In terms of theorising social identities, as explored in Chapters Two and Three, looked-after young people often have contested identities which can sometimes produce unintended barriers to the enactment of good practice (to promoting education achievement). As discussed in Chapter Two, some children with a looked-after status are constructed as vulnerable. This vulnerability can then become the master identity for children (Christensen, 2000, p. 40). In contrast to this master identity, as we shall see in later chapters, when authentically heard looked-after young people’s own voices can challenge dominant constructions by revealing themselves as no different to other young people. The discussion, in Chapter Two concerning looked-after young people’s identities focused upon ‘underachievement’ and ‘low attainment’, when compared to their non-looked- after peers, through three lenses: pre-care experiences; low expectations; and the importance of having aspirations. It was also shown how looked-after young
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people are positioned within complex and shifting occupational constructs within an ever-evolving (and devolving) UK welfare state.
Following on from the advancement of children’s rights, children’s participation and the importance of including children’s ‘voice’, children have become subject to greater surveillance and protection (Prout, 2003). Thomas and Holland (2010) argued that understanding children’s identity as a specific category is important as it touches their subjective sense of ‘self’ and therefore professionals must be sensitive and balanced in how they portray children and young people. There are numerous theories of what constitutes ‘identity’ and to establish a clear definition is ‘something of a challenge’ (Williams, 2000, p. 3). Thus, relating to the nature and meaning of identity, a selective rather than comprehensive account is provided here. Retaining elements of Lockean and Cartesian understandings of identity, modern understandings of self and identity rely on the tensions from within modern societies such as social regulation, social experience and social organisation as a means of shaping identities (Williams, 2000). A postmodern formation of identity argues that it is an existence of multiple networks of possibilities (Baudrillard, 1998). From an interactionist perspective, individuals often hold multiple identities (both individual and collective) (Jenkins, 1996). Moreover, it is through historical and external social forces that the idea of a multiplicity of self suggests that, ‘although childhoods are variable they are also intentional, predicated upon social, political, historical, geographical and moral contexts’ (Aitken, 2001, p. 57). The concept of identity within this study is thus informed by a postmodern formation of identity.
Chapter Three explored how during different policy eras looked-after young people’s identities were sometimes constructed at macro policy level as threats to social order and in need of state regulation, but also as ‘victims’ of neglect and other harms and in need of family intervention (Parton 1998). As previously stated, policy is interpreted, translated, mediated and implemented in often complex circumstances by public service professionals. Thus, with the focus on the micro or practice level, this section will explore how the identities of looked- after young people were constructed by LACE Coordinators and their team practitioners. It will be seen that the identity construction of looked-after children within practitioner accounts can be broadly positioned within the ‘state paternalism and child protection’ perspective (Fox Harding, 1997; Pinkney, 2000), where looked-after children as a result of their ‘looked-after’ status are
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understood through narratives that mix, thicken or thin the status of young people as ‘victims’ and/or ‘threats’ (Hendrick, 1994). Furthermore, this is where the child is viewed not as a subject with agency but instead as a deficit category: a vulnerable, passive subject dependent on state protection (Pinkney, 2000). Examples of this tendency towards problematizing the identity of looked-after young people can be noted in the following extracts:
Donna (LA2 LAC Learning Coach): People will say
to me now: ‘you work with naughty children’. I don’t work with naughty children! I work with colourful children! [Laughs], those with a personality!
Brenda (LA1 Learning Support Officer/Assistant):
We’ve got challenging children… I would say the majority, have got some kind of chip on their shoulder …We usually find that their needs hadn’t been met prior, before coming into care. So you’re always playing a catch-up game!
Anna (LA3 LAC (education) Mentor): [young people] they found it a bit hard to take to me… they
just don’t turn up [to my sessions]… I think a few of the GCSE students, would say that they found it [the
LACE provision] annoying [laughs]. Because, they’d
rather be elsewhere. When you’re sixteen, some things are more important aren’t they? Like their boyfriends, and they’re off like!
Rachel (LA1 LAC Learning Support Officer/Assistant): In this authority, attitude is quite
poor… it’s difficult changing [young people’s] attitudes, but I do try.
From these extracts, we can deduce that LACE team practitioners construct looked-after children’s identities in step with the notion of ‘threats’ linked to their own conduct and/or as vulnerable ‘victims’ of often multiple harms, and who are ‘in need’ therefore of welfare intervention. It appears that the matter of looked- after young people’s identities (discursively, victims and/or threats) operates to impede rather than perhaps to mediate policy enactment. Such identities intermingle beyond a simplistic binary. Linked to this point and described by all respondents as a major barrier to providing good practice, was the notion of visibility and stigma and how these can impact upon taking up LACE support within the school setting. For Ann (LA1 LACE Coordinator), it was acknowledged that other school staff may be competing with LACE practitioners, by providing a less stigmatising support provision within the school setting:
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Some of the barriers are young people wanting to access the support themselves… tuition is something that’s offered to all looked-after children and young people… it’s based a lot on whether or not the young person wants support. And I must admit in the Key Stage Four, the ones that aren’t accessing support from LACES, it’s really a fact that they don’t want it or don’t need it themselves. Or it’s a case that they are receiving other intensive support from the school, they perhaps have got a full-time LSA support via the LEA anyway.
The term visibility denotes an element of social sorting - an activity that relegates some people into invisibility (Mubi Brighenti, 2010). Visibility establishes a threshold where stigmatisation operates (Mubi Brighenti, 2010). Research has long reported that looked-after young people, in terms of visibility, frequently feel marked, labelled and stigmatised as a result of their ‘looked-after’ status (Martin and Jackson, 2002; SEU, 2003; Holland et al., 2010; Mannay et al., 2015). In this study several respondents reported that being identified as a looked-after child had significant consequences for their schooling outcomes. Ann (LA1 LACE Coordinator) recalled a year eleven pupil who did not want LACE support stating: “I don’t actually want to be seen as different in a mainstream school, I
don’t want to be highlighted as looked-after.” Goffman (1968) attempted to
describe the relationship between ‘normal’ and ’stigmatised’ individuals through their interactions within social groups and social institutions. For Goffman (1968) people can experience spoiled identities, which refers to those who are discreditable, discredited, have abomination of the body, and blemishes of individual character. However, it has been suggested that such spoiled identities can be and are resisted by some individuals (Goffman, 1968; Juhila, 2004; Severinsson and Markström, 2015). Rhiannon (LA2 LAC Learning Coach), described how there was evidence of looked-after children feeling marked out as being not the same as their peers and how this identity deficit is resisted by some young people:
I think a lot of looked-after children probably still see themselves as different… there is like that feeling of being different. Some of the looked-after children we work with they’d rather us not work with them in school.
Ann (LA1 LACE Coordinator) described how visibility was managed. Her account was corroborated across the other LACE teams:
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LACES support is available to every pupil and it’s just that battle as well of, you know? A year eleven pupil thinking, ‘I don’t actually want to be seen as different in a mainstream school. I don’t want to be highlighted as looked-after. The team try to be very discreet. And they try to sort of work their timetable, so it’s not that they are withdrawn from classes.
Similarly, Laura (LA3 LACE Coordinator) described how some young people were cautious about the LAC mentor support (in school): “on the whole young
people are very positive about having the support, but there’s been occasions where they’ve been hesitant about it.” The consequence of being labelled as
‘different’ results in a stigmatised identity and as such Donna (LA2 LAC Learning Coach) observed that: “It can be quite hard I find as well, for children to admit
that they’re in care.” The notion of visibility as part of stigma (Mubi Brighenti,
2010) is returned to in later chapters when this topic is considered from the perspectives of the young people in the study. Here, notions of young people’s own ‘responsibilisation’ and identity and how these link together as a means to engage in educational improvement are next considered.
In terms of the link between identity and responsibilisation, across all the LACE respondents the willingness of young people to take up the support offered by the team members was raised as a persistent issue and discussed in terms of young people’s own ‘responsibilisation’ to engage in their own educational improvement. It has been argued that the ‘repercussions of neo-liberal policy are that youth who cannot be ‘responsibilised’ by the systems become further marginalised when they adopt alternate ways of coping’ (Liebenberg, 2015, p. 1019).
The role of the local and national state has evolved from being a direct service provider to a commissioner of services that are often targeted at those most in need. At the same time, social life has moved from being viewed as fixed, inevitable and subject to ‘fate’ to being mediated through human agency and control in a world where we are deemed to make life choices and to take responsibility for these choices (Parton, 1998). By extension, held within this, it is the responsibility of young people themselves (including looked-after young people), to develop into ‘empowered’ responsible citizens (Newman, 2010). The following extract hints strongly at this notion:
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Sara (LA2 LACE Coordinator): [The team] will offer
support to all of the looked-after children. Some of them won’t want it; some of them will have to be persuaded that it’s a good thing … The difficult ones are the ones that don’t want support and won’t engage… they could get used to working with [the
team] and get that academic ethos - that education
is a key to a successful life, if they want it to be.
The notion of identity is returned to in later chapters when this topic is considered from the perspectives of the young people in the study.
Concluding Comments
There is a dearth of research concerning how local authority LACE Coordinators and team practitioners are meeting their legislative duty and promoting the educational achievement of looked-after children and young people in Wales. In addition there is little research exploring how government policy (Welsh Assembly Government, 2007) has been interpreted, translated or enacted by LACE Coordinators and front-line LACE practitioners in their day-to-day work practices (see Chapter One).
This thesis set out to explore this rarely researched occupational world through a largely ‘upward’ (from the ‘front-line’) instead of from a ‘top-down’ perspective (Hupe, 2014, p. 171). This chapter has highlighted that LACE Coordinators’ and their team practitioners’ work practices are set within a complex, diverse and multifaceted organisational landscape. The respondents described some unintended consequences of the policy direction, as a result of ‘threshold’ thinking. In their day-to-day engagement in inter-agency working partnerships and in crossing occupational boundaries they experienced aspects of professional rivalry that stemmed from and impacted upon their boundary- spanning activities. Furthermore, LACE Coordinators and practitioners held resources that they deemed chronically inadequate relative to the tasks they were asked to perform. It was shown that LACE Coordinators and their team members invoke narratives in which children are often cast as ‘victims’ and/or ‘threats’ (Hendrick, 1994). This is because a public child welfare discourse (legislation and policy) constructs the identity of looked-after children as often vulnerable ‘victims’ of often multiple harms as well as ‘threats’ to order by their own conduct and who are ‘in need’ therefore of welfare intervention. We have seen how the link between young people’s identity and responsibilisation can move us beyond the simplistic binary of victim/threat to demonstrate that these
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notions intermingle and can be used for particular occupational purposes to account for the work of LACE Coordinators and their team members. Their displays of expertise and legitimacy stem in part from appeals to the notion that they work with young people who are challenging. Issues of service failure or stress can also be positioned in a narrative of exoneration related to resource inadequacy and insufficient training to succeed with some children with complex needs.
Before exploring the young people’s engagement with and views about the LACE services (Chapter Seven) it is important to first explore their perspectives on being ‘looked-after’, their ‘in-care’ identities and their schooling experiences. It is towards these background contexts of the young people that the analysis now turns.
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