The Good, the Glad,
the Sad and the Ugly

A review of four books based on research into residential childcare

Pain, Normality, and the Struggle for Congruence
Professor Dr James Anglin 2002 The Haworth Press ISBN 0-7890-2141-2

Better than you think : Staff morale, qualifications and retention in residential child care
Amanda Mainey 2003 National Children’s Bureau ISBN 1-900990-85-7

Burnout Across Thirteen Cultures : Stress and Coping in Child and Youth Care Workers
Professor Victor Savicki 2002 Praeger ISBN 0-275-97453-7

Victims of Benevolence : The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School
Elizabeth Furniss 1992 Arsenal Pulp Press ISBN 1-551520015-X

Although all four books are based on research, the projects and subject matter are all completely different, and will have very different impacts on the reader. Yet there are many points of agreement, and many similar messages emerge, re-inforcing each other as they approach residential childcare from different angles.

Pain, Normality, and the Struggle for Congruence : A Call for Congruence

To start with Jim Anglin’s work, this is a brilliant book, which will become one of the standard texts on residential childcare. Any criticisms in this review have to be seen against this overall judgement.

Jim is the Director of the Child and Youth Care course at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. The course has developed an excellent reputation both in Canada and internationally, and in reading about Jim’s thinking, you will understand why the course has achieved its standing.

Jim undertook a sabbatical and decided to try to get under the skin of good quality residential childcare. He wanted to know what made it successful, and adopted the “grounded theory” approach to his research. In essence this meant that, rather than collecting masses of data and analysing it before reaching conclusions or setting up a hypothesis and testing it, Jim visited a sample of children’s homes to observe what was actually happening and to try to identify the main concepts by which the homes appeared to be working, before then gathering detailed data to cross-check his impressions, continually refining his thinking until a theoretical approach had been identified which still matched the actual practice of the homes.

The first part of the book covers contextual material, and explains grounded theory. This part could stand alone as an explanation of this research method, which deserves to be used more widely in work with children and young people. Equally, if you know all about grounded theory, you could skip some of the early chapters.

Jim then goes on to his main conclusions. He found that the homes were trying to achieve three things :

- to create extra-familial living environments for the children
- to respond to the children’s pain and pain-based behaviour
- to develop a sense of normality.

The key test in judging the effectiveness of the homes was their achievement of “congruence”, a word that peppers the book. Congruence needed to be developed between the policies and practices of each home, between what the head of the home said and did, between practice and supervision, in teamwork, in recording, and in training.

While most of Jim’s sample were homes which were acknowledged to be successful, a couple were not, and in these there were symptoms of lack of congruence. This finding will of course come as no surprise to those who have worked in the field, and one of the functions of research is to enable people to say to themselves (or others) that they always knew the situation, and that it is nice to have the reassurance of research to confirm one’s views.

The point is that identifying congruence as a key factor offers a tool for people analysing ineffective services to check possible reasons for failure. (It reminded me that in Britain, for example, for many years, residential childcare workers were relatively powerless, with low status, and yet they were meant to provide a model which would help the children in their care develop a sense of self-worth so that they could move on to independence - surely a fundamental lack of congruence.)

The book is at its best in analysing the task of group homes for children, where there is a useful distinction in the differing roles of residential and fostercare, criticising the comparisons often made as to which is better for children and pointing out their respective qualities.

The central chapters of this book should be read by anyone training to work in residential childcare, and by those who have been critics of work in the residential setting. Too often residential care has been dismissed as institutional, (for example in the Stockholm Declaration) and of course, it can be; but Jim’s description of life in good group homes and its impact on the children and young people shows that it can be a very powerful tool to enable the residents to cope with the problems they face and to re-orientate themselves.

Of the key messages, I found the discussion of a sense of normality somewhat unconvincing and still prefer the formulation devised by the British Department of Health, but maybe I need to read that chapter again. The final chapters of the book consider a sample of other literature about residential childcare to see how Jim’s ideas cohere with other major books, and look at the implications for training residential childcare workers. For me, these chapters were useful in reminding one of key historical texts, but they seemed to tail off from the brilliance of the central message of the book, and the consideration of other literature looked like the edited remnants of a section which the author had had to put in his doctoral thesis.

A final grumble is that the book was also published as volume 24 of the journal Child and Youth Care Services, and perhaps as a consequence it starts with several pages of advertising which detracts from its impact and should be excised when it is reprinted. For all the criticisms I have made, this is an outstanding book, and it deserves to reach a wide readership.

Indeed, if Jim can find the time, there would be an argument for publishing a truncated version, focusing on the key central findings, to have maximum impact on practitioners. It is certainly the sort of book which is bulging with messages to people in the work, raising questions and suggesting answers about ways in which practice can be improved. My guess is that years from now there will still be young people living in residential care who will be unaware that the quality of their experiences has been influenced by Jim’s thinking through its impact on the practice of the workers in their homes.

Better Than You Think : A Welcome Message

The title of the second book is apposite. I would class myself among those who have taken a gloomy view of the predicament of residential child care services in recent years, having heard the stories of high staff turnover, poor pay, lack of training, reliance on agency staffing and so on. It was therefore a real encouragement to be told by Amanda Mainey that in many ways the situation is not too bad, that there is some stability in the staffing of homes, and that staff morale is positive.

The research was undertaken by the National Children’s Bureau and funded by the Social Education Trust. It was based on questionnaires sent to residential child care workers, followed up by a smaller number of structured interviews and a series of interactive seminars. In all, 408 staff took part, consisting of 318 care staff and 90 people in managerial posts. Over a third held no formal qualifications, but a fifth had achieved the National Vocational Qualification Level 3 in Caring for Children and Young People.

As I remarked above, possibly the most surprising finding was the high level of morale : 15% said their morale was high and 59% said it was satisfactory, with only just over a quarter saying it was low. They picked out three factors as being important motivators - teamwork, residents’ progress and job satisfaction. Knowing their work was valued and being supported both scored high as factors creating high morale, but again, teamwork came out top, neatly underlining the argument put forward in Jim Anglin’s book for congruence.

In the chapter on information and support, staff were reported to be well-informed, they knew the aims and objectives of their homes, they had received clear guidance on good practice, and they were generally positive about their managers. None of these findings is a sign of a failing service, and they all suggest that the staff should be offering a competent service to their residents.

Staff turnover and shortages were acknowledged as problems. Although over half the staff said they would be reluctant to leave the work, shortages and staff loss had affected over half the homes in the previous twelve months, according to the managers in the sample. In general, staff did not feel that the use of agency staff was excessive.

The key to good practice, according to the respondents, was clearly teamwork within the home, though they also looked outwards and wanted to improve their collaboration with field social workers and colleagues in education. Meeting the needs of children and young people holistically was seen as vital to the success of their work.

The book itself is laid out very clearly, with simple charts and summaries at the end of every chapter, making the absorption of its main messages easy. Managers, planners, lecturers and central policy-makers in the field of childcare should all read this book.

Overall, the research revealed a committed and enthusiastic workforce, who value teamwork, support and positive approval, and who need further training and closer collaboration with allied professional groups. It gives a surprisingly positive message. Things are better than you think.

Burnout Across Thirteen Cultures : A Study of the Effects of Stress

Professor Victor Savicki has built up his study of stress and burn-out over many years in thirteen countries. His book represents a solid piece of research, based on extensive data and careful analysis. The very theme inevitably means that the book focuses on a problematic area, and so there are no comforting messages of the sort provided in Amanda Mainey’s study.

Vic starts by looking at basic concepts and the nature of child and youth care work. He considers culture as a suitable medium for considering stress, as it reflects both environmental factors and personal aspects of staff functioning, with burn-out as a possible outcome of the behavioural coping of staff working in their contexts.

He describes the nature of stress and patterns of burn-out, and considers most of the main literature on the subject, though I was surprised to see no reference to the main British work in this field. Nor does he mention the labile phase prior to breakdown, which I had understood was a key feature in observing stress patterns.

The body of the book covers Vic’s research in different countries, analysing the different patterns of responses with care. He compares different cultures within one country using the same language, (East and West Germany), cultures in one country using different languages (French and English-speaking Canada) and cultures using - or separated by - the same language (Australia, Canada, England, Scotland and the United States). This section makes for dense reading, and is probably of greatest benefit to other researchers working in allied fields, for instance studying culture differences.

It is only towards the end that Vic spells out some of the messages, with chapters on Burn-out Prevention, Remediation and Recovery and Implications for the Twenty-first Century. He suggests thirteen ways of countering stressful situations, and interestingly, they tie in closely with the messages given by Jim Anglin and Amanda Mainey. Among other things, staff need personal strength, coping styles which reduce stress, job ownership, workload management, consistency of goals and rewards.

Anyone concerned about stress in residential child care should read this book. It contains a wealth of material, though if you want the implications for practice, go to the end chapters first.

Victims of Benevolence : An Ugly Legacy

The fourth book being reviewed here was actually first published in 1992, but reprinted in 2000, and it is included here, partly it deserves to be well-known, partly because it contrasts so sharply with the other research works described above, partly because we need to be aware of the possible harm which even well-intentioned intervention can cause, and partly because we happened upon it in the shop at the State Museum of British Columbia in Victoria.

The book tells the story of the use of residential schools by the Government of Canada to educate and socialise children from tribes which were then known as Indians but are now generally termed First Nations. The first residential school in Canada was founded in 1630, but the story really took off in the second half of the nineteenth century, and by 1923, there were 72 residential schools.

The incoming European people who were settling Canada saw the indigenous population as being backward culturally, unskilled in modern ways and in consequence vulnerable. They wished to see the Indians given skills to cope with modern life so that they could be absorbed into the new country of Canada, which was stretching westwards to include British Columbia.

The method they chose was to establish residential schools and Indian children were removed from their tribes for virtually the whole of their childhoods, to be taught the skills needed in European ways of living. This had a terrible impact on First Nations communities, as it made them almost child-free, as well as denying the children the chance to learn the values, culture and skills of their own communities.

Worse still, the schools were very harsh settings and the education was of variable quality. There were high death rates among the pupils, who often absconded. There were scandals, and children were abused. In the end there was an outcry, and the schools were closed, but the last one, in Saskatchewan, was only closed in the 1980s.

Elizabeth Furniss undertook the research on which the book is based, and it is well-grounded in fact. The story is a shameful one. It started with high intentions, but the founders of the system made assumptions then prevalent world-wide that their style of living was best and that others should adopt it. This assumption is made no longer in Canada, and there is greater respect for all cultures, but the lesson took a lot of learning, and the children who went through the residential school system in Canada were its casualties.

Unlike the other three books, this one has a campaigning tone, no doubt influenced by the injustices it describes. This detracts from the book as an account of dispassionate pure research, but it also gives the book a sharp edge, with the message that this type of thing must not happen again.

Before we smugly claim that this was a past era, reflecting days of imperialism and colonisation, we need to consider the messages for current practice. In any country where one ethnic or cultural group dominates another, there needs to be a critical consideration of policies.

For instance, in many countries in eastern Europe, Romany children are over-represented in children’s homes and special schools, while the staff are predominantly non-Romany. In Britain, foster carers and the children they care for are often from different social classes. In several western European countries, children and young people from ethnic minorities are over-represented in their children’s extra-familial services while the staff are largely from the white indigenous populations. (This is often reflected in adult prisons as well.)

In all these cases, one ethnic or cultural group may be imposing its values and ways of living on another, and we need to be aware of the possible impact. The main effect on the children can be that they end up belonging nowhere, neither in their birth community nor fully accepted in that of their carers. Of course, not everyone is a casualty, and some succeed through such systems, but the potential for damage is there, and this book gives a powerful example.

In Conclusion

Residential care is a potent medium for working with children and young people. Elizabeth Furniss describes an example of the harm which it can do, while Jim Anglin demonstrates the positives. Vic Savicki shows the stress which staff may suffer across several countries, while Amanda Mainey shows that on the whole morale is not that bad in the United Kingdom.

The styles of research of the four volumes all differ, but they share some common messages, such as the need to be clear about the purpose of the services offered, the need for congruence between the needs of the children and the methods of work, and the importance of teamwork throughout the staff.