In Voluntary Care: A Strange Place To Be, UK

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 10 Jan 2008 - 2:00 PDT

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Children and parents who experience a period of voluntary local authority care because of issues at home or in the community can be disadvantaged by systems of care, and by subsequent family separations.

This is the conclusion of Janet Phillips, Educational Psychologist, who will reveal her findings today, Thursday 10 January 2007, at the British Psychological Society's Division of Educational and Child Psychology conference in Bournemouth.

She spoke to four parents, and three young adults who were as children looked after by the local authority by agreement with, or at the request of, their parents. No court proceedings were involved and the parents retained parental responsibility.

What she found was that processes were not good for emotional and psychological well being in the family. In particular the relationships with parents and siblings during care were compromised. One young person said: "In care the support's the main thing. The worst thing about being in care…it's just your family isn't it.... I never get to see them that much...They're not really going to know me as a sister when they get older."

The psychological separations of care, particularly loss and exclusion, were experienced as traumatic by parents, putting them at risk of mental and physical ill health. They said they wanted "help with healing", and that "the whole family was traumatised". One parent said: "I felt that I'd kissed him goodbye for ever".

Dr Phillips said: "Voluntary care is a public service for families experiencing stress. It did not feel this way to parents involved.

" I suggest that a Code of Practice should be drawn up between child protection workers and parents of children in voluntary care, because ultimately providing a service that meets the psychological needs of the whole family including parents as well as children gives the best long term outcomes in child protection."

British Psychological Society