Safeguarding in research: case study #2
Investigation on increasing resilience of young people in care
What was the research about?
This PhD research project was an ethnographic study based at a Local Authority secure children's home (or 'secure unit').
Aims
This study focused on the 6% of care leavers who successfully 'battled the odds' to make it to university. The aim was to produce extensive qualitative data collaboratively with students who have successfully negotiated this journey. The outcome was to unpick the notion of 'care' and love and examine how 'care' is understood and experienced by care leavers.
Participants
The study involving observations and interviews with both care home staff and residents over a 12-month period. Residents were vulnerable young people between the ages of 10-16, many of whom had experienced significant trauma in their lives.
What were the safeguarding risks and mitigations?
One of the key challenges the researcher faced was ensuring that clear boundaries were set between themselves as a researcher, and other professional adults with whom the young people came into contact (e.g. social workers, youth justice workers, CAMHS, etc). This was more of a challenge due to the fact that the researcher became quite well known to staff and young people during the project. The researcher was also curious of the power differential between adult and child during the interviews, and the need to make it very clear that young people did not have to participate in an interview if they did not want to (particularly important because in some cased care workers encouraged them to take part).
One approach involved taking care at the start of each interview to remind young people about the role of a researcher and to set clear parameters regarding the kinds of things they might want to tell them. For example, while reassuring young people that information discussed in an interview setting would be confidential, the researcher carefully explained what they would have to report information if they felt that the young person was putting themselves or someone else at risk.
The researcher put the safeguarding needs of participants at the forefront in the research design and built in extra ways for them to ‘opt out’ of sensitive discussions. The researcher developed topic cards, each listing 3 or 4 interview questions, for use during the interviews with young people. The cards were in a large font, in colour and contained pictures to make them more readable/accessible. Young people were encouraged to have a look at the cards and if there were any topics/questions that they were not comfortable discussing they could remove them from the table and they would not be covered in the interview. Young people were reminded that they could change their mind about being involved at any time, and the researcher practiced phrases that they could use to decline questions that felt uncomfortable.
In terms of practical considerations, the researcher undertook a DBS Check before carrying out this research; they also obtained ethics approval from the University, as well as undergoing the ethics approval procedures operating in both the Local Authority and the Secure Unit itself. They made sure they always wore a visitor badge within the unit. The unit is secure, so all rooms and corridors were locked at all times. To reiterate their position, the researcher opted not to have access to unit keys, therefore avoiding difficult requests from staff and young people that might have harmed the research relationship - such as being asked to sanction a child by removing them from a group situation. Instead of keys, the researcher carried a bleeper to enable them to call for help in case of emergencies.
By contrast to the above study, another study undertaken by the researcher involved interviews with care leavers in relation to their experiences of University. This raised different safeguarding challenges, as although the participants were over 18, they were not as well supported as the young people living in secure care. To help address this, the researcher looked at the policies and guidance of the Universities the participants were attending, to identify sources of potential support to direct them to in case of need (e.g. mental health support).
*Please note that this project was undertaken prior to the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK Data Protection Act 2018, so it does not cover all the aspects that would be expected to meet the current data protection requirements.