September 3, 2018

Written by
Katherine Baxter and Robert Clark

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In the context of Scotland’s ‘year of young people’ it is timely for the Talking Hope project to acknowledge the work that residential staff do to support young people. This piece shares insights into what it’s like to work behind the scenes supporting young people in secure care. Given the unique pressures involved for staff working in a secure care setting, we ask the important question who cares for the carers? After all, achieving better outcomes for young people in care requires that the adults directly responsible for them are themselves well supported and as skilled and confident as they can be.

Robert Clark has been a senior manager at the Good Shepherd Centre for 12 years. Robert used to see the Good Shepherd building as he drove along the motorway to Greenock Prison where he worked as a prison officer. When he asked a colleague what it was, he was informed it was ‘the bad girls’ home. This has always stuck with him on people’s perception of young people in care and he has sought to counteract that ever since.

Recently I’ve spent a lot of time at the Good Shepherd Centre speaking to Robert and staff. What stands out is the uniquely challenging and skilled nature of the work that staff do behind the scenes to support and engage effectively with the young people there. Robert and the staff have shared reflections about the complexity of the work they do and it seems to me there is a need for the challenges involved to be more widely understood within and beyond secure care. The challenges for staff include:

How do staff remain hopeful that they can make a contribution towards a better life for young people who have often faced significant and sustained adversity?

How do staff maintain belief and pride in the work that they do in the face of misconceptions and lack of knowledge of the work they do in the outside world?

How do managers show leadership and create the right environment to nurture hope for the staff and young people in face of daily challenges of a secure care setting?

Many people might not fully understand what a secure care centre is, why a young person might be admitted or the nature of the work that takes place there. As a consequence, many staff can feel as though the work they do to support young people is either not visible or not fully understood. Staff would like to see more publicity about the skilled, complicated and trauma informed work they undertake on a daily basis, and the success stories of young people who go on to achieve good outcomes. The tendency in some media and policy outlets to report solely negative stories can have a damaging impact on young people in secure care, their families, public perceptions of secure care, not to mention the impact on staff morale within the sector.

So what keeps staff coming back day after day? Staff enthusiastically express how much they love their job, as one said “how amazing it feels when you really connect with and make a difference in a young person’s life, how much the relationships matter and how much it means to see that young people can regain trust in adults… That’s a big deal.” Staff also discuss lots of opportunities for their personal growth, creativity and leadership in learning about how best to support young people. Robert told me a story about how one day he had a phone call from a young person, now an adult, who had left the Good Shepherd Centre 10 years previously. She missed the staff who were always there in her time of need and will never forget the support they gave her in secure care.

Exit from secure care presents as a time of vulnerability for both the young people and the staff. Each time a young person is returned to the community it feels as if everyone is collectively holding their breath, hoping they will continue to hold on to hope for their future, whilst being realistic about what each young person is up against. They are currently in the process of thinking about how to better support young people once they have left secure care given the unique challenges of these transitions.

It’s also important to acknowledge that the staff who care for young people are human beings in their own right – with hopes and dreams of their own, with families who love and care for them, who support them in their work and who sometimes are upset at what they might perceive as the abuse a young person has inflicted on their family member. Staff are entitled to feel overwhelmed and to have it recognised that they can’t always be strong, invincible receptors of young people’s trauma and grief.

So, in answer to the question “who cares for the carers”, it seems part of the answer lies in: carers needing to learn to self-care; mutual support between staff within teams and effective leadership by management which allows for continuous learning, reflection and improvement. Better informed and more balanced media coverage would also help. Finally and most importantly, carer wellbeing is also supported by seeing young people flourish in their care.