Reflecting on... the language of the care system

Working with Looked After Children (LAC) has offered a valuable opportunity to explore the unconscious meanings contained within the language of the care system. An emerging acronym for children in care is ‘ChiC’. For me, this redefinition has uneasy undertones of cute, fluffy fledglings needing a home. Is this how we’re supposed to think of children in public care? Is it supposed to make them more care-able-about? More foster-able, perhaps?

Children are described as ‘taken’ into care which has connotations of an impulsive, unannounced act. Regrettably, this matches the experience of many LAC/ChiC who are not prepared for what is about to happen to them. Colloquial language describes sick people as ‘taken’ into hospital. Are children in care sick in some way they don’t yet know about? Will they get better? Will they die? For many children, the emotional pain of not-knowing feels like a physical illness; while the loss and uncertainty is as dismal as death.

Many children imagine they must have done something dreadful if they are taken into care and language can perpetuate this belief. Children are ‘removed’ from home, while other things that are removed include tumours, cysts and warts; bad things that cause harm and which, once removed, leave us feeling relieved. ‘My parents are better off without me’ is an all-too-common refrain, which can be interpreted as ‘now the bad me is gone, the good parent will be better/happier’.

As is often the case, the children I work with describe their experiences more eloquently than I can; using language with a lack of self-consciousness that absolutely defines their experience. One child likened himself to a five-pound-note, explaining to me that, like money, he had been passed around between numerous owners and was usually kept in a dark place. As well as describing his experience of multiple carers, I think this metaphor also expresses his sense of self as an owned/passive object with little value. Like many children in care, he didn’t perceive himself as care-able-about and he couldn’t comprehend what was being done to him or why.

Children encouraged to explore their experiences in their own language communicate in a profound way that gives us a real sense of what it feels like to be them. We must listen and we must ensure that their language is assimilated into the way we communicate about children who are looked after in the public care system.

First published in BACP Children & Young People September 2013