Abstract
This study based in Sweden explores family practices and family displays among young adults with a history of secure care, which limits and restricts contacts and therefore causes fundamental changes in relationships. Almost 10 years after institutional placement, narrations of 11 young adults and 11 nominated family members reveal ongoing struggles between imagined and lived realities of family. These struggles are revealed by memories and emotions evoked by the context of secure care and show how deeply the secure care penetrated their family lives. By using the metaphor of shadows, shadows of recalled horror of secure care (reflecting family displacement) and the pressure to make family work (reflecting restricting practices in secure care where only (birth) family were considered as family and relations of (natural) importance) are discerned. We call for more attention to the perversity of secure care arrangements, at both policy and institutional levels.
Highlights
What is family to you? This question was asked to young adults who had been placed in secure care about 8 years earlier
We explore how young adults with the lived experience of secure care and their family members talk about family relations and how they understand family
We found that shadows cast by placement in secure care revealed themselves in three different areas, namely emotional chaos, revised and negotiated family positions, and doings and undoings of family
Summary
What is family to you? This question was asked to young adults who had been placed in secure care about 8 years earlier. Besides experiencing secure care as harmful and punitive, young people struggle with making sense of their placement and of themselves (Enell & Wilinska, 2021; Henriksen & Prieur, 2019; Vogel, 2018). Placement in secure care signifies critical interventions in young people’s relations both inside and outside the institution, making this placement a special form of relational practice (Enell & Wilinska, 2021.). When young people enter secure care, they are separated from previous relations and at the same time introduced to new temporary relationships with peers residing in, and staff working at, the institution. We explore how young adults with the lived experience of secure care and their family members talk about family relations and how they understand family
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