

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Refocus research questions

The gap between these broader developments and the actual experiences of many children

and their parents suggests that it is necessary to consider afresh the micro dynamics within review meetings through which decisions are

arrived at

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Methodological challenges

Where in the review meeting does power lie and how is it exercised?

To examine this need to: Reclaim the individual case as a foci of analysis Apply sociological theories that elucidate social,

relational aspects of children’s encounters Develop theoretically informed accounts that

connect the ‘one’ and the ‘many’

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My research

In depth case studies In depth individual interviews with children

(aged 4-7), social workers and birth parents Uses work of:

Foucault (macro-discourses and discursive practices)

Bourdieu (micro-social and relational aspects which impinge on participation rights) –field, habitus and capital – The Weight of the World

Field – the review meeting

A legally mandated structured space where professionals, parents and the child are required to come together

Space organized around the same common interest namely the statutory requirement to review and agree a plan for a child

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Field – the review meeting

Field defined as ‘structured spaces of positions’ where ‘all the agents [people] that are involved in a field share a certain number of fundamental interests, namely everything that is linked to the very existence of the field’ and [where] they are ‘engaged in [a] struggle’ to accrue, acquire or keep a certain form of capital’ (Bourdieu 1993, p. 72-73).

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Capital

Four types: Economic (property and material possessions); Cultural (what is understood to be the legitimate skills,

knowledge, behaviour and competencies needed to gain and maintain power within a particular field);

Social (the quantity and quality of relationships and networks with others);

Symbolic capital (positive recognition, prestige and/or honour associated with the acquisition of one or more of the other types of capital). Can also refer to species of capital

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The capital in review meetings

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Capital

Knowledge of the child

Players in the field have differential knowledge of the child which they trade in

Some knowledge is more highly valued than other knowledge

Two main types of knowledge11

Capital

‘Assessed/objective knowledge of the child’ produced by social workers often imbued with jargon and objective terminology and the most highly valued

‘Subjective/relational’ knowledge of the child owned by parents and the least valued

‘Competition’ takes place with players trading on their knowledge of the child

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Objective/assessed knowledge

Congruent with organisational norms and forms –’damaged’, ‘needy’, ‘behavioural issues’

SW: [Andrew] … he’s been subjected to a horrible parenting and misdemeanours throughout his

wee life. Em, he is quite damaged. Very confused and very, very hurt and he’s very keen

to be loved. I think he’s afraid of rejection

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Subjective/relational knowledge

Draws on personal relationship with child

It is historical, personal, anecdotal, from memory, by word (rather than written script), woven through and within the child’s lived experience of family life, pre-dating social work involvement and therefore inaccessible to the social worker

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Subjective/relational knowledge

Mrs. Armstrong defines knowledge of her son Andrew through: the maternal relationship, similar shared childhood experiences with him and ‘blood ties’.

Yea […] he’s not a good mixer […] well he mixes with younger kids than himself […] you see he has [… ]

difficulties […] I should know I’m his mother and I went through the same thing [referring to her own care history

and childhood difficulties] … Me and Andrew is close and I know he is finding it hard what with us away an all.

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Subjective/relational knowledge

The importance of Mrs Armstrong’s knowledge claim lies in the fact that, the maternal relationship and similar shared childhood experiences cannot be reproduced or owned by the professionals

No-one else can be Andrew’s birth mother

No-one else therefore can lay claim to the unique experience and knowledge that accompanies the birth mother-son relationship.

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The importance of Mrs Armstrong’s knowledge claim lies in the fact that, the maternal relationship and similar shared childhood experiences cannot be reproduced or owned by the professionals

No-one else can be Andrew’s birth mother

No-one else therefore can lay claim to the unique experience and knowledge that accompanies the birth mother-son relationship.

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Habitus

The highly valued objective ‘knowledge of the child’ maintained by the operation of the professional habitus of the social worker and the strategies and techniques they employ

This occurs in a context where the parental habitus is defined through the discourse of inadequate, dangerous and/or inappropriate parenting

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Habitus

Bourdieu (1993) argues that subjects’ strategies of action are determined by their positioning in the field

Those in dominant positions enact conservation strategies the aim of which is to preserve the distribution and valuation of the different capitals and to safeguard, preserve and even enhance their position within this hierarchy

Dominated actors, on the other hand, operate subversion strategies in which their aim is to transform the fields’ system of authority including its relative valuation of different capitals

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Parental habitus

Mr. Armstrong: Yea [...] all the while you have to be careful what you say in case them uns [social workers] take it the wrong way. Like you have said something bad and they could cut your contact

Mrs. Armstrong: Yea. Like they have this over you that we’ve got your children and you might not get to see them.

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Professional habitus

Habitus – those taken for granted dispositions, norms, practices and language

Structuring effect of the LAC meeting and its requirements

Paperwork – note taking (suspicious) From filling for contributions Verbal contributions –questions (suspicious),

lack of time to talk

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Examples

Mr. Armstrong: Their school’s brought up. How are they doing in school, their health eh the health visitor’s always there. She’s been to every one of them eh their medical needs is all attended to blah, blah, blah [...] Just the usual load of bull

Interviewer: [Later in interview] Do you not find those useful questions or?

Mr. Armstrong: How would we know about their care?

Mrs. Armstrong: We’ve asked the questions and they don’t fire the answers

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Examples

Mrs. Armstrong Whenever you go to them (the meetings) you’re given pieces of paper that size and there’s a lot of writing on it and you’re maybe given sometimes ten to twelve sheets for each child and you’re given maybe ten fifteen minutes to go through them [...]

Mr. Armstrong: you’re not actually getting proper time to go through them

Mrs. Armstrong: Before they (the professionals) went in they had read all this paperwork for each child [but] we were given five minutes to go through nearly half a telephone book.

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Social positioning of the child

Crowded out by conditional support from the parent Where the child expresses a view congruent with

parental view (example returning home) this view is sanctioned as legitimate

Where child expresses a view to the contrary claims of coaching emerge

Same process mirrored in social worker accounts Competition as to who has the rightful, truthful

knowledge claims over the child

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Example Interviewer: How did [Andrew] get his views across? Mr. Armstrong: He wrote them but it’s not his handwriting and

they’re not his questions Interviewer: They’re not the child’s questions? Mr. Armstrong: You would know yourself love if you were at it Mrs. Armstrong: You know your own child like Mr. Armstrong Like there was one particular one ‘When am I going

to get a foster family’, now that’s my child’s question? Mrs. Armstrong: No that’s them talking to him about fostering Mr. Armstrong: That’s them putting words into his mouth Mrs. Armstrong: Drumming it into him like

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Drawing together

Use of Bourdieu to: Provide theoretical framework Provide methodological principles Provide backdrop to foreground accounts,

perspectives, the content, the depth, the process Important in terms of complimenting existing

research regarding children in care and their involvement in decision making