FRIENDSHIPS
I am in the UK at the moment for my eldest son Ewan’s wedding. Just before we left New Zealand I led four transitioning from care workshops with colleagues in Sydney and Melbourne doing good work around transitioning from care. One interesting issue that was raised at the Sydney practitioners’ workshop, was that many in out-of-home care (OOHC) do not have many friends. We were discussing the importance of helping children and young people in OOHC to build a network of relationships that may potentially help support them when they come to leave OOHC, and how this needed to be seen as critical to the care leaving preparation process.
I have three ‘children’ who are now in their thirties, and as most parents will recognise, they are all very different from each other. Graham the youngest is outgoing, gregarious and sociable and has many friends (and is at his happiest when he is engaging with others). Indeed when he was younger he had several groups of friends that he seemed to continuously juggle - his old school friends, his university friends, his football friends, his couple friends, and his childhood friends from Scotland.
A couple of weeks ago I was reminded about the value of his network of friends when I was at his place. He was getting new ‘ranch slider doors’ installed but they were delivered a few days early and had been left outside in the garden. However, as they were timber they could not get wet and so Graham needed to get them moved into the garage and so he asked me if I could give him a hand. Turned out that they were too heavy for just the two of us to lift and so Graham said not to worry, and went inside to get his phone so he could call a couple of friends. He returned 5 minutes later to say that Stu and Nick, who lived 15km and 25km away, would both come round that evening to help him get them moved. A simple example of friendship in action. While I wasn’t surprised that Graham was able to get such help from his friends, I was surprised that it only took him 5 minutes to arrange!
My son Graham probably invests more heavily in his friendships than most. However, for some others making and keeping friends is harder. For those in OOHC, and particularly where children and young people are often changing schools and OOHC placements (and so regularly losing any friends that they already have), have little sense of security or confidence, have regularly been let down or rejected, and are dealing with the impacts of trauma, it can be much much harder. So what can professionals do to improve the chances of children and young people in OOHC having friends?
While we probably all know at least some children and young people in OOHC who have become very adept at making friends, the UK’s Children Society argues that “children need to practice making and keeping friends if they are to avoid becoming socially isolated care leavers”. The Children’s Society has developed a range of useful resources (link below) on this under-recognised topic, including their publication “Friendships for all: A ‘how to’ guide to help children in care have more opportunities to make friends”. As well as exploring the issue of developing and supporting friendships in the recruitment, training and support of foster carers (and highly applicable to residential workers and social workers too), the website includes a number of other resources that can be used with individual foster carers and children. Whether a manager or a practitioner, I’d encourage you to take a look at:
As The Children Society argues, “children need to practice making and keeping friends if they are to avoid becoming socially isolated care leavers”.