Gssw seminar presentation

1. Why do young people looked
after at home (under a Home
Supervision Requirement)
not flourish at school ?
John Paul Fitzpatrick
Ed. D Student
e-mail:johnpaul.fitzpatrick@strath.ac.uk

2. Why explore Home Supervision
Requirements (HSR) & Education?
• Very little prior research about young people looked after at home,
particularly from young people’s viewpoint and little focused on
educational experience.
• Largest grouping of young people that are looked after are under home
supervision (5,437 out of an entire Looked After Children’s population of
16,171).
• Poorest educational outcomes compared to all other looked after
children.

3. Education & Home Supervision:
Context Attendance of children
continuously looked after
for 12 months (June 2011)
(Scottish Government, 2011)

4. Education & Home Supervision:
Context Exclusion from school (Rate:
per 1,000 children )
(Scottish Government, 2011)

5. Education & Home Supervision:
Context
Source(: Scottish Government, 2011)
Positive Destination Data
(Scottish Government, 2010)

6. Education & Home Supervision:
Context Average tariff score of S4 pupils
2004/05 to 2009/10
(Scottish Government, 2010)

7. Study Aims & Processes
• To explore young people’s views of being under a HSR and their
education through their narratives.
• Empower participants through adopting a narrative interviewing and
analysis approach, itself a mechanism for creating agency.
• To make sense of narratives through undertaking thematic analysis to
enable drawing of practice recommendations.
• Draw on social capital theory as underpinning theoretical framework/
• Interviewing 23 young people across three local authorities over two
depth narrative interviews.
• 1 st interview > transcription > case notes > interactive presentation &
feedback > follow up questions

8. Methodology - Why Narrative?
• Narrative approach– aiming to develop a shared imagination with
participants, a process which itself “creates ‘a space beyond the
immediate confines of the local” (Gustavson & Cytrynbaum, 2003, p. 13)
• Narrative inquiry remains particularly useful for studies examining
experiences of stress and coping (Hauser, Golden, & Allen, 2006), -
stories are commonly used to describe life transitions illuminating the
ways critical events bring understanding and shape behavior (Webster &
Mertova, 2007)

9. Progress & Challenges
• 23 first round interviews completed, six second round interviews
completed.
• Working with ‘Gatekeepers’ (or around. Or over. Or beside)!
• Need for utter reflexivity.
• Young people, temporality & reflection.
• Narrative interviewing & young people.
• Relationship building.
• Staying congruent with young people.
• Dealing with adult perceptions.
• Recognising the absence of data, is data itself!

10. David’s Story

11. Early Findings
• Reasons for being under the supervision requirement were varied. Most
had been placed under the requirement for reasons of their non
attendance at school. Others were for reasons of care and protection or in
a few cases for young people's offending behaviour. One young person
interviewed had 17 crime files.
• Continuity and stability, both of family and professional relationships, are
important. Young people expressed frustration at a lack of continuity in
their lives of professionals who understand their views and needs,
necessitating multiple retelling of their stories and views.
• Young people often do not understand the intent behind, or the
implications of, an HSR.

12. Early Findings
• Many young people value the structure and support that an HSR provides
and feel they had derived benefit from the support.
• Young people looked after at home value informal coaching, mentoring
and support mechanisms when subject to an HSR.
• Many of the young people in the study felt that there was little support or
encouragement or value attached to education in the family home; for
others it was seen as a vehicle for securing a positive future job through
further education or training.
• Most of the young people in the study were not optimistic about their
future prospects - and indeed appeared to have a poverty of aspiration.

13. Early Findings
A final thought
• For most of the young people in the study, members of family appeared
to have strong influence on young people’s actions, particularly older
siblings with a strong bond and trust.
• Early findings suggest that family support is critical to young people’s
educational progress and that more should be done in order to support
young people in their whole family context.
• Greater attention needs to be paid to young people’s support needs
during transition periods from primary to secondary; failure to meet these
needs combined with instability in the family home is often a catalyst for
non-attendance and exclusion from school.