Sexting: Children, Young People and Child Pornography

Sexting: Children, young people and child pornography

I’m crediting this blog to Dr Thomas Crofts and Dr Laura Harvey and Dr Jessica Ringrose whose talks I went to this evening.

The first one was particularly interesting and about the legislative framework surrounding child pornography. The research that he was talking about was all in Australia but I’m sure has similar legal implications here.

He discussed the concept and definitions surrounding pornography, about possessing or distributing sexual material of a child – child being defined as someone who is 18 or under. However he went onto explain, that although laws have really toughened around child pornography, and there are things such as the UN conventions for the rights of the child (Art 34)  in place to prevent adults distributing this material,  they are not set up to handle the subleties of ‘sexting’ – that is, young people who are sending each other sexual images or films i.e via text. (Sexting is not a word young people use themselves, it seems to have come from the media – they are using terms such as naked selfies and nudies).

And in Australia, young people, are being arrested over possessing this material – although there have been no prosecutions yet. The only thing in place to protect them is if they are below the age of criminal responsibility – but in the UK, that’s as young as 10, so unlikely to form any protection.

This all comes down to the perceptions of this material and whether it’s offensive. The law in Australia explores whether its offensive to the reasonable person- but the reasonable person would be an adult – and young people might perceive it differently.

So there is a question about this balance – we don’t want to sanction young people and turn them into criminals (and in Australia this can go as far as being on the sexual offenders register!) but equally we want to protect our young people, and make sure victims who are being bullied are given a voice.

However there is clearly wide spectrum of sexting – some can be clearly exploitative, but others can be two mutually consenting 16 year olds, taking images of each other and keeping them on their phone alone.

The pros – for criminal sanctions – are long lasting ‘haunting harm’ it can cause young people, the digital footprint, that it might encourage deviant sexual behaviour, might whet the appetite of adults and it challenges idealiased notions of childhood innocence.

The outlined cons were that sexting does not fit the rationale driving severe responses to child pornography. In addition repression might incite more sexting, in line with Foucault, perhaps by criminalising, it would actually normalise sexting, does it deny young people their sexual citizenship and the severe sanctions can have long term consequences eg on jobs.

The researcher supported Diane Abbott’s recent message on Women’s Hour – that the ideal is about support and education about sex and relationships, not about sanctions and censorship.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21127073

The second talk followed on from this and was based on research conducted in two schools in inner city London, talking to teenagers and exploring their social media habits.

They found a lot of talk about the idea of getting ‘ratings’ – ie social currency through the way you dress, the girls you get, potentially violence…and a lot of male teens were putting on facebook images of girls’ cleavage, sometimes with their own names written across it. The less ‘easy’ the girl, the more ratings they get. As well as putting up images of girls, they were also putting up images of their six packs – but there was a lot of pressure on them, and they had to negotiate whether it’s the right image to put up  - that enhances their masculinity and doesn’t make them look gay. However if they put the right images up, it’s valuable to them.

On the flip side, the comments under the girls’ pictures tend to discuss how the girls are ‘skets’ and sluts – and it’s much harder for them to get ratings in this way.

The teens were saying, having porn on your phone is for the kids, the year 7s, whereas they have photos of real girls.

A lot of this information is not that new but it just reinforces the notions of gender inequality and the pressures that each gender have to face – the constant negotiations they are working through. Some of the boys are under pressure that if they don’t’ ask a girl for an image, they might be seen as gay – equally girls feel it’s nice to be asked to give an image – but want to balance being a ‘sket’ and being frigid. It’s important to note the pressure on each gender as the media and policy discourse tends to frame boys as problematic and risky, and often demonises this gender.

Interesting insight into this world – although clearly a small sample.

Cuts affecting practice: Use of SGOs

Happy New Year!

And thanks for the many views of my Xmas post – I had almost 200 which is nice for me!

I’m writing today’s blog on a specific issue as it is something I am coming into contact with in practice for the first time. I have learnt about Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs) in our lectures but it’s only recently in the LAC team that I’ve seen how they might fit in.

However, at the moment, I’ve not seen them used in the way they are intended, in the most child-centred way but often for what feels like financial motivations. I’m very aware that in this climate in particular, one of the main frustrations social workers have is the impact of the cuts on their ability to practice as intended, however for me this is the first time I’ve seen a specific example.

To be clear – I have young people I am working with who have been with foster carers over a year and are thriving. These foster carers are agency carers and are paid more than in house local authority carers. When it comes to looking at placement permanency, we have to go to panel to ‘match’ the young person formally with their foster carer until they leave care. For the young people I am working with, this is likely to be for at least another four years. However, for budgetary reasons, our fostering and adoption team are finding it increasingly difficult to get approval to fund many of these agency placements for long term permanency work, only for short term placements. Thus foster carers are asked if they would consider taking an SGO – basically because it’s more cost effective. I’m not saying that SGOs can’t be beneficial to young people, just that this this is not the motivation.

I’m wondering if this is happening in lots of local authorities. In many ways it is child centred, in that questioning the foster carer as to whether they can be a SG, is in order to prevent the placement being disrupted, and working in the best interests of the child to aid stability. It just seems unfortunate to have to put the foster carers in such difficult positions, where many find that despite not having gone into it for the money, money does play an important role, and they can’t afford to take on the less well paid SGO.

All the social workers want the best for the young people, and we’ll all be fighting to advocate and make our case that the young people should remain where they are until they leave care, so as to avoid disruption and another placement move. It’s just incredibly frustrating to see decisions at the top, affecting practice in this way.

Xmas with care leavers

I spent Xmas day yesterday volunteering with the Tope project.

The Tope project was set up by a group of volunteers because a young man, Tope, himself a care leaver, took his own life a few years ago around the Xmas period. Xmas time was identified as a particularly lonely and difficult time, and this group of people thought it would be great to set up a project for care experienced young people to come together and enjoy the day. This was their pilot project for 70 young people.

I had a really inspiring and memorable Xmas yesterday. Firstly, the day was superbly organised. Outside my social work MA and for the previous 10 years, I have been running my own charity, and so I know quite how difficult it is to run big events in spare time. But this event was incredible, and it seemed to really bring to light everything Xmas is all about. All the volunteers genuinely just cared and wanted to put on a fantastic day for the care leavers. There was a huge amount of food, fun and activities, from arts and crafts, to giant jenga, xmas films and incredible goodie bags for everyone with donations of gifts. Lorraine Pascale, herself a care leaver, showed up to give away signed books and talk about her own experiences, and an Arsenal rep, gave out gifts and the chance to tour the Emirates.

But what I really loved was chatting to so many young people and watching them chat to each other. I met young people who used to be homeless and recently have spent years in hostels, young people living with siblings in cheap hotels because there is no housing available, and young people still in care, who for whatever reason, decided they would prefer to spend Xmas with other care experienced young people than their foster family. Just before i left, two of the girls on my table started to bond, to chat over their experiences, over the careers they might want to do, or the song they might sing to the room - and it just felt pretty awesome. The whole experience felt inclusive. Some of the inspiring people who helped to lead it, from the Children's Rights Service just brought tonnes of energy, and had everyone laughing but also identifying with the experiences they talked of. It was grassroots, it was what the wonderful Cameron would call the Big Society, in between trying to make these people homeless by cutting their housing benefit. (sorry i digress!).

It chimed with me partly because I love working with young people, and got the same buzz from it that I did after mentoring during the summer, and from my current placement working with children in care, partly because it''s reinforcing the topic of my dissertation. I'm looking into the lack of emotional support care leavers get and how to help them in developing a support network, or understanding why they might not choose to engage with what social workers traditionally offer. I also saw how resilient these young people were, having gone through tough times, but still able to come together, many of whom turned up as teenagers at the event knowing no-one, and laugh and joke together, offering me advice as a trainee social worker (get to know the young person, keep in contact, remember to build a relationship, not just talk about issues, be supportive) and finally, because there is nothing better than being surrounded by volunteers like you, with the same passion, the same interests and with a desire to make a difference.

Thank you to the Tope project for giving me the opportunity to be part of such an inspiring and memorable event.

Every time i have an experience like this, it makes me question the direction I want my career to go  -is it social work, is it youth work, is it some kind of charity youth engagement role, or entrepreneurial social enterprise role - but whatever it is, it has to be something that makes me feel the way I did yesterday.

And another five tools...

And another five:

Going on a journey:

Another way of helping young children to open up about their family and relationship. Draw a picture of a bus or a toy bus and the invite the child to pretend they are going on holiday with their family. Ask, ‘who would you sit next to on the bus?’ and ‘where might you like go on holiday’ – if they draw a tent, ask them who would you feel comfortable sharing your tent with’……

More story-telling:

You can also use techniques such as a day in the life of a child. You can use role play or dolls to take the part of different members of the family. If you are playing the  part of a member of the family, ask the child what you should say in certain scenarios.

The magic carpet ride – this can be useful to assess attachment.

It is adapted by Mary Corrigan 1990.

Introduce a magic story ride – close your eyes, imagine you are sitting on a beautiful rug infront of a fire at home, on the rug is a basket of your favourite food. Describe the food, everytime you take something more food appears. The rug is very soft and it gently lifts up. Hang on as it flies, it is going down the hall to the front door of a house where the door is open. Someone is standing there, who is it?

This is likely to be the person they feel most attached to and safe with.

Body pictures – this can be useful if you suspect physical or sexual abuse

A body is drawn onto a large piece of paper. Using colouring pens, invite the child to draw their face then ask them where in the body they feel happy, bouncy, cold, warm, cross, angry and shocked. Ask if they have had any bumps and bruises and invite them to draw and colour these in. The child can make clothes for their picture from wapping paper. Plasters or cream can be applied to the most painful places so the child feels heard and better.

The window: (this is very similar to 3 houses).

A worker can draw a window and then the child to draw in the top right hand corner a picture of something in their past, in the bottom corner a picture of the present, top left, a picture of their hoped for future and in the bottom left a picture of the fear that will prevent their hopes for the future being revealed.

Direct work with young people

I thought it might be helpful to post examples I find of good exercises to do with young people.

I'll keep adding to these and it would be great if anyone wants to share their own! Please tweet or comment to add.

I need to also think about a more useful way of categorising them, rather than in a long list - but that might be a future project.

First five

1. 3 Islands - helps to understand dynamics of relationships

Draw 3 islands. Ask the young person who would be on the island with them, they would spend lots of time with these people. Who would be on the next island which has a bridge connecting it. They don’t see them all the time but can see them as and when they want. Who would be on the third island, far away, who they would not see.

This is helpful in opening up conversations to understand fears or risks associated with characters, both in the young person's history and present, can help with disclosures. Also helps show desires - who might they wish they were living with now? Who did they wish they could see more, or less?

2. Agony aunt scenarios - projective technique for more uncomfortable conversations/projecting by thinking through 3rd person

I used this when doing a sex education session with a young person. As she was quite embarrassed about the topic, I created some agony aunt scenarios to explore her attitudes to things like peer pressure i.e – “Dear…., At school everyone talks about having sex and I’m the one left out. I’m thinking I should just do it so I can fit in with everyone else, what do you think?”

      3.     Story Stems – this one came from a psychologist report - shows attachments and role expectations 

Story Stems are situations set up with dolls house figures and furniture. The psychologist sets up a story and begins to act out and narrate the scenario. The child is asked to complete the story. The stories are set within the family and contain situations triggering high arousal in the child character such as fear or pain, which would normally lead to the enactment of attachment behaviours such as seeking comfort from a caregiver. The way the child completes the story reflects on their attachment narrative and also tells us what their expectations of the roles of different family members and the relationships between them are like. The interpretation is based both on the content of the narrative the child gives, the coherence and style of the story, and the affect shown by the child when telling it.

    Narratives which are coherent, rich in detail of normal domestic life and contain      nurture and no traumatic intrusions reflect secure attachment experiences. Chaotic narratives, traumatic intrusions, and lack of warmth or detail show deficiencies in attachment e  experiences. Research has shown that story stems change over time, reflecting the improved quality of the child’s internal working model over time in a stable caring placement.

Examples include – coming home late without telling parents first, waking up having a nightmare, smashing the window with a ball.

    4.     Post boxes – also from a psychologist report - shows importance and quality of relationships

In this task the child selects post boxes to represent each member of their family. They are then given a large number of small cards with messages such as “this person frowns at me” and asked to post them to the most appropriate person. I explained the meaning of any unfamiliar words. Cards that the child does not wish to post to a member of the family can be posted to Mr Nobody. The number of cards given to different people usually represents the amount of importance that person has in the child’s life, and the content of the cards chosen reflects the quality of that relationship. To the original set I have added a number of cards indicative of child protection concerns, and issues relevant to parent-child relationships.

5. 3 houses - thanks to @MrDougalDog for reminding me of this one - strengths, risks and desires

This is based on the Signs of Safety risk assessment and helps to understands strengths, risks and desired safety - or things that need to change to get to the young person's desired outcomes. The three houses are 'house of worries' 'house of good things' 'house of dreams'. For each you look at internal and external factors - ie young person's own strengths, and those that comes from outside sources - friends, family, community etc.

On this link you can see an image of the template. You can download the powerpoint for a clearer one: http://www.practicecentre.cyf.govt.nz/policy/practice-tools/resources/three-houses-tool.html

Here is a helpful article with guidance on how to use it: http://www.d.umn.edu/sw/snydersfiles/AdvCW/week7/Three_Houses_Article.pdf

Children in Care team through the eyes of a newbie

I have been on my placement in a local authority Children in Care team (CiC) for ten days now. That’s obviously not a very long time and so this blog post comes from someone with limited experience. But one of the things I have been discussing with my fellow student is our lack of induction. The placement has been great so far, I’m loving it – but I do feel I’m asking a ridiculous amount of questions because we did, in many ways, get thrown into the deep end.

As such, I suppose this post is more for students or people wanting a basic insight into some of the things the team does on a day to day basis. Given that I’ve only been there for ten days, I will definitely leave lots out but I’ll come back to this at a later point.

So the basics:

Our CiC team handles a few child protection cases but mainly works with LAC or CLA (looked after children also known as children looked after…)

I have been allocated 3 ‘cases’ as well as co-working a CP case. 3 young people – all between the age of 10-15. However, our team can work with babies, from the moment of birth, up until 16 when the young people will be transferred to the 16+ team. I know this is different in some Local Authorities – for example some leaving care teams will meet the young person age 16 but not start formally taking over the case until they are 18.

On a basic level, in terms of statutory requirements:

-          I need to visit each young person every 4 weeks minimum (stat requirements are 6 weeks, in our LA it’s 4 weeks.)

-          I need to plan for and prepare for LAC reviews. They tend to happen every 6 months and involve writing a report, giving an update on all the areas of the CAF framework – child’s developmental needs, parenting capacity both of birth parents and foster parents etc. I have just completed my first one for a LAC next week. As part of this, it’s important to get the views of the young people pre the meeting. I was given a specific consultation leaflet to go through with my young person, but we are going to be learning to use a piece of software which is a much more dynamic and engaging way for young people to express their views, tailored to their age group – where they can choose themes and characters and play games while filling in their answers. After the LAC review, I will then be updating their care plan in accordance with key decisions made.

-          I need to attend PEP reviews every 6 months. Personal Education Plan meetings – where you discuss with the school how the young person is getting on, look at any extra support they might need…

-          You also need to make sure their health assessments are done on time and there is an ongoing health action plan

On top of this, there is a lot of day to day stuff. I have found so far that despite being pretty efficient (that’s not trying to blow my own trumpet but I think if I have one strength, being organised and efficient is it) I have a huge to do list that grows by the day. Each visit you do often ends in a pile of tasks – mine has included everything from applying for a passport for my young person to helping to arrange contact between them and their siblings to looking into whether a foster care agency will pay for the young person to go on a school trip.

Then there’s the stuff that you really want to be focusing on, creating more meaningful direct work with young people. From my measly 10 days, I can already see how little time there is to do this, even as a student. I have started to read up on life story work, in the hope of creating a book for one of my young people before she moves to her next long term placement. I am looking into finding an advocate for another young person and need to consider a referral to counselling, if their eligibility meets the threshold, for another.

In between this, there are duty days, where we must not arrange visits, but be on the desk for anything that might come in – such as supervising contact sessions between birth parents and children in care, or helping out with cases where the social worker might be away.

There’s also the limits set by the fact that you can only see young people after 4pm when they come home from school. I have found this can make it quite hard, in the three days a week I’m on placement, to fit all my visits in, but it’s also a really nice way to break up the day, if you’ve been sat working through your more ‘paperwork based’ to do list in the first half of the day, knowing your visit is coming up to look forward to.

There’s lots of other stuff that I know little about as it isn’t something I’ve yet had to do – like viability assessments – working out if someone might be a suitable foster carer before handing it over to the fostering team to do the full on assessment.

I’m loving it so far. It’s very interesting. There are a huge number of learning opportunities. Perhaps frighteningly so. We have a big responsibility – the term ‘corporate parent’ comes up a lot. And everytime I see something on my list move further down, it’s important to remember and sometimes reconsider priorities. It has made me sad that so early on, I’m struggling sometimes to find the time to work on the things I really want to, but I also think that the smaller tasks are taking me that much longer because I have to ask a million trivial questions.

It’s pretty damn exciting though. I’ve spent lots of time researching direct work techniques, starting to make my own toolkit, including my handmade board game! And a variety of worksheets for when they might be appropriate.

There are also many challenges, and I'm sure i'll go into these more once I gain further experience. But one that has struck me is the dynamic between social worker and foster carer. There have been 1 or 2 instances already where the tone a foster carer has used, or their advice to the young person, didn't sit entirely right with me - and I think that will be an interesting dynamic to explore further..

That’s all for now!

End of summer, preparing for final year.

I can’t quite believe my 2 month summer has come to an end. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d fill it but in the end it was ridiculously busy. I spent a bit of time back at the WhoCares Trust charity, I spent 2 weeks and 3 Sundays, on an incredible camp, mentoring 16 year olds. This has been my favourite bit of the summer and I’m sad to be saying goodbye to them this weekend. I’ve been back to adland to freelance. And I’ve completed my training to be a Prince’s Trust mentor next year. I’ve also spent a bit of time thinking about and reading up on my dissertation topic – which as it stands, is about the lack of emotional support/the role of the support network for care leavers…and am coming to the end of organising my big annual charity event which takes place next weekend. So…. This week I went to have a meet and greet at my new placement team, a local authority Children in Care team. Generally, I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity. This was my top choice for a placement team, and the area of foster care is one of the main ones that inspired me to move into social work, within a broader passion for social justice. I’m also pretty nervous. It’s going to be an extremely different environment from the last placement. In my first placement, the first 6 weeks were an induction period where we held no cases, and even when that changed, it grew slowly to 3 clients, all of whom lived in the setting and so were also ‘managed’ by all the staff there. This time, I have already been told 3 ‘cases’ allocated to me, before I’ve even begun. But there sounds like a heap of learning opportunities, and basically I just hope I’m up to the job. I was thinking a bit about the role – and how on the one hand, you’re trying to get your portfolio done for uni, and hit your key roles etc, and on the other hand you’re trying to impress your practice educator and do a good job. And I think its quite easy to forget, as a student, the third area – in this case, to do a great job for the children I’ll be working with, the whole reason we all chose this career. Whilst that may sound like I’m not doing it for the right reasons or ridiculous that I would even forget this – I don’t think that’s the case, I just think it’s easy to become bogged down in the targets you are being set and the task at hand, i.e to pass the MA! And so, to remind me of that constantly, I stuck on the wall a fantastic double page spread from the WhoCares magazine, entitled ‘social workers read this’ written by young people, with quotes as to what makes a good and bad social worker. Tomorrow comes an opportunity to recap on some of the law, ready for my first week next week. Here’s to a challenging but hopefully fantastic final year, and the chance to reinforce and reward my decision to change career! P.s If anyone has any idea how to sort the formatting in Blogger and make the paragraphs that I can see when i write the post, actually appear when i post it, i'd love to know!!