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By Christine Barter, Emma Renold, David Berridge and Pat Cawson (July 2004)
Children's homes admit young people with challenging behaviour and conflicting needs. Those with histories of abuse and of abusing others may be placed together. Government guidance on violence emphasises management and staff competence, rather than the context in which young people interact. Research has rarely looked at children's experiences of peer violence. This study explored children's and staff's experience of peer violence in children's homes.
Exploration of violence could not be confined to physical assaults, since coercive and violent cultures can be, and often are, underpinned and maintained by fear and intimidation. Children's experiences produced a continuum of behaviours that were multi-faceted. Categories derived from the young people's accounts were:
Young people described differential levels of impact:
Half of the young people interviewed described direct physical assault as victims, perpetrators or witnesses. Girls reported isolated and infrequent attacks in response to particular catalysts, whereas boys' use of physical violence was often embedded in expressions of certain forms of 'macho' masculinity. Almost half of young people experienced non-contact attacks, often as part of a wider cycle of verbal and physical violence.
Reports of unwelcome sexual behaviour were low but girls were three times more likely to report this than boys , and to see it as high impact. Girls experienced the most serious cases and the majority were from boys to girls. All were coercive, and most incidents took place in girls' bedrooms.
Nearly all young people experienced verbal abuse. There was a general undercurrent of name-calling and swearing accepted in children's cultures in most homes. However high impact verbal abuse breached boundaries of acceptability by impugning the victims' sexuality or through insulting their families. Girls were more likely to use sexuality whilst boys engaged in 'mother cussing'. These were the worst forms of insults experienced, warranting immediate, often physical retaliation. Family insults may be especially hurtful in the context of children's homes as family relationships were often strained, uncertain and sometimes severed. Most young people regarded these insults as more harmful than physical violence.
Most young people advocated retaliation. High impact attacks generally justified targeted and planned retaliation. Nearly all accounts used language of revenge, prevention, protection of honour and similar justifications. In most homes young people used peers rather than staff as a source of emotional support.
Peers were the first port of call in all incidents later disclosed to staff. Reasons included feeling that staff could not solve and might exacerbate the problem, lack of trust/empathy and to avoid 'getting into trouble' themselves through violating non-disclosure cultures ('grassing'). In homes that actively fostered positive relationships staff were more readily used as emotional support and young people perceived interventions as being successful. These were homes where high impact violence was rare.
Consistency of staff intervention differed both between and within homes, with responses to physical violence the most consistent. It was routine for staff to intervene in physical violence, up to and including restraint if conciliatory methods were unsuccessful. Non-contact attack was unanimously considered the most difficult to identify, due to its hidden nature, rooted in the group's power dynamics. Staff described its covert nature as 'undertone', 'undercurrent' and 'backdoor' violence. Staff were often reluctant to discuss sexual violence. Managers appeared more confident in discussing it than front-line colleagues. In contrast to young people, many workers diminished the importance of verbal abuse, especially sexual insult, thinking it too ingrained in the young people's everyday language for them to have any significant impact for change. They did recognise that 'mother cussing' had a significant effect, but primarily were preoccupied with children's physical safety.
The main method of securing young people's safety was through direct supervision. Restriction of young people's freedom was a key mechanism to increase surveillance. Rules in many homes included restriction to communal areas, and controlling access to bedrooms, while some had alarms on bedroom doors and CCTV. A few staff in homes with very restrictive practices questioned the long-term consequences for young people's development. Strategies were reactive rather than proactive, and workers often lacked training or confidence in undertaking group work on sensitive issues. There were some positive initiatives but most control centred on the use of negative sanctions, including ultimately loss of placement, rather than on rewards for positive behaviour. Perspectives on reducing violence concerned the need for positive relationships with children, the control of 'inappropriate referrals' especially emergency placements and establishing a 'good mix' of young people.
Staff were aware of gender differences in patterns of aggression, although they both underestimated girls' involvement in physical violence and lessened its significance by referring to 'cat fights' and 'bitching matches'. Male violence was often perceived as a normal although uncontrolled developmental expression of masculinity.
Power dynamics between young people were also conceptualised by staff in terms of the 'pecking order'. Positions could be established by positive means such as maturity or through violence and intimidation. Staff saw this as a normal or at least inevitable aspect of residential life, but for many young people the process was intimidatory.
In many ways young people and staff agreed on the nature of violence, although differences in interpretation affected staff's ability to help young people and influence their behaviour. Staff presumed that they found out about unobserved physical violence, although young people described incidents they believed remained unknown. Serious sexual incidents, whilst disclosed to other young people, were generally not reported to staff. However both groups most often discounted or minimised sexual violence when physical force was absent, if the instigator was female and if the victim had a previous history of promiscuity.
Both staff and young people used the term bullying to represent aggression which was a targeted and persistent abuse of power. Often young people were viewed as being both the victim and aggressor on different occasions. However, many young people rejected the term 'bullying' in relation to their own experiences, as this denied them access to justification narratives used in explanations of their aggression and implied low status and weakness for victims. This hampered professional attempts at intervention.
Both groups agreed that racist and homophobic violence and insult were rare. Racism was one area where staff were more proactive within clear agency policies, and young people generally gave an anti racist perspective, although certain 'outsider' groups were at greater risk of racial victimisation. Such groups were not ascribed the 'street credentials' of wider youth cultures with which many young people engaged. The rarity of homophobic insult was directly rooted in homophobia, as challenging a person's heterosexuality was seen as being the most derogatory form of verbal insult.
Violence between young people in children's homes shows many similarities to that found in other contexts, and appeared no higher than that found in some studies of day schools and neighbourhoods. However its operation throughout all areas of young people's lives, particularly the likelihood of invasion of personal space and attacks at night, can make its impact much greater.
Reducing violence requires a planned, proactive approach. Staff require appropriate team and individual training, and young people need to be consulted and involved in the development of strategies both to challenge violence and support victims. Strategies will need to recognise the importance of verbal attacks, both as sources of direct harm and in setting the context for physical and sexual attack. Violence is underpinned by cultures which treat male violence as natural, accept the normality of sexually derogative language, or ratify hierarchical power relations between young people. These cultures must be challenged through management, staff training and groupwork with and by young people themselves.
Altogether 74 young people aged between 6 and 17, and 71 staff including front line and management in 14 different children's homes were interviewed about their past and present experiences of peer violence and aggression. Vignettes describing different levels and forms of aggressive behaviour, based on young people's accounts, were used to assist discussion of sensitive topics in semi-structured interviews.
Barter, C., Renold, E., Berridge, D. and Cawson, P. (2004) Peer violence in children's residential care. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
ISBN: 1403935599
Available from Palgrave Macmillan
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