The Situation
“She just spends all her time in her room”, they said to me as we sat in Reflective Practice. I was speaking with a group of residential staff. A new young person had moved into their supported living accommodation and they were struggling to engage with them. I empathised, knowing that when you work in residential care, young people who don’t engage can be some of the hardest to work with. Many of the support staff that I have worked with over the years will tell me that they can cope with aggression, violence, and bad language being thrown at them, but to be faced with a young person who doesn’t want to engage is the biggest challenge of all.
After considering how difficult it was for the staff, we then began to think about what may be going on for this young person. What was it that was keeping her in her bedroom? What had her previous experience of care been? What made it hard for her to come out and engage with the support workers?
The residential workers found these questions hard to answer.
From their point of view, they were doing everything they could to engage this young girl. They were offering her activities, they were putting out meal plans, they were telling her exactly when they would be available for her in the communal home space. They couldn’t see why she didn’t want to engage.
Reflection
And so we took some more time to reflect. This young person had grown up in a home where she had been let down by her parents, her mother had mental health difficulties, she had been required to fend for herself and care for herself. She had experienced a number of different placements in care before moving to supported accommodation. In essence, her early experiences of the world and other people had shown her that people were not to be trusted, that people let you down and that the world was an unsafe place.
I paused at this point, and asked the staff team, “If you genuinely believed the world was unsafe and that people couldn’t be trusted and let you down, would you want to form a relationship with them? I know I wouldn’t.” If that had been my experience of the world I would be hiding in my bedroom in my new placement, afraid to go out and meet these people who could hurt me, who might promise me the world and then let me down
I watched as the staff team began to take this in. I could see a shift in their thinking as they began to put themselves in this young person’s shoes, to realise just how challenging it was for her. That the decision to hide in her bedroom was not her being lazy, it was not her being rude, it was her way of surviving.
Reaction
So then we stopped and thought about what this young person may need to feel safer, to change the way that she viewed the world. Some of the staff team said “but we’ve already told her we can be trusted and we’re safe” another said, “I told them that if an activity is planned on the schedule, it will be going ahead, and they still don’t join in”. We reflected again. I wonder how many times this girl has been told something will go ahead, and then it hasn’t happened. I wonder how many times she has heard that this will be her ‘forever home’, her long-term placement and then she has been moved on? I wonder how many people have made promises to her that they can’t keep.
Action
We spoke together about the difference between words and actions. We spoke about the power of providing consistent, predictable care for young people who may have never had that experience. The staff who attended reflective practice feeling frustrated and hopeless, were suddenly keen to think about a new way of engaging. How could they consistently show this young person that they care? We spoke together about the small ways that they can make her feel cared for; an early morning cup of tea left outside the door, the offer of a bacon sandwich, just regularly knocking and checking that she is okay even if she seems disinterested. A postcard bought and written “I saw this and thought of you” popped through the bedroom door. Buying a magazine with an article that would be interesting for her. The staff team was full of ideas that could help this girl realise that she was worth caring for.
This dialogue epitomises many discussions that I’ve had with residential staff teams, with foster carers and with social workers. So many young people in the care system have reached a point where they no longer feel able to trust adults, and whilst we may not be able to change this deep seated belief, we do know is that there are opportunities for staff working with these young people to really build meaningful relationships based on consistent and nurturing care. Not words, but actions which allow them to feel a sense of self-worth, which otherwise would not be created.
Support
At Oasis Psychology we specialise in providing reflective practice and consultation support to staff teams working with children who have experienced trauma or have attachment needs. We believe that this is an extremely powerful way to provide therapeutic input without forcing young people to engage in therapy. Those working first hand with young people are often so busy and absorbed in daily tasks that they have little time to reflect and take stock, to have a calm space to consider their practice and really understand the young people they are working with. Creating a regular reflective practice space, can help staff grow, learn, and develop, and provide the best therapeutic care to the young people they work with.
If you’d be interested in learning more about the Supervision and Reflective Practice services that we offer please get in contact. at oasispsychologycervice.co.uk. We would love to be able to help.