[Introduction] 

This is a Research in Practice podcast, supporting evidence informed practice with children and families, young people, and adults.   

Georgina: Hello. Welcome to this podcast, exploring what caring relationships look like for separated and unaccompanied children. My name is Georgina, and I'm a Senior Research and Development Officer with Research in Practice. The aim of this podcast is to bring to life some valuable research that explores what care looks like for unaccompanied children. We'll be thinking about how the learning from this research can be used by practitioners working in social care. By separated or unaccompanied children or young people, we're referring to children who've arrived in this country without parents or carers, and who are seeking asylum due to war, persecution, or other reasons. Personally, I am particularly interested in this topic as I practiced as a social worker in an unaccompanied children's team for a while, and then I worked with a refugee charity. 

But I do want to start this podcast by acknowledging the deeply challenging context of this work at the moment, where immigration and asylum has become deeply politicised. It's always been a challenging area for practitioners to work in - needing to balance the realities of the immigration system with maintaining social work values and keeping young people at the heart of practice. 

This must be even more the case at the moment, where young people must be facing the brunt of fear and division and the uncertainty of a hostile environment. Walking alongside and supporting young people through this can also be really challenging. So look after yourself while you listen to this. If it isn't the right day, then do come back to it. 

But at the end of the day, we really want this podcast to encourage you to emphasise the value of what you do in supporting young people and to counteract narratives of fear and division with narratives of care and support. So I'm really pleased to be joined by Professor Sarah Crafter and Kirsty Bourne, who were involved in the Children Caring on the Move research study. Would you like to introduce yourselves? 

Sarah: Yes, thank you, Georgina. Hello, my name is Dr. Sarah Crafter and I'm a professor or cultural and developmental psychology at the Open University. A lot of what the research that I'm interested in is about the lived experience of children and young people who have experienced some kind of migration. So, I'm really interested in how their personal experiences impact on their transitions to adulthood, for example, how it impacts on their sense of identity and, I think most importantly, how that information can be used to help improve their lives.

Georgina: Thanks, Sarah, and, Kirsty, would you mind introducing yourself?

Kirsty: So, my name is Kirsty Bourne and I'm a social worker and quality assurance lead at Central Bedfordshire Council, and I've recently completed my doctoral research, which was part of a doctoral fellowship granted by the National Institute of Health Research, and that was based at the University of Bedfordshire. My research has also focussed on the topic of unaccompanied minors and their experiences in diverse contexts.

[The background to the research] 

Georgina: That's great, thanks, Kirsty. It's really good to be chatting to you both today. So, Sarah, could you tell us a little bit more about the Children Caring on the Move study?

Sarah: Yes, so along with colleagues from a number of other universities and partner organisations, we conducted a large funded research project called Children Caring on the Move. The funder was a UK council funder called the Economic and Social Research Council, and we really wanted to understand how unaccompanied and professionals and practitioners who care for them make sense of that care relationships and how particularly young people navigate, you know, the difficult welfare and asylum systems in England. Actually, in particular, we wanted to examine what happens, if you don't have kin, how do unaccompanied minors view their care of each other, you know, what is important in terms of that relationship and how might that care of each other look like, both for those unaccompanied minors but also for the professionals who are tasked with the care as well in a variety of different ways? So, we collected data in two ways. So, the first involved a group of young researchers and all of those, we call them young researchers, they had migration experience themselves but we, at the Open University and University College, London, trained them as co-researchers and then they helped us to do interview, do 75 interviews with 38 unaccompanied minors. We also did 112 interviews with adults from a range of different sectors, so that included social care, healthcare, the charity sector, Border Force. We interviewed interpreters. We interviewed therapists, accommodation providers, a whole range, and, sort of, national and local policy representatives as well, so it was a really broad range of adults that we spoke to on this topic.

Georgina: Thanks, Sarah, that sounds really interesting, and, Kirsty, can you tell us a little bit about your PhD research too?

Kirsty: Yes, so my research has explored the experiences of children seeking sanctuary in two contrasting environments. So, some of these young people lived within a large, diverse city in England, and others lived in small, more rural towns, and I was really interested in understanding the opportunities and barriers that they faced in these different environments, and specifically how the local and wider context impacted on their lives, particularly as they left care. So, this research was conducted alongside a fantastic group of young researchers, like in Sarah's study, who had all arrived in the UK independently, and they really helped to shape every stop of the research. So, they offered ideas for the research methods. They contributed to training sessions and they helped with the reflective process while analysing the findings, and I went on to interview seventeen young people and this was over three different sessions, and I also spoke with eight professionals, so that included social workers, personal advisors and social work managers, and all of these professionals worked in the two contrasting environments.

[The emotional impact on practitioners of being in a ‘caring’ role for young people] 

Georgina: That's great, thank you so much, Sarah and Kirsty. It's really helpful to hear a little bit of a background about the research and particularly interesting hearing about, kind of, how you used young researchers. Perhaps that would be, like, a subject of another podcast, I think, but in this podcast, we'll explore a little bit more about the idea of care and some of the learning from your research. Yes, I'm really, like, interested in the idea of care because it's embedded in the nature of the role of a social worker. Local authorities are corporate parents for separated children and the young people are often looked after in Children We Care For teams but we often don't step and think about, like, what actually do we mean by 'care'? So, in this first part of the podcast, we'll think a little bit about caring relationships from the perspective of practitioners. One of the things that you wanted to talk about, Sarah, was to think about the emotional impact, of the work on practitioners, of being in a caring role. So, perhaps could you tell us a bit about this and perhaps some of the ideas that came up to mitigate some of the challenges?

Sarah: Yes, there were many, many themes that professionals and practitioners raised with us but something that came up very strongly, perhaps unsurprisingly, in both our research projects is the emotional toll that it can take, working, you know, with this group of very vulnerable young people. Professionals had a variety of experiences when it came to the emotional impact and, perhaps unsurprisingly, this could vary depending on the role. As I mentioned earlier, we interviewed a really wide range of different professionals across different sectors and also, kind of, levels, managerial levels. So, the more involved the role, you know, in other words, social workers, foster care, case workers, the more emotionally involving and sometimes exhausting it can be, and that's not surprising because the relationship could be more intense and involve more time. So, we had professionals describe, sort of, a feeling of a sense of secondary trauma sometimes when hearing stories from the young people. For some, it was the sense, the emotional toll was the sense of fighting the same battles on behalf of young people over and over again, almost feeling there's a, sort of, daily or weekly grind of fatigue and exhaustion because the battles never seem to go away. I guess this is a systemic issue, isn't it? Some people also had a sense of guilt about their role in young people's lives, and that was particularly acute for professionals who, themselves, had their own migration story or personal experience. So, across the board and perhaps we did interview such a wide variety of people, practitioners coped in different ways.

So, some coped by focussing quite a lot on the process and procedural aspects of the role to create an emotional distance, you know, 'I will with work, with what I need to deal with on a step-by-step basis.' Others actually deliberately, often after many years, moved themselves into a more senior role, management role because that helped them, kind of, step away from the heavy case work. It helped create a bit of an emotional distance to the whole area really.

Georgina: Thanks, Sarah. Kirsty, did you find, kind of, any similar things in your research or anything that's different?

Kirsty: Yes, I did. For me, the professionals were talking about these value conflicts that they often found in their work. So, particularly in situations where they felt restricted in the support that they could provide, for example, when young people are appeal rights exhausted, so that means that they've got no further options to appeal their asylum decision and it impacts on their access to social care support. Or when they were closing to the service because of their age, it was a difficult time for practitioners because they were sometimes stepping back when they could see that young people would benefit from further support. So, that was a really heavy burden for the practitioners to carry and they put a lot of energy then into supporting the young people as best as they could, up until the point of this step-down in support but I would say it still sat uncomfortably with a lot of the professionals. So, even though they had put a lot of time and effort into preparing young people, they knew that these young people often had limited support networks, so they really tried to educate the young people about their rights and entitlements. They offered reassurance and made sure that they were aware of as many local resources as possible. Bearing in mind the emotional weight of all of this support, I think it's really, really important that social workers do have that time within supervision to reflect on things like this, and on a really individual case-by-case basis, and thinking about how these challenges shape their professional judgement, impact on boundaries and their ability to remain present for young people.

Sarah: I agree with Kirsty on this. I guess, for me, because I come at this more from a psychological perspective, it makes sense to argue for the benefits of reflexive practice here as a mechanism for coping. This is easier said than done when you're overwhelmed or your work is so full, and, you know, I think that kind of reflection is the easiest thing to let drop off but it does help you take a step back from the immediate emotional weight, and at best, I guess group supervision can be really beneficial if the space is safe and if it feels confidential to do that.

Georgina: Yes, and just from, kind of, my own practice perspective, I really beneffited from a group supervision and really found it really helpful. We do have some resources, we've got a fantastic reflective supervision hub on the Research in Practice website and we've got some really helpful resources on different forms of group supervision. One example is inter-vision, so that's where someone, kind of, brings their particular practice problem or challenge or dilemma, shares it with the group and then hears the different views and perspectives of everyone else in the room, and so that that's a really nice way of opening up thinking, and I found that way a really helpful way of almost reducing some anxieties actually. Yes, so I'd definitely recommend having a look at that if you're interested.

Kirsty: I've definitely really benefitted from models like that in the past, Georgina, that chance to hear other people's ideas and thoughts about what to do next or what might be doing on for that child or that family, yes, really helpful, especially when things can feel overwhelming at times.

[The importance of building trust for young people in relationships with professionals] 

Georgina: Yes, yes, so we thought a bit about, kind of, exploring caring relationships from a practitioner perspective but you also spoke to a lot of young people. So, perhaps, Sarah, could you tell us a little bit about, yes, the perspective of young people about, kind of, what a caring relationship looked like from their perspective?

Sarah: Yes, our findings from the Children Caring on the Move project suggests that young people perhaps have a slightly different perception of what they need and what professionals can provide. So, they seem to make a distinction between their discussions with social workers and other professionals, which tend to group together, and the actions of those professionals. So, for example, when young people first developed relationships with social workers, they really appreciated being asked questions about their lives, on the whole, not all of them, but many of them did, their interests and their needs but then, over time, if that was not accompanied by action, this could lead to a bit of a breakdown in trust. So, what can happen is a sense of, I suppose, misalignment in the relationship between the young person and the social worker, and then in our interviews with the professionals, particularly social workers, they were really deeply concerned about gathering enough information to complete an assessment or, you know, to develop future planning for other professionals. It might for building the asylum case. So, for them, asking lots of questions and having a dialogue and building that rapport, relationship, as a care relationship and, you know, having that dialogue was really important to their approach. You can see, when you take those perspectives side-by-side, the young people and then the adults, you can see how, maybe in the making, how the perceptions and expectations can lead to a kind of breakdown in trust when they're not quite aligned with each other.

Kirsty: Coming in on that point of action being taken, a lot of the young people in my study really spoke about how important it was to communicate and that sometimes it was not even always the action for them but it was knowing what was going on and knowing that someone hadn't forgotten about that action. So yes, really interesting that that came up in your study as well, Sarah.

Sarah: Yes, absolutely.

Georgina: As you were talking, Sarah and Kirsty, I was just thinking about some systemic ideas that I, like, found quite helpful in those kind of situations. You talked about reflexivity but the idea of relational reflexivity and, kind of, using space in the conversation to ask the other person how they're finding the conversation and asking, at the beginning of the conversation, what their hopes are, so that, yes, as practitioner, you got a better understanding about where young people are coming from and what they're expecting out of the conversation, yes.

Sarah: I think that's really important and I suppose another thing from, again, a, sort of, more psychological perspective is that both parties, you, yourself, and the other person bring a set of experiences and backgrounds and all that variety of stuff that we bring to our interactions, and all of that is at play during those interactions. I guess, you know, it's also, I guess, from a psychological perspective, it's a little bit around building trust within those relationships because perhaps we can say that trust is a fundamental foundation for building any positive relationship but is particularly difficult in a situation where one party holds a greater position of privilege and power. The adult, nearly always, the social worker because of their professional role, and also that the professional is not only bringing themselves and their identify as a professional to this interaction but they're representing an institution, in many ways. So, you know, young people have a lot to learn when they come to a new country. They're learning about education, they're learning about the welfare and asylum system, they're engaging in a whole new culture, a whole new world. So, young people do feel reassured if there's a, sort of, yes, mutual sense of trying to understand each other through talk but as I say, also recognising that that has to be accompanied by actions, even if those actions are confined by rules, which the adults have to maintain.

Kirsty: Yes, I think you're right, it's about taking the time to build that relationship, and some of that relationship building, the young people are saying to me, it comes to those relationships that are consistent, professionals that are attentive, that they feel are trustworthy, and a lot of them spoke to me about those that were engaging with them in a way that felt genuine. They described it as 'coming from the heart', so they said, 'We can really easily tell if someone's a social worker because they really love being a social worker and they really want to help us,' and for those young people that had built really effective relationships with their social workers, they described them as family-like people. So, they began to compare them to different role models that they have within their family units, and I think that really shows the power or relationship when it's done well, and some of those relationships really were significant in helping them to manage the contextual challenges that they faced. So, particularly when waiting for an asylum decision or hearing news from back home that was unsettling for them, these safe adults became a really key-, well, they filled a really key role in helping them to navigate those difficult times. So, having said that, all the wonderful things about the relationships that they experience, there were also times when young people felt that their needs and requests didn't align with the types of support that professionals offered them.

So, for example, one big topic that came up was around housing and where they would live, especially as they were leaving care, so coming up to eighteen, and often, they wanted to live in places which were larger, which were diverse, perhaps where friends lived or people that they'd met on their journeys. Practitioners were often limited in the amount of support that they could give to find housing really in these very specific areas, particularly as a lot of young people were needing to access social housing, and they felt really limited in their role, despite recognising the, sort of, benefits for young people potentially to live with people that are familiar to them. So, this, at times, caused some tension in the relationships between young people and their social workers and, at times, they spoke about how they then withdrew from that support, they'd given up in accessing that support. So, I think what's really important here for social workers is to think about how we speak to young people about the processes in the UK, how we educate them in ways that they understand those, sort of, processes and the remits of the role, and I think part of that is around developing resources which are accessible for the young people. I think that work should be done in collaboration with the young people, I think they should be involved in developing those resources, so that they are useful and so that they are meaningful for the young people. So, it might include things like using pictures, translating key information. It may be that they need the information to be in video format, so that they can listen to it, rather than read it, and I think it also needs to be followed up with regular conversations.

So, it's important to revisit these conversations, particularly at different points when the context changes for the young person or thinking about when they received an asylum decision, understanding how their rights and entitlements might change. Or at the point of leaving care, thinking about what entitlements they might have then, how they might differ from when they were under eighteen and thinking about how different processes in the UK work and different things that they may be able to access, now that that context has changed.

[The importance of peer relationships for separated children and incorporating] 

Georgina: Yes, really helpful to highlight how important it is to communicate with young people and really, kind of, help them understand what their rights are and understand these bewildering systems that they're suddenly part of. I was really, like, struck when you were just talking, saying about how difficult it can be for practitioners sometimes, when they can really see what a young person needs, particularly around housing, and can really understand the young person's perspective but when the resources just aren't there. Yes, that can be a real site of moral injury, I think, sometimes. It can put practitioners in difficult ethical situations when they can see what a young person needs, and I guess, for me, kind of, that comes back to the importance of supervision and talking about these really difficult situations in supervision, thinking about, 'Is there an advocacy role? Like, how do I go about this difficult conversation in a trauma-informed way? Like, how can I help the young person feel heard and validated, within the limits of what's possible?' Just another pointer to a resource that we have, we've got a briefing on supporting difficult conversations, so do have a look at that if you're interested. So, I think, Sarah, one of the things that you're exploring in the Children Caring on the Move project was the nature of caring relationships between the young people, be really interested to hear a little more about what your research found.

Sarah: Yes, it was really interesting. When we wanted to, sort of, put the project together, I think I'd seen a news report somewhere, and this was at the time when the Calais refugee camp was open, and the news report mentioned how these groups of young people in the camp were looking after each other because they didn't have any adults with them. That was the, kind of, spark of the idea, of thinking, 'Well, what does that look like, that care relationship then? What does it mean for groups of or young accompanied minors? If they don't have kin, what does it mean for them to have that kind of relationship?' We were really looking at care in the broadest sense, possibly in a slightly more common-sensical sense than social workers work with, in a more everyday sense, you know, 'What does care mean? What do you give and what do you receive in terms of practical and emotional support for others?' that fundamental foundation of care. So, when we asked professionals what they thought of children's care of each other, they almost universally said that it was important. You know, I think, generally, it's acknowledged that friendships, peer relationships, these are really fundamental, important things, though perhaps for some they didn't quite see that relationship as care per se, I'm using inverted commas but many professionals could offer examples of the children they work with having really important care stories. There were more positive stories than there were negative. There were some really sad stories, that our professionals had witnessed, what happens when young people are actually, kind of, torn apart for some reason, the emotional toll that that can take on them, maybe if they're placed in different counties, placed in different parts of the city or can't get to each other, whatever, when one gets their asylum case approved does not.

You know, there are a number of examples of the big, major impact that could happen when that happens but also what was really interesting is, systemically, children's care of each other and those relationships are not quite foreground in the major decision-making processes and procedures. So, for example, in decisions about placing children together in accommodation or placing children in the same local authorities, some of that deep care, you know, Kirsty was talking about it being really family-like, got lost within the policy and procedural decisions in day-to-day making. From the young people's perspectives, you know, some of those care relationships began on their migration journeys, others developed deeply during their time, once they'd arrived in England, for example. Some saw their care of other young people as almost like a, kind of, moral duty because when they arrived, someone helped them and then they pay it forward and they want to help someone else in a time of need. Of course, you know, the loss of a friend, we sadly did have descriptions of, for example, people committing suicide, of course, these could be really significant events in those young people's lives.

Kirsty: I think you're right, Sarah. I think, like the example I was giving around housing, we often see, in housing policy, for example, social connections to an area being related to this idea of family, and for the young people that have arrived in the UK, they do find people that are family-like but it's not recognised as that in the policy landscape. So, I think that's a really interesting point to make really, how young people do see their friends as family, family-like. That's definitely something that young people spoke about within my study too, some of their most stable and significant relationships were with their friends, who they compared to being like brothers and like sisters, and the support that they provided each other was huge, I mean, in terms of emotional support, advice, sometimes even practical support. Some young people spoke about how their friend bought them some clothes early on because they'd been here longer and it was, like, a nice gesture for them, and like you say, they often paid those sorts of things forward to young people that were newly arrived, as time progressed. Lots of the professionals in my study too spoke about how the young people would often gather information and share information via their friends, and on the most part, this was seen as positive but there were some times when there were challenges. Some of the professionals reflected that the advice that young people were given was not always accurate, so that then caused some tension in their relationships or some mistrust with their social worker. So, again, I think that really emphasises the importance of providing young people with the information that they need to understand their rights and entitlements in accessible ways.

Sarah: I think it is a really tricky and interesting dilemma for adults and for professionals, you know, who are worried about the nature of those relationships because I think it's natural to worry about the nature of friendships and other relationships. We do with our own children, as parents, we wonder who they're socialising with, we're wondering if, you know, there's a particular friend who's a bad influence. So, you know, it's not vastly different, it's a little bit of an extension of that perhaps but I think it's also worth keeping in mind how deeply important those relationships can be when reflecting and thinking about the young people's lives. You know, like all young people, they need those connections, perhaps even more than their citizen peers because they don't have, necessarily, a parent as a sounding-board or the other person to turn to, and so, yes, it's understandable that they'll turn to that family-like person as one of the potential mechanisms.

Kirsty: Yes, and particularly as young people are leaving care, you know, eventually, the social work support does come to an end and young people will therefore be relying on their own networks of support, aside from the professional support. So, I think it's so important that we think about how we can expand and diversify those networks of support as young people are leaving care, yes.

Sarah: What was also quite interesting from the young people's perspectives was there was the odd mention of a relationship that didn't go well and some of the adults could talk about the odd relationship that didn't go well but, on the whole, the young people were overwhelmingly positive about those friendships and relationships. I think, when into this research, I, kind of, expected more negative stories, maybe of power imbalances between the young people, and that didn't really come through. That said, young people, perhaps later on, reflecting a little bit back, differed in their views on being placed in accommodation with other young people from their community. So, some valued this but others actually preferred foster-care and some initially really appreciated being placed with members of their own groups or communities but later, thought, 'Actually, I needed to socialise a little bit more widely, with a wider variety of cultures.' I think you found that as well, didn't you, Kirsty?

Kirsty: I did, yes. Lots of people said, 'Looking back-,' well, they quite often said, 'My English would be so much better now,' so they did find that, as they got older, as they were looking for job opportunities, they wish that they had invested more time in building a wider range of relationships. I think that's also where the professional role can come in and thinking about ways that we expand those opportunities to build a wider community.

[Developing the independence of young people transitioning out of care] 

Georgina: It's a really, really interesting conversation, thanks, and as you were talking, I was, like, reflecting back on my own practice and thinking about how challenging it was when someone arrived in the country and you didn't know anything about the young person and they had these really important relationships. You, as a practitioner, didn't know whether they were safe, whether they were risky. Often, yes, really, kind of, emphasising on assessing and understanding the risks but bringing in that perspective of how important those relationships are, I feel like, a really important message too, that it's not either/or, that balancing risk and the possibility of really, yes, important relationships too, yes, really complex and really interesting. You moved on, kind of, to talk a little bit about leaving care. In this last part of the podcast, perhaps we could just explore a little bit more about, yes, this area, developing independence of young people transitioning out of care. Yes, Sarah, I know you've done, kind of, quite a lot of work on thinking about the idea of childhood and that an ideal childhood should be. Kind of, how did your ideas about that impact on, yes, this research and thinking about young people as they grew out of being a child?

Sarah: As a developmental psychologist, a lot of what I've been interested in, in my past research and still in this research, is, 'What does it mean to transition to adulthood?' Psychology, as a subject, has delivered a very strong sense of stages, of that, sort of, growing move towards independence, it's a really family model in society's mind, and we have, as a society, I think, strong ideas about what an ideal childhood should look like, 'What activities should children do, by when, and how do we protect them from the adult world? What happens if they have a childhood that puts them outside the boundaries of that ideal childhood?' So, these are the, kind of, big questions that have shaped a lot of what I have researched and the conversations that I've had with young people over the past twenty years, and a lot of those questions and those ideals really impact on how we see unaccompanied minors in their transition to adulthood. In many ways, the life experiences, the lived experiences of unaccompanied minors don't fit into these ideas and they don't fit neatly into our stages of development in easy or neat ways. In fact, lots of children's don't but, you know, it becomes a really stark contrast when we look through the lens of the lived experience of unaccompanied minors. So, when you read the literature on this but also when interviewing lots of adults, you know, it's clear that sometimes these young people are framed as being more mature and independent. In other ways, they're framed as being less mature, less certain, in more need of support.

So, it's, kind of, quite difficult, I think, for practitioners to bring what is this really dominant sense of the ideal childhood that most of us, if we've grown up in the western world, just take for granted, to a childhood that is quite diverse. I suppose it's another good opportunity, just going back to our earlier, like, thoughts on this, is to ask reflexive questions. It's another good opportunity to be reflexive about one's own assumptions and experiences that are brought to interactions with unaccompanied minors. Perhaps what can help is letting go of those assumptions about what children should or should not be doing at certain ages because then it can help focus on the experiences they're actually telling you and them, as individuals, without getting as, kind of, bogged down in societal representations of wider childhood itself, if that makes sense.

Kirsty: I also think it's really important to think about the young people in the context of their past, their present and their future, as they are leaving care. So, I think particularly for the young people that were in limbo, so waiting for their asylum status as they were leaving care, it really brought up a cycle of thinking really about their past, whilst also feeling worried or restricted in their present and having uncertainty about what their future might hold. So, in my study, I really noticed this connection between the individual, the wider context and the young person's own thoughts and feelings about their past, present and future. So, in some circumstances, young people drew upon their experiences from the past to help them to manage the challenge as they left care, so the challenges in their present, or they used their visions of the hopeful future to motivate them to continue when things got tough. At times, they did require the support of professionals to help to navigate these different challenges, particularly around the impact of waiting for their asylum decision. I think, as social workers, if we're thinking about this idea of past, present and future, we can really draw upon some skills, for example, coaching skills or motivational interviewing, so helping young people to think about what they want to achieve, what they have achieved so far and what steps could be taken to bring them a step closer to where they want to be.

So, helping them to think about their strengths and how they can utilise these to build a successful future but bearing in mind the context of the difficult decisions really that are going on around them that they might have very little control about. For me, lots of the young people were talking about this need and this desire to feel a sense of agency in their lives at a time when it didn't feel like they had a lot of control over really big decisions, like their asylum, asylum decision.

[Outro]

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