Institutional and Organisational Factors Associated with Violence

Abstract

Meeting the needs of children and young people in residential children’s homes is widely acknowledged to be both a complex and demanding process (Department of Health 1998a). This challenging role can be further exacerbated by both institutional and organisational factors that are often out of the direct control of individual homes. In this chapter we consider how these factors were seen to influence the climates of violence and verbal attacks within the residential settings. First, the formal residential policy and practice guidelines relating to peer violence are examined, including the manner in which these are presented to young people, and young people’s own awareness and assessments of their appropriateness. Leading on from this, the issue of children’s rights in residential homes is considered in relation to institutional policy and practice developments surrounding violence. Following this, the organisational factors associated with issues of violence are documented. These are largely restricted to workers’ own assessments, although young people did provide opinions on three areas: physical structure of buildings, function of homes and staffing. Last, the organisational and structural factors identified by participants are considered in relation to the position of homes on the violence continuum, originally presented in Chapter 2.

I’d definitely like to see a lot more information given to kids and a lot more say in what goes on in their own home, but with staff included in that, ‘cause we find here that we’ve got management, then little bits of management underneath that, and then us and it’s constantly a fighting battle,’ cause the management’ll come in and make rules and they’ll all go home and we’re left to implement them, yet they don’t ask our opinion.

(Residential Social Worker, female)