Learning difficulties and social exclusion

Adult children of parents with learning difficulties; implementation of the Children Act 1989, and its regulations and guidance; young people running away from home or care, edited by Peter Marsh

PARENTS WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES

GROWING UP WITH PARENTS WHO HAVE LEARNING DIFFICULTIES

The study set out to explore what it means to be brought up in a family headed by a parent or parents with learning difficulties.

The research is based on in-depth interviews with 30 adult children. Many common assumptions about the risks and outcomes of such an upbringing are open to serious challenge. The researchers conclude that children's destinies are not fixed by having a mother or father with learning difficulties.

Almost nothing is known about the longer-term outcomes for children who are brought up by parents who have learning difficulties. While limited information is available about the effects of parenting by people with learning difficulties on early child development, there is none about the longer-term outcomes for older children through adolescence and into adulthood.

A key purpose of this study was to find out how successfully people born and brought up in a family headed by at least one parent with learning difficulties had managed the transition to adulthood.

Thirty people (16 men and 14 women) took part in the study. Their median age was 27: more than half were between 20 and 30 years old.

They divided equally into people with and people without learning difficulties. Twenty eight of the 30 informants had just one parent who had learning difficulties, usually the mother. Twenty three informants had a mother or father with learning difficulties who was still alive at the time of the interviews, of whom all but one remained in regular contact.

Many people showed considerable resilience in coping with lives filled with difficulty. Such resilience is fostered or enhanced by protective factors that mediate children's response to risk and shield them from the hazards of their environment. The study points to three sets of variables that may act as protective factors producing resilience in children: personality characteristics, family characteristics and external supports.

Paying more attention to the sources of resilience in children is important. The 'risk paradigm' that currently underpins much professional practice in work with children and families has diverted attention from the equally important issue of resilience as a factor mediating children's responses to adversity.

The researchers suggest that we would be better placed to develop forms of preventive support, and ways of promoting positive outcomes for children and young people, if we learn more about why some children are not damaged by deprived childhoods and what factors help them to rise above their disadvantages.

The study underscores three crucial aspects of the role of the family in helping children overcome an unenviable childhood and establish a berth in the adult world.

First, family ties can nurture resilience in children. Second, family supports may compensate for a lack of competence on the part of the parents in order to ensure satisfactory care for the child. Third, adults need parents too. For most of the now-adult children with learning difficulties in the study, their relationship with their mother or father provided the only close, secure and continuing emotional bond in their lives. Even for those without learning difficulties, this relationship lay at the heart of their adult identity.

This point has a bearing on the interpretation of the 'paramountcy principle' enshrined in the Children Act 1989. For children born into families which need a lot of support it is tempting to invent a future in which they would be better off away from their parents. Looking back from their position in the adult world it is equally possible to see the harm that can be done by too readily jumping to any such conclusion.

Most of the people in the study had been set apart and set upon throughout their childhood. The experience of exclusion was a common thread running through their lives. On a personal level, people met with persistent name-calling and verbal abuse, bullying at school, and harassment at home and in the neighbourhood.

On an institutional level, the children were channelled into special schools, their parents were not listened to by people in authority, and the families were frequently subjected to forms of discriminatory treatment at the hands of official agencies sufficiently serious to warrant the label of system abuse. Economically, they were excluded by debt, unemployment, and the poverty trap.

Social exclusion lay behind many of the troubles that blotted people's childhoods and beset their families. All too often these troubles were put down to the limitations of the parents when they were more properly seen as a product of their situation.

Recognising the impact of social exclusion is very important and would open up new possibilities for social action in support of families.

Source: Tim Booth and Wendy Booth (1997), Exceptional Childhoods, Unexceptional Children, Family Policy Studies Centre, 231 Baker Street, London NW1 6XE (price £9.95).

CHILDRENACT

REGULATION, PROCEDURE AND PRACTICE IN CHILD CARE

The research examined how the guidance and regulations of the Children Act 1989 had been put into practice

A national survey of relevant documents was carried out, and practice was examined in detail in 180 cases from three authorities, using observation of review meetings, file material, and interviews with users and staff.

Preparation and distribution of policy and procedure documents was not very collaborative within or outside social services. There was a more systematic approach to parental and young person participation, although meetings outside the formal system appear to have grown. On average just over half of planning decisions were implemented. Monitoring and review of care planning was limited.

The Children Act 1989 brought in new guidance and regulations designed to encourage changes in both procedures and practice. This study was concerned both with the level of compliance with these changes, and how far planning and review work advanced the underlying principles of the Act, and made a contribution to the overall intervention with a child.

A survey of policy and procedural documentation of social services in England and Wales was carried out, and a detailed examination undertaken in three local authorities, covering the actual practice of care planning and reviewing. The fieldwork was undertaken from 1993 to 1995 and covered a sample of 180 cases, using methods that included case file study, observations of review meetings, and interviews with children, parents and professionals.

The survey did not provide substantial evidence of an open, shared and collaborative approach, in the spirit of the Children Act, neither in the preparation nor in the distribution of policy and procedure documents. Health or education authorities were consulted in less than a third of the cases, and parents or advocacy groups in less than a tenth. Social workers reported receiving key documents in less than two thirds of authorities, and only two fifths supplied them to health and education authorities. The content of the documents incorporated the minimum requirements of guidance and regulation in seven out of ten authorities, but there were still difficulties to be resolved

The researchers suggest that practice under the new Act had changed since the 1980s. There were signs of a more systematic approach to promoting participation. Overall, two thirds of children were consulted about their wishes and feelings prior to a review, with on average just over half attending the review, including nearly all the older children. Two thirds of mothers and about three out of ten fathers were consulted about plans for their child, and just under half of mothers, and around a fifth of fathers, attended the review meetings.

There were good levels of consultation with parents in some particular areas, for example short-term accommodation and children on the child protection register, but much lower levels in other area. Although the picture was broadly reassuring the variety of other 'planning' meetings held complicated the evidence of involvement, as there were very low levels of service user attendance at these additional meetings.

Parents were deliberately excluded in around one fifth of cases, and the main reason for this was that the parents were no longer relevant to the plans for the child. Young people and their parents generally experienced the meetings as uncomfortable and frustrating, and better preparation was needed.

The initial stages of planning, especially for consultation of children, were improved where there were well designed forms. Continuing planning generally involved assessment of health and education needs. However the quality of the educational assessments was poor.

In around two thirds of the cases education and health plans were identified, but in comparison with other aspects of plans there was only moderate success in implementing these, and unplanned changes were particularly noticeable in connection with health.

The individuals responsible for carrying out decisions were normally identified, but less than half the decisions had adequately recorded timescales. Overall 60 per cent of decisions were implemented, with legal and placement decisions most likely to be carried out, and contact with parents least likely to be implemented.

Reviews often involved quite wide attendance and could be described primarily as an exercise in communication, rather than a tightly focussed planning process. Despite guidance and regulations, there was still a strong emphasis on planning via review meetings, rather than planning as a continual review process.

Monitoring of care plans and decisions was given little attention, and monitoring of the overall planning system was given such a low priority that authority-wide information about reviews was rudimentary.

The researchers conclude that the regulatory strategy has set in place standards that are being observed to a significant extent, but that there is a need to make sure that systems and procedures are shaped by fundamental principles applied to individual cases, and not inflexible administrative considerations.

Source: Roger Grimshaw and Ruth Sinclair (1997), Planning to Care: Regulation, procedure and practice under the Children Act 1989, National Children's Bureau, 8 Wakley Street, London EC1V 7QE (Price £15.95 plus £3 p&p).

YOUNG RUNAWAYS

This project looked at the issues concerned with young people who run away from home or from the care system.

A national seminar on runaways was held to examine findings from a number of studies and reports.

Substantial numbers of young people run away from care. Runaways face serious problems, including health, social factors, and personal safety. Services before and after running away episodes are very important, and young people's own views should help to shape them.

Recent research on running away has explored two key questions: were some children, by virtue of their background characteristics, more prone to run away, and if so what were the differences between those who ran and those who stayed? Despite all the effort to identify distinguishing factors, there do not seem to be clear and relevant differences between the groups, other than their level of offending. The best predictor of running away is previous running away - it is a behaviour that children are likely to repeat.

The research studies have also highlighted the considerable dangers faced by children on the run. Many travelled more than 100 miles and were exposed to all kinds of risks in order to get transport, food, or accommodation, as well as the possibility of being victims of robbery or assault. There are also health risks associated with living rough.

Studies of children who go missing have pointed to other areas of concern. There is an over-representation of young people from residential homes among runaways. Running away seems to peak between the ages of 14 and 16, and to be a consequence of both 'push' and 'pull' factors.

A national survey of young people missing from care found more than 200 to be missing during a one-year period, with around two thirds of this group missing from residential care. It was estimated that at least one in 20 children in foster care aged 11 to 16 went missing, and one in four of this age group in residential care. Boys and girls were equally likely to run away. More than one quarter of the young people had special needs, and just over one fifth were black. Nearly half of the young people in this survey had first gone missing from the family home, emphasising the need for a 'career' perspective on running away.

A study at Centrepoint in London, which gathered information from 200 of the young people aged 15 or under who had used the refuge, also found that just under half had run away in earlier adolescence. From the young people's own perspective, most of their problems had not been severe at the outset, but had escalated over a period of perhaps four or five years. Many had avoided contact with social services, and there seems to be a case for projects engaging young people in schools.

The police have reported that work on running away is important, but that children referred to them as running away from children's homes, for brief periods may be subject to an inappropriate, and probably ineffective, model of control. For example, young people who do not return on time after an evening out can be reported immediately as having 'run away', in order to demonstrate decisive action about the rules of the home.

While there are advantages to taking a holistic view of running away, the single term runaway is too wide for all the circumstances that are covered. An 11-year-old boy who takes off into the unknown poses a different problem from a 17-year-old boy who stays out late. Some classification is needed to identify those most at risk, while maintaining a 'career' perspective.

Overall the research suggests that although running away is a separate incident, it cannot be regarded in isolation. There are precursors and an aftermath which must be taken into account when services are planned. It is unlikely that a special service for runaways will resolve long-term problems, but there is a role for safe accommodation and counselling with a recognition that, in general, runaways are likely to be already detached from their families, schools, communities, friends and other social situations. Services need to limit this isolating process, and help runaways reattach when things break down.

Young people who run away feel disconnected and are disadvantaged in everything that research recommends for healthy development, security, strong relationships, and commitment. They need a 'champion' or advocate. But their situations usually feature poor relationships with professionals, who tend to shed responsibility for their welfare once they run away. More effective services are needed at the start and end point of a runaway's career, based in part on very careful listening to what young people have to say.

Source: Dartington Social Research Unit (1997), Young Runaways: Report of a National Seminar, Dartington Social Research Unit, Warren Lane, Dartington TQ9 6EG (Price £2.50 inc p&p).