Adoption & Fostering
Abstracts
Spring 2007 - Vol 31 (1)
Special edition: Education
Guest editorial
Sonia Jackson
Newspoints
‘Don’t we deserve a decent education?’
Collette Isabel Stadler
Key words:education, children in care, expectations of excellence
By the age of 13, Collette Isabel Stadler had experienced nine changes of school and as many placements moves. It was only by chance that she eventually found ‘new parents’ who supported her education and encouraged the ability and aspirations that led to a place at university. She makes a passionate plea for the need to prioritise education for all children and young people separated from their birth families.
Collette Isabel Stadler is in her final year of a BA course in Modern Languages, University of Birmingham
Closing the gap:investigating the barriers to educational achievement for looked after children
Angela O’Sullivan and Rob Westerman
Jennifer Beecham is Reader in Social Policy, University of Kent
Key words: foster care training, Fostering Changes programme, powerful learning, effectiveness
By tracking the records of individual looked after children from GCSE back through Key Stages 3, 2 and 1,the authorswere able to show a steady widening of the gap between their attainment and that of children not in care. Despite weaknesses in local authority data, the evidence is clear that the frequency and timing of placement and school moves play a crucial part in preventing children in care from achieving the levels predicted by their earlier Key Stage grades. The article concludes with practical suggestions for change.
Dr Angela O’Sullivan, De Montfort University, is seconded to the Way Ahead Project
Rob Westerman leads the Raising the Attainment of Looked After Children team, Leicester City Children and Young People’s Service
Education: the views of adoptive parents
Pauline Cooper and Sandra Johnson
Key words: adopted children, educational needs, parents’ views, information-sharing, teacher awareness
The changing nature of adoption means that more children being placed have experienced traumas that are likely to affect their educational progress. This is manifest in the raised levels of special educational needs among adopted children. Yet, the benefits of educational fulfilment are especially pertinent for such children, given their disadvantaged backgrounds. This summary of a survey of adoptive parents reveals some satisfaction with existing arrangements but highlights areas for improvement. These include giving parents better information on their child’s educational needs and their future implications, sharing information more effectively between parents and teachers, increasing teachers’ awareness of the needs of adopted children, dealing with children’s unhappiness in school, especially bullying, and facilitating children’s and parents’ access to specialist help.
Pauline Cooper and Sandra Johnson are Educational Psychologists, Sheffield Educational Psychology Service
For the love of learning: promoting educational achievement for looked after and adopted children
Randy Lee Comfort
Key words: looked after, adopted children, educational achievement, support
This article focuses on Our Place, a Bristol-based support centre for adoptive and foster families, and how it responds to the educational needs of the children and families who attend.
Randy Lee Comfort is a social worker, educational psychologist, mother of birth and adopted children, and founder and Executive Director of ‘Our Place’, Bristol
Visible children, invisible lives . . . ladders towards self-healing
Melody Moran
Key words: looked after children, education, motivation, resilience, primary school
In a submission to the Primary Review, Moran, a head teacher, argued that schools have an important role to play in fostering resilience and motivation in looked after children. She drew on experience in her own school and evidence of more successful practices in the care and education of looked after children in Europe.
Melody Moran is Head of an outer-London primary school
Education and self-reliance among care leavers
Claire Cameron
Key words: education, care leavers, self-reliance
Cameron reports results from a study on the use of services by a group of young people who have left local authority care, where the proportion holding educational qualifications is above the average for care leavers. Using the concept of self-reliance, she explores how care leavers managed and directed their educational participation and achievement against a background of a lack of financial, familial and inter-personal support. The paper suggests that care leavers, who have often developed self-reliance skills in highly disadvantaged circumstances, can be misperceived by professionals as being ‘difficult’.
Claire Cameron is Senior Research Officer, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London
The educational outcomes of young people 4-5 years after leaving care: an Australian perspective
Judy Cashmore, Marina Paxman and Michelle Townsend
Key words: educational outcomes, stability in care, ‘felt security’, longitudinal study,
participation, outcomes after leaving care
This article focuses on the educational and employment pathways and outcomes for young people after leaving care in Australia, based on a longitudinal study of young people ‘ageing’ out of care in New South Wales. Consistent with the findings of other research on the educational performance and attainment of children and young people in care, those in this study were less likely to have completed their secondary schooling than other young people their age in the general population. Four to five years after leaving care, they were much less likely than their peers to be in full-time work and/or education. Many had a history of part-time and casual work in poorly paid and low-skill jobs, and over half the young women had had children. Those who had completed Year 12, however, were more likely to be employed or studying, and to be faring well across a number of areas compared with those who did not complete Year 12. The more stable and secure they had been in care, the more years of schooling they completed, and the better they were faring 4–5 years after leaving care.
Judy Cashmore is Adjunct Professor and Chair of Advisory Board for Centre for Children and Young People, Southern Cross University, Lismore, and Honorary Research Associate at the Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales
Marina Paxman is a Research Officer at the Parenting and Research Centre, New South Wales Department of Community Services
Michelle Townsend is a doctoral student at the Centre for Children and Young People, Southern Cross University and a former National Co-ordinator for Create Foundation, the national advocacy organisation for children and young people in care
Foster care and higher education
Sonia Jackson and Sarah Ajayi
Key words: higher education access, widening participation, foster care, longitudinal study
Jackson and Ajayi report findings from the first UK study of young people in care who go to university. They suggest that foster care could play a major role in enabling more looked after children to access higher education and complete their courses successfully
Sonia Jackson is Professorial Fellow, Thomas Coram Research Unit, London University Institute of Education
Sarah Ajayi is a Research Associate in the same Research Unit
Foster care: a role for social pedagogy?
Pat Petrie
Key words: fostering, social pedagogy, looked after children, education, Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden
Social pedagogy, still an unfamiliar concept in Britain, is concerned with education in its widest sense, encompassing but going much beyond formal school-based learning. Petrie reports on studies of social pedagogy in four countries conducted at the Thomas Coram Research Unit and discusses potential benefits of the social pedagogic approach for fostering in England. She argues that this would fit well with developing English policy towards children and children in care and can bridge the tensions inherent in foster care, combining a personal, relational approach with an insistence on reflection.
Pat Petrie is Professor of Education,Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London
Can Scotland achieve more for looked after children?
Graham Connelly
Key words: looked after children, education, attainment, Scotland
The Learning with Care report (HMI and SWSI, 2001) made seven criticisms in relation to the provision of education for looked after children in Scotland. The most recent report, Looked After Children and Young People: We can and must do better (Scottish Executive, 2007), contains 19 actions for improvement. Connelly examines whether the distinctiveness of the Scottish political landscape has the potential to lead to improvements in tackling the deficits in the educational experience and attainment of looked after children and young people clearly acknowledged by the authors of both reports. The article considers the recent history of political concern and asks whether things are getting better, concluding that while there is only limited improvement, the climate is more supportive and more emphatic in its expectations of the young people and the professionals who support them. Note: This article was wrongly attributed to a second author in the printed journal.
Graham Connelly is a chartered psychologist and senior lecturer in education at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. He is also a trustee of Who Cares? Scotland
Spare time activities for young people in care: what can they contribute to educational progress?
Robbie Gilligan
Key words: educational progress, young people in care, spare time activities, mentoring
Earlier articles by Gilligan have argued the case for the value of participation in spare time activities for young people in care, in terms of its potential to enhance their resilience (Gilligan, 1999, 2000). Here he focuses specifically on how such participation in spare time activities may contribute to positive educational progress for the young person in care. First, evidence is examined as to what, if any, impact such participation may have for the educational achievement of young people in general. Attention then narrows to the possible educational impact for more vulnerable young people, and for young people in care. Two issues are considered: (1) why and how participation may support educational progress for young people in care; and (2) what it may be useful for adults to do in terms of supporting and eliciting any positive educational effects of participation in activities.
Robbie Gilligan is Professor of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College, Dublin
Boarding school care
Roger Morgan
Key words: boarding school, placement options, children in care
The UK Government is currently piloting and evaluating the possible development and expansion of placement of children in council care in ‘mainstream’ (other than special) boarding schools, and the establishment of boarding school as one of the range of possible placements to be considered for looked after children. Roger Morgan reports on a small-scale consultation with children and young people already placed in such schools − some in care and others termed as having ‘boarding need’. The article is based on Boarding School Placement: A children’s views report (Commission for Social Care Inspection, 2006).
Dr Roger Morgan is Children’s Rights Director for England
Returning to education after care: protective factors in the development of resilience
James Mallon
Key words: protective factors, risk factors, resilience, looked after, local authority care, academic underachievement, education
Research to date on the academic performance of looked after children has tended to concentrate on their consistent and significant underachievement compared to the general population of school children during the school years. However, some people who have been looked after in local authority care during childhood return to study later in life as mature students. James Mallon’s study, reported in this paper, identifies protective factors that enabled some participants to develop resilience and achieve academic success, despite many risk factors in their pre-care and care experience.
James Mallon is a Lecturer, Napier University Business School, Edinburgh
Legal notes: England and Wales
Deborah Cullen
Legal notes: Scotland
Alexandra Plumtree
Legal notes: Northern Ireland
Kerry O’Halloran
Health notes: Infants exposed to fetal teratogens: long-term outcome of infants exposed to neuroactive compounds in utero
Dr P M Preece
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