2 Identities in social care

Many people see their identities as being in a process of transformation as they make new relationships and are subject to pressures, challenges and changes in how they see themselves in the world. The same is true of people who use social care services. Social care professionals can only really understand the identity of someone if they give that person opportunities to talk about themselves, if they ask open questions and listen attentively without making assumptions.

This can be more challenging than it sounds. Social care professionals are frequently limited in the time they can spend with the people they provide services to, and, in some situations, may be under pressure to complete specific tasks or ask specific questions in order, for example, to complete paperwork for assessments. However, allowing time and space to build relationships, listen and value other people’s experiences or perspectives, is a skill that is at the core of social care and social work practice.

Activity 1 Identities of young people leaving care

Timing: Allow 20 minutes for this activity

The participants in the following video are all young adults who have experienced being in care as children. Here they talk about the impact that their experiences of care have had on their identities.

Watch the video through a couple of times and then note down your thoughts in response to the questions that follow.

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Transcript: Being in care

Child 1

You lose the value of place of your own. You lose that whole thing. You lose that whole – and plus, you lose your self-respect in a way. When you keep moving from place to place, you lose yourself and your self-respect as well goes along with it. And once you lose that, I think that’s where most kids actually ended up in criminal stuffs because they lost themselves in that way.

Child 2

Tell you the truth, social services are my family. They are my family. I mean, my social worker, Joy, before I actually became leaving care – independent, you might as well say – she was always telling me, Edna, I ain’t going to be your social worker anymore. You’re going to have to keep going to duty.

You could ask her now. I’m still pestering her. And it’s not the fact that I’m scared to go to somebody else, duty or whatever, but it’s just the fact that they’re my family; I could call any one of them when I need help. I mean, I might as well say they’re the ones that have taught me how to become a woman, how to live independently and any complicated question – the questions that your parents are supposed to be answering, they answer it for me, so. I don’t know.

Child 3

The fact that they hear that you’re in care, to them, kids in care are bad. And some kids are in care because – I don’t know how they’ve been brought up – but because they act bad, people see that every child in care is bad as well.

Child 4

The only person I’ll consider is important to me now, there’s only me. Because a lot of life I went through that teach it – that teach me, the only person I can depend on is me.

End transcript: Being in care

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Being in care

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1. How do these care leavers suggest their identities are shaped by the concepts of home, family and place?

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2. In what ways do these young people suggest their identities are shaped by how other people see them?

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Comment

These young people talk openly about their individual experiences of spending time growing up in care. They have had a variety of experiences and their identities have been shaped in very different ways. One young person reflects on the impact of being moved around and how sense of self can be affected and even lost along the way. Another young person notes that her social workers have undertaken the role of family, while another states that he has learned to depend only on himself. One young person observes how young people in care are often viewed negatively and that the expectation can be that they will cause trouble. It is important to remember that everyone’s circumstances are different and that we are all impacted by our lived experiences. How we view ourselves and how others view us can significantly influence our identity in both positive and negative ways.

You will now consider more about how (or why?) understanding the whole person is essential in social care and social work.