Transcript Representing the Views of Younger Children

Review meetings for children
in care: insights informed by
Bourdieu
Karen Winter
ESWR conference 2013
1
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
2
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
3
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
4
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’
5
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
6
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
7
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).
8
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
9
The capital in review meetings
10
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 knowledge
11
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
12
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
13
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
14
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.
15
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.
16

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.
17
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
18
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
19
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.
20
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
21
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
22
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.
23
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
24
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
25
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
26