On care as Friendship and Vital Connection

This dossier on care comprises a series of short posts from speakers at our Roundtable on Care, co-badged with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) and convened during the visit we hosted for members of UGEN. 

By Autumn Roesch-Marsh

My research has focused on work with children and young people who we call in Scotland “care experienced.” I came into this research because I am a qualified social worker, and I worked in residential homes or children's homes in Scotland, and was involved in providing care. I worked with children and young people who, for a range of reasons couldn’t be looked after by their birth families and had often experienced a lack of care in their families and communities. In situations like this the state steps in and children and young people become ‘looked after’ or placed ‘in the care’ of the state.  And yet, this substitute care does not always meet the needs of those it is supposed to provide for.  

I think this is an interesting group to think about when we're trying to think about what does care mean and how do we, as a society and as a collective, provide care effectively? I was working in these residential children’s homes and in secure units and, and one of the things I noticed in working with young people is the care that they gave each other. As one of the young people from our research review said: “when you've lost your family, your friends are everything” (Roesch-Marsh and Emond 2020).  So, there's something about when other networks are lost: friendship has an even more important role in providing care. 

I'm interested in starting from where young people are.  What does care mean to them? What does friendship mean to them?  How does friendship help us understand the meaning of care? And where do we learn about care? There is a fair bit of discourse in our society at the moment that there's not enough care around and that we've become a little bit more intolerant, a bit less kind to each other. And working with young people in the care system, who often had a care deficit in their early life, I saw a lot of care and a kind of innate ability to provide care. It's something very human that we all bring. So, I think I'd like to think about where do we learn about care, whether we have the opportunity of learning about that in family, or whether we have to learn about that in substitute care settings, but also what are the contexts that enable care? 

Some of the sociological research on friendship that some of you might be aware of talks a lot about how contexts (whether it be where we live or our neighbourhood or our family environment or the temporal things in our life) enable care to happen or not. One of the reasons that care experienced young people are interesting to think about in this context is the way that being in the care of the state creates a lot more barriers to friendship and to care. Young people come together and provide care to each other as they can, but a lot of the rules and regulations around being in care make it harder for those friendships to happen. So, for example, can you have a sleepover? Can you have your friend over to stay around in your room? Well, actually, you might not be able to, because you might have to have a police check done on your friend’s family members to make sure that they don't have a criminal record. Or the home might say they can't come around because there are other young people in this care setting who might not be a good influence on the young person coming into the unit, and we can't keep you safe. If you've moved a placement, as a lot of care experienced young people have to move for one reason or another, you may have had to change school multiple times, and so the friends that you had in one place don't live where you live anymore. And how do you get to see them? Does your foster carer have the time and the space to make sure you meet up and get to see those friends and keep those links going? We know in Scotland, for example, that a lot of siblings in care don't even get to see each other as much as they should. So, friendship is even further down in terms of a priority, and yet we know from young people, they say, “this is like my family because my birth family can't provide what I need, so now my friends are that thing.” Yet we find there are structural constraints to enabling those relationships and friendships. 

I am interested in thinking together with you about how we create enabling contexts for care and friendship and what that might look like. As someone who works in the welfare state as a social worker, working with children and young people and researching that, what are the things that I can do as an adult ally and as a professional to make care possible and to help friendships and connections to grow? Because care is linked to well-being, and that is linked to health, and all the happiness research that we have about children and young people repeatedly says, “I want friends, I want to matter to other people and help other people. I want to have fun and be happy.” So, how can we remove barriers for care experienced young people and for all young people to connect and help each other, but also, live a happy, good life?  

Author Bio

Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Edinburgh.  She is also a registered social worker.  Her research seeks to support improvements in the care system and in social work more generally for the benefit of the workforce and the people they work with.  You can read more about her work here.  

Roesch-Marsh, A. and Emond, R. (2020) Care Experience and Friendship: Theory and International Evidence to Improve Practice and Future Research, The British Journal of Social Work, , bcaa13