STEPHEN VERTIGANSROBERT GORDON UNIVERSITY,

ABERDEEN, UK

Home from Home: Civilising Offensives in Residential Childcare

INTRODUCTION

Spurts of child rearing and schooling civilising offensives throughout industrialisation and colonialism.

Such approaches are prominent within residential childcare within forms of civilising offensives which seek to control and transform.

Rates for education and post LAC offending, mental illness & homelessness indicate such offensives are frequently doomed to failure.

Unable to overcome the longer term processes and the increasing tensions that arise between social welfare and political, managerial and civilian concerns

Looked After Children

Children who are “Looked After” are away from home have needs that cannot safely and competently be met within their own family homes

They are likely to have experienced emotional or physical neglect and trauma

Disposition is hard wired to fight/flight/freeze which restricts embodiment of individual restraints

Normative aim to provide help and support children to overcome circumstances that led to becoming LAC

Corporate parents seeking for them what any good parent would want for their own children (ScotGov 2008)

From Integration to Regulation

Draws on work of Garland (2001), Rodger (2008, 2012) & Wacquant (2007, 2009)

De-regulated and re-regulated (Standing 2011)Part of ongoing shifting of greater responsibility onto

individuals conversely aligned with widening security and surveillance

Work as the basis both as a form of social integration and mechanism for system integration has been lost in areas within de-skilled, temporal forms of labour

‘Self warehousing’ through passivity & self-blame‘Precariat’ – life of insecure, temporary, low wage

labour and unemploymentMedia coverage which informs and reinforces

attitudes to poverty, welfare and ‘juvenile delinquency’ compared to idealised middle class values

Troubled and/or Troublesome

Aim to locate LAC within wider debate about criminalisation of social policy and advanced marginality of the ‘precariat’ which counter civilising offensive

Interwoven impacts of wider history of welfare, shifting perceptions of ‘worthy’ poor, pre & time in care experiences and reduced social opportunities

Best interests of the child’ is historical and contextually located, subject to social, legal, political and financial fluctuations (van Krieken 2005)

Children can be viewed as either innocent and helpless or troublesome and a threat to society

Lenses upon LAC

Since the introduction of workhouses and the onus on destitute and criminal families there have been concerns over the balance between care and control

Removing problem families for the security of others is today been extended under the anti-social banner and the extension of surveillance by ‘responsible communities and citizens’

LAC are viewed through a similar lense as troubled and potentially troubling

Controls that are contrary to requirement for nurturing developmental care

Criminalising (LA)Children

Mutual identification and interdependencies demarcated

The physical and psychological distance of LAC makes them more vulnerable to types of abuse with limited forms of wider representation

Limited shift from social constraint to self restraintCondensed and curtailed childhoodPhysical and psychological separation Tactics that reconcile exclusion from mainstream

education and socially mobile opportunitiesDiffering forms of status and normative standards of

behaviour and shame

Blaming the Family

UK (E & W especially) social policy increasingly focuses on problematic families who are held responsible for anti-social behaviour and their ill-disciplined, ‘under-socialised offspring’ (Rodger 2008)

Precedents such as 19C emphasis on moral hygiene, thrift, work, marriage and civic responsibilities of family life

Controlling or ‘civilising’ policies connected with welfare changes & populist agenda which influence legal system

Who to blame when the state is the substitute family of children who disproportionately feature within crime and anti-social statistics

Challenges – Precariat looking after the precariat of the future

Inherent hesitations in decision making processesCare is driven by political beliefs, budgetary

requirements and management structuresLiving in a group of similarly wounded childrenNumber of adults who may not have coherent

approachesRemoval from family home weakens public

empathy - ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ Indicative of ‘last resort’ mentality in UK, unlike

other nations and destitute and/or criminal tradition

Salary and conditions of care workers as precariat and lack of secure role models

Conclusion

Many successes with LAC against increasingly challenging wider processes and agendas

Consequences of the decline in welfare, employment prospects, diminished education and weak interdependencies are the responsibility of individuals

Limited opportunities for stereotypes to be challenged and mutual identification to grow contributing to LAC ‘outsiders’ feeling more outside and middle classes wanting exclusionary barriers to be strengthened

Interweaving processes of criminalisation and securitisation ensue with populist support and result in civilising offensives becoming tools of blame rather than changing behaviour

For the relatively powerless, the prospects both of marginalised LAC obtaining secure futures and, over the longer term, successful care worker interventions may well diminish further