Abstract
Figures from 2015 show that two hundred and five children entered secure accommodation from England and Wales. 47% were placed because they were on remand or sentenced for committing a serious offence. 43% were placed by social services under a child welfare order. The remaining 10% were secured by their local authority on criminal justice grounds. This paper uses the example of girls in secure care to explore understandings that are applied to young people considered ‘vulnerable’ and ‘troublesome’ simultaneously. While policy around secure accommodation claims that it offers a therapeutic intervention, to help young people work through their problems and learn appropriate coping mechanisms, it also keeps them ‘safe’ by physically locking them away from the world in which they have been entrenched. Using detailed ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores the experiences of girls living in a setting usually exempt from scrutiny and showcases their views of being ‘worked with’ in an institution designed to enable reform. Significantly, findings show that girls rejected the ‘vulnerable’ label that was ascribed to them and instead felt that vulnerability was better defined by life experience instead of age. By examining girl's own perspectives of their complex pathways into secure care, this paper will contest the binding of childhood and vulnerability and argue that such an act disenfranchises girls from the services that are designed to help them.
Highlights
Introduction and backgroundThis paper uses ethnographic data collected with girls in a Secure Unit in England to consider the cultural and political twinning of age with vulnerability
Figures from 2015 show that two hundred and five children entered secure accommodation from England and Wales. 47% were placed because they were on remand or sentenced for committing a serious offence. 43% were placed by social services under a child welfare order
While policy around secure accommodation claims that it offers a therapeutic intervention, to help young people work through their problems and learn appropriate coping mechanisms, it keeps them ‘safe’ by physically locking them away from the world in which they have been entrenched
Summary
Introduction and backgroundThis paper uses ethnographic data collected with girls in a Secure Unit in England to consider the cultural and political twinning of age with vulnerability. Interventions for ‘children in trouble’ have traditionally been informed by two conflicting views of childhood, firstly that children are innocent and vulnerable and are in need of protection (Daniel, 2010) and secondly, that children need to be socialised into useful and active members of society (Stainton Rogers, 2001). Despite these oppositional views of childhood, research and practice has frequently shown that ‘children in trouble’ share similar characteristics of social exclusion and poverty, often do poorly at school and have experienced abuse or neglect at home (Gray, 2009; Muncie, 2006). The circumstances in which children first become known to professional agencies play an important role in defining their future involvement in state interventions and define whether they are perceived as being troubled or troublesome (Worrall, 1999)
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