Ellis, K.H. (2016) ‘He's got some nasty impression of me he has’: Listening to Children in the Secure Estate. British Journal of Social Work, 46 (6). pp. 1553-1567. ISSN 0045-3102
Abstract
In 2010, 260 children entered secure accommodation. Of these, 51 per cent were placed because they were on remand or sentenced for committing a serious offence. Thirty seven per cent were placed by social services for their own protection under a child welfare order and the remaining 12 per cent were placed under both categories concurrently. Secure accommodation is therefore used to simultaneously hold children sentenced for punishment with those who are ‘saved’ from tragedy by welfare professionals. This paper highlights findings from an ethnographic study conducted with girls in secure accommodation. The research used participant observations and in-depth interviews to explore girls’ experiences of being secured and found that all thirteen of the girls admitted from local authority care felt that they were perceived as ‘bad kids’—regardless of whether they had committed a crime or not. These feelings were exacerbated by the prominence of case files which followed children between care placements and were described as a source of anxiety and worry for young people. This paper hopes to inspire social work practice to be more inclusive of young people and to be aware of the impact of shrouding the information contained in case files.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Case files; trust; children’s views; secure children’s homes |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Nursing and Midwifery (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 30 Jun 2017 13:13 |
Last Modified: | 30 Jun 2017 13:13 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcv114 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/bjsw/bcv114 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:118109 |