Overall, analysis of the literature indicates that the educational experiences of looked after young people (LAC) often lead them to underachieve. The literature demonstrates that young people tend to have experienced many traumas and disturbances and it is very unlikely that they will experience a consistent and nurturing educational career because of this. As a consequence the educational achievement of looked after young people as a group remains unacceptably low. The study includes five looked after young people attending a voluntary organisation for young people not in education, employment or training. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the young people. Interpretation was informed by Narrative Analysis (e.g. Crossley, 2007; Mishler, 1986; Murray, 2003) to allow case-by-case presentations of the lived experience of each young person. Analysis on a case-by-case basis suggests that there continue to be multiple influences at play for each young person in terms of their experiences of primary and post primary education. Analysis on a cross-case basis suggests that there is a needs narrative structure emerging. The individual stories of each of the young people coalesced with the literature and emphasized the ecological perspective outlined; that looked after young people must be viewed in the context of their developing under an interplay of multiple factors, leading to adverse educational experiences and poor academic attainment when compared to their peers. The young people's time lines illustrate that there were varied experiences across the number of primary schools and post primary schools attended; yet each young person's story describes a negative experience of school and education. The results indicate that, for looked after young people, it is not the number of primary or secondary schools they attend acting as a barrier to education, but the experience they have of their individual needs being met, or not met, within the school itself. Reflections on the strengths and limitations of the research, including researcher bias, are presented.

This thesis explores the provision of care for looked after children from the perspectives of foster carers and social workers. It comprises of a literature review, a research paper, a critical appraisal of the research, and an ethics section. The literature review aimed to explore the psychological needs of foster carers and how these needs may be met. A meta-ethnographic method was used to analyse and synthesise 21 qualitative research papers that addressed this topic. Five key themes were identified: the emotional experience of being a foster carer; being a ‘parent’ without parental rights; attachment and loss; value and frustration: two sides of professional support; and being truly understood: the value of peer support. The findings are discussed in relation to psychological theory and other research in this field. A number of clinical implications are discussed, along with recommendations for further research. The research paper aimed to explore social workers’ experiences of psychological consultation around their work with looked after children. Eight social workers participated in semi-structured interviews, in which they were asked to reflect upon their experiences of psychological consultation. All interviews were transcribed and then analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Four themes were identified: An alternative perspective: Seeking expertise; A dual-purpose: consultation for families and the self; Consultation as a lifeline: The final chance; and Validation and acknowledgement: The psychological experience of consultation. The findings are discussed within the context of psychological theory and national policy around the care of looked after children. A number of clinical implications are highlighted and the role of clinical psychologists in the support of social workers is discussed. Recommendations for further research in this area are outlined. The critical appraisal provides a reflective discussion of the research project. Issues relating to research design and researcher reflexivity are discussed.

Children and young people in Public Care are one of the most at risk groups for educational failure and poor life outcomes (NCH, 2005). There is now a wealth of literature detailing predictive risk factors across a range of populations and outlining factors which contribute to resilient, adaptive outcomes in the face of risk factors (e.g. Rutter, 1990 Fonagy et al., 1994). In addition, an understanding of the processes and mechanisms involved is necessary in order to identify which, if any, of the many attributes and/or circumstances that correlate with resilience may be critical targets for effective prevention and intervention. Attributions, the causes given to events, are considered to be powerful determinants of our future actions (see Fosterling, 2001). Drawing on attribution theory and conceptualisations of optimism and self-efficacy, this research uses the Leeds Attributional Coding System (LACS) to compare high and low resilience looked after youngsters' perceptions of positive and negative events in educational, social and home contexts. Resilience was associated with how positive events were construed. High resilience (HR) youngsters made more positive attributions and tended to perceive the causes of positive outcomes optimistically, i.e. causes were relatively unchanging and wide reaching. Low resilience (LR) youngsters saw these causes as unstable and specific. HR adolescents tended to make self-efficacious controllable attributions for internal causes. LR young people were more negative about peer and carer/parent relationships, and views of school, suggesting that perceptions of more everyday contexts are more influential in resilience than major life events, such as changing school or placement, and that relationships are a key factor in positive adaptation. Furthermore, looked after adolescents tend to see themselves more frequently than non-looked after adolescents as the target of others actions. However, HR looked after youngsters are more likely to view others' actions positively.

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This PhD is based on 12 pieces of work: 11 published pieces, all of which relate to one large-scale, qualitative study carried out by the applicant and supervised by Professor Andy Kendrick. The study's aim was to explore, in depth, the views and experiences of children, young people, and staff related to physical restraint in residential child care in order to inform policy and practice. The twelfth piece, the critical appraisal, establishes the coherence of the publications, and contextualises and analyses them. The selected publications reflect a trajectory of development that establishes increasingly complex relationships between features of the social ecology of physical restraint, and theoretical analyses that offer a way of understanding this complexity. Several key themes run through all of the publications, including complexity, ambiguity, relationship, meaning making and therapeutic containment. The last theme, therapeutic containment, is the most theoretically developed and offers an encompassing frame within which to make sense of the others. The critical appraisal examines the publications from a macro perspective. It introduces Goffman's Frame analysis and explores several frames for understanding the practice of physically restraining children and young people in residential child care. Two new frames are then explored and combined with therapeutic containment, resulting in a three-part combined frame which is offered to better understand and to inform related policy and practice; they are Bion's micro-level containment, Goffman's macro-level containment, and Tronto's political-philosophical ethic of care. The publications are re-viewed through this frame assembly, and the ensuing discussion is organised around three key themes: order versus havoc, anxiety and fear, and policy and practice. It is argued that the use (and misuse) of physical restraint, an extreme form of containment, is predicated on inadequate processes of at micro and macro-levels.

The mobility of young people within the care system has been a cause for concern for many years. It has often been associated with a number of negative features in the lives of young people during their time in public care but also well into their adulthood. These include low educational achievements, drug and alcohol misuse,teenage pregnancy and social exclusion. However, little seems to be known about the causal relations between such features and care placement endings. A large body of research has been published on the matter of placement endings but it has often concentrated on isolated aspects of the service provided or on characteristics specific to young people. The project aimed at getting a better understanding of the way successive placement endings occur throughout the care career of individual children. A lifelong approach was chosen in order to reflect the premise that young people looked after are engaged in a dynamic process of adaptation to life in substitute care but also to life after trauma. A sample of 43 case files of young people who had been looked after in two local authorities was analysed with a mixed approach including both qualitative and quantitative methods. Three ideal types of care careers were identified and used as a base on which to create a causal model of placement ending. This model encompasses variables related to children’s early parenting experience, to their experience of trauma and to the placement context. The model reflects the dynamic nature of the relation between these three sets of variable.

Early, effective and integrated public service responses to the needs of children and families continue to be a cornerstone of National Policy. Children’s centres are local resources offering a range of services across health, education and social care in order to improve the life chances of children and their families. Leadership is known to be the key to successful collaboration, bringing together people who have not worked together before. This research aimed to explore the challenges of leading an integrated children’s centre. The research used a qualitative methodology to identify new understandings about leadership approaches. It identified the barriers that prevented effective collaboration and developed a model to analyse and shift the current state of integration. It explored the meaning of integrated services and how leaders could establish a climate for collaboration. Five strategic managers were interviewed. The main findings were that the concept of integrated services was unfamiliar and open to interpretation. Centres offered professionals an opportunity to be part of a learning community where they could share knowledge and build relationships. Ten centre leaders took part in eight action learning sets. The main findings were that centres enabled staff to share knowledge and develop a shared purpose. Services needed to be well planned over a locality. Leaders needed to have a clear understanding about their own and others behaviours and learning needs. The final synthesis of these outcomes was that four leadership processes were developed which could help leaders to enable integrated working to flourish. These were: thinking systemically, building and rebuilding relationships, nourishing self actualisation and utilising alternative approaches to solving complex problems. The outcomes from this research mean that it will be possible for leaders to test out and explore new ways of leading a children’s centre.

This case-based study centred on ways of examining the nature and significance of sibling relationships for children unable to live with their families of origin, and where decisions about permanency of placement were being considered. The multifaceted nature of the problem being studied necessitatedth e use of data from different sources, in the context of an overall psychoanalytic approach. Detailed information about the children's histories, their present circumstances and the dynamics of the professional network provided an understanding of the complex personal, legal and child care context surrounding each case. Psychotherapeutica ssessmentps rovided more detailed information about the emotional needs of each child and a perspective on their relationship with each other. The analysis of the data allowed for in-depth assessmentso f the children seen and formed the basis for recommendationst o Social Services. The assessmenrte ports also facilitated the identification of themes, which highlighted the impact of cumulative experiences of trauma, separation and loss shared by all the children in different ways. The difficulties in identifying and acknowledging the children's distress and emotional needs was linked to anxieties within the professional network. The importance of disentangling those anxieties, accessing the children's perspectives and considering the children's shared experiences and meaning for each other was emphasized and the implications for training, practice and policy were discussed. This study proposesa n assessmenmt odel for considering the sibling dimension to facilitate more informed decision-making in child care cases.

This study has explored, through a small number of case studies, whether 'Looked After Children' (LAC) who have experienced early life abuse or neglect receive the education provision that fully meets their needs. Statistical evidence, as measured by GCSE results, continues to suggest that despite the implementation of national policy and practice changes for over a decade, 'Looked After Children' continue to achieve significantly lower (14.6%) in comparison to non-looked after children (58.1 %) (DfE, 2012). A new conceptual framework for this study was developed using Cuthbert, Rayns and Stanley's 'framework for understanding the causes and consequences of maltreatment in infancy' (2011 :20). This study's framework suggests that the multiple interacting levels of influence, as described by Cuthbert et at (2011), must be further extended to recognise the interacting levels of influence of the externalities. The literature review was carried out using a semi - systematic approach and examined sources in a multiple domain manner. This original approach enabled the formulation of possible predictors and mechanisms of learning that are relevant to more than one domain of child development. Such knowledge provides the opportunity to develop a broader range of possible response strategies to the needs of looked after children who have experienced early life abuse or neglect. The study charts the educational experiences and progress of the individual case study children across a period of up to three years using a pragmatic . concurrent mixed method design. Data was collected approximately every six months during visits to schools and attendance a:t education, social care and health meetings. The study included data collected from the children, social care, health and education professionals, and from documentation and assessments. Themes generated from each of the case study's data were examined separately before being merged together. The research questions were explored using these findings against the backdrop of literature and other documentation.

This thesis focuses on kinship care specifically for children and young people requiring this provision away from their biological parent and for whom Children’s Social Services, United Kingdom and Child Welfare Agencies, South Africa, have a statutory responsibility (UK CA, 1989; SA CA, 2005). The study explores kinship care from a multifaceted viewpoint. A case study approach, incorporating interviews and observations was adopted for the data collection and a thematic analysis approach utilised for the data analysis. A total of thirty-two interviews were undertaken, in both the United Kingdom and South Africa, involving seventeen kinship carers and fifteen social workers. This study highlights practice complexities experienced in the care of kin in the United Kingdom and South Africa and considers similarities and differences across the two distinct cultural settings and relevant philosophical, but divergent, underlying ideologies. Findings from this study show that kinship carers who participate in statutory assessments are forced to surrender some of their privacy and autonomy in return for legal endorsement and financial remuneration. Attitudes towards kinship carers are dependent on the social construction of an underlying cultural philosophy or ideology that determines what is best for the child in each country. Specifically, in relation to the United Kingdom, the study found that kinship legislation is often ignored by local authorities, and tacitly ignored by other government agencies. With regard to South Africa, the study found that the poverty issues in Zululand prevent carers from adequately caring for their kin, and issues of illiteracy prevent many carers applying for grants that would alleviate their situations. This research clearly demonstrates that immediate changes need to be made to improve the way in which kinship care legislation and policy are created and then put into practice in both countries. Furthermore, recommendations are made in relation to the training and up-skilling of social workers involved in kinship care provision.