Abstract
It has been proposed that boarding schools in England can be used to provide a stable education and care environment for vulnerable children in need, and the government is expanding their use. However, for vulnerable children to be placed in boarding schools, social workers will need to be willing to contemplate boarding as a viable care option. In this study we interviewed N = 21 social care practitioners including directors, senior and middle managers, frontline social workers, social worker‐academics and family support workers who work with vulnerable children. Using thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews, seven major themes identified a range of issues and concerns held by social care workers about placing vulnerable children in boarding schools. We present these themes and consider the issues that will have to be addressed prior to changes in policy and practice. The study concludes that many of those within the social work profession are unlikely to consider boarding as an intervention for children in need. Further research in this area is a matter of urgency.
Highlights
IntroductionThe use of boarding schools for improving the attainment of socially disadvantaged youth is a matter of international education policy, with examples of its practice in the USA (Curto & Fryer, 2014), South America (Mexico) (de Janvry et al, 2012) and France (de Behaghel et al, 2017), and recently emerging in England (Boarding Schools Partnership, 2017)
The use of boarding schools for improving the attainment of socially disadvantaged youth is a matter of international education policy, with examples of its practice in the USA (Curto & Fryer, 2014), South America (Mexico) (de Janvry et al, 2012) and France, and recently emerging in England (Boarding Schools Partnership, 2017)
There have been several attempts to test empirically for the academic and emotional benefits to vulnerable children of using boarding schools as part of a combined educational and social care intervention. Such interventions can be considered as using pedagogical devices (Bernstein, 1990) as a ‘social care lever’
Summary
The use of boarding schools for improving the attainment of socially disadvantaged youth is a matter of international education policy, with examples of its practice in the USA (Curto & Fryer, 2014), South America (Mexico) (de Janvry et al, 2012) and France (de Behaghel et al, 2017), and recently emerging in England (Boarding Schools Partnership, 2017). The intent or aim is to move children in need from challenging family circumstances into proposed secure and stable socio-environmental conditions, in an attempt to create opportunities for vulnerable young people. Such attempts have not hitherto been without their challenges. Two attempts at randomised control trials have resulted in failure to recruit a sufficient number of participants, and a third within-subjects design study failed to recruit sufficient participants (Murphy et al, 2017) These studies assumed that boarding schools can raise the educational chances for vulnerable children and develop their emotional wellbeing and subsequent life chances (Boarding Schools Partnership, 2017). Understanding the relationship between social care workers and the boarding school system is an important first step to explore prior to developing policy in the field
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