Dr Katie Ellis works in the Health Sciences School at the University of Sheffield. Her research shares the perspectives of children and young people who could be classed as vulnerable or marginalised. Hannah Raine, Research Assistant for the Connect & Reflect project, was able to meet virtually with Dr Ellis to talk more about her participatory research with girls in secure care and their perceptions of vulnerability. Dr Ellis explained,
“I wanted to share young people’s perspectives about their own experiences. So much is written about children in care, always purporting to advocate for their ‘best interests’. I wanted to talk to young people to see what they had to say about their own lives, and about the interventions that were shaped for them.”
Dr Ellis started her research career looking at pathways in and out of crime for young people (Ellis & France, 2012). During her masters, she worked as a research assistant on a project carrying out interviews with children living in Youth Offending Institutions. She noticed that there were gender differences with regards to where children were placed, with girls often placed in adult prisons, while boys were accommodated in institutions designed especially for young people. She also found that the early experiences of girls in custody had often been characterised by violence and abuse, of both a physical and sexual nature. This generated an interest in finding out more about how boys and girls were being treated in these kinds of settings. She investigated further, focusing her attention on settings known as ‘secure units’, or Secure Children's Homes. Dr Ellis explained what these units are for.
“Secure units are used to provide care and custody for two types of children, those who are in custody (or on remand) for committing serious offences, and those who have a secure order because they are seen to be at risk of harm in the community. For instance, you might have children who have committed very serious offences living with others who are considered to be at extreme risk and have perhaps been sexually exploited or trafficked.”
Again, Dr Ellis realised that there were gender differences, with the young offenders overwhelmingly being boys, while the ‘welfare’ group were girls.
“I wanted to talk to the girls and to find out how it felt to be ‘locked up’ under the guise of ‘protection’ alongside others who had committed very serious offences. I was interested to know what being secured might do to the self identity of these girls, considering that they were locked up for harms that have been done to them. It felt unjust, I guess.”
She found that often the two groups of young people had experienced very similar early childhood experiences, regardless of the sentence that had secured them. Their sentence was also sometimes defined by the service who first came into contact with children. For instance, if social services were aware that young people were experiencing child sexual exploitation, they would look to acquire a secure order. However, if the same sexually exploited child smashed the window of their perpetrators house, they might be arrested and charged by the police for criminal damage and hence follow a youth justice route.
There were challenges to the ‘level’ of participation that was possible within this sort of setting. For example, it could not be ‘co-produced’ in the typical understanding of this approach, because the ethical requirements necessary to enter the secure home specified that she should have her research questions and design already agreed with the local authority, the unit to be researched, and the university’s own ethics committees. Dr Ellis attempted to diffuse power imbalances in the interview itself and took question cards with pictures and just a few words on them, which would be accessible for the girls irrespective of their reading level or confidence.
“I’d spread them out all on the table, then say these are some of the things I’d like to talk about, but if there’s anything you’d rather not discuss, can you just take them off the table and pop them in an envelope or put them in the bin, do whatever you want. Please just know if there’s something you don’t want to talk about, it’s fine, just remove it. I also said, if we start talking, and you change your mind about the direction the conversation is taking, it’s ok to say ‘actually I’m bored of this can we talk about another topic?’”
During her interviews, Dr Ellis provided opportunities to practise ways to disengage, and shared ideas for ways in which the girls could change the subject in a way that didn’t feel like they were being ‘rude’ or disrespectful. She also reminded them that they would not get into trouble even if they were rude!
“I said ‘I just wondered how you felt about things today, and, if part of your feelings are that you don't want to take part, or you want to finish the interview early, then that's as important as staying until the end. If that happens I just want you to say to me, ‘do you know what, I’m done’”.
Dr Ellis pointed out that while there were challenges in carrying out this type of participatory research with children living in secure care, it was important to understand children’s experiences while they were living it, rather than waiting until they were adults and asking them to reflect back. Due to the structured interventions and support provided by the unit, even as the research was continuing, she was able to observe the ways the girls developed their perspectives and the ways in which they talked about their experiences.
One theme that emerged from Dr Ellis’ work was the notion of ‘contested vulnerability' (Ellis, 2018). All of the participants had been described by those working with them as being 'vulnerable'. She asked the girls what they felt ‘being vulnerable’ meant.
Participants had strong feelings about the concept of vulnerability and strongly resisted being labelled as such. They spoke about the drastic measures that they had taken to protect themselves, under extreme circumstances, and made hard choices that they felt were in their best interests. These situations were often hard for adults in their lives to comprehend, but the girls felt they were managing their circumstances in the best way they could.
For example, one girl described running away from a children’s home where she was being sexually abused. The fact that she ran to stay with a known paedophile was marked on her file as evidence of her vulnerability. Dr Ellis’ research found that the label of vulnerability often did not feel appropriate to children in these situations. They also described experiencing ‘victim blaming’, or being labelled with terms such as ‘manipulative’ due to their behaviour.
Giving young people an opportunity to give their own side of the story added a valuable perspective to consider when thinking about the lives of young people ‘in trouble’.
Dr Ellis knew that she needed to set herself apart from other adults the girls interacted with by ensuring they knew they were always able to choose if they wanted to take part or not.
“Part of the interesting thing about the research was trying to disrupt the ideas that the girls had about adults, because they’re used to being told what to do - one girl said ‘you just nod and agree and then you can get out’. So as a researcher it was really quite tricky to set my own place in that setting, to say I’m not a member of staff, I won’t tell you off if you swear, you don’t have to take part if you don’t want to.”
Relationship building also involved the staff, and required Dr Ellis to set boundaries with them, both to ensure a clear delineation of her role but also to ensure that young people could also see differences between a researcher and a care worker. She enforced these messages with her actions. One example of this was by choosing to decline a set of staff keys. Access to keys was a real source of power within the unit, as each door was locked at all times, to ensure the children could not move freely,
‘Not having keys stopped me from becoming a member of staff by default, I couldn’t be expected to do the normal things that a staff member might do” - like take people on a ‘time out’ if there had been rule breaking for instance.’
Dr Ellis was also clear to separate herself from members of staff by ensuring that she did not report on children’s behaviour or get involved in the day-to-day politics of the setting (as long as it was not a case of safeguarding). Part of building those relationships was also managing interactions with staff carefully, including situations in which her words conflicted with what staff were saying. This might mean reminding staff that the children did not have to take part in the research, and so she did not need staff to persuade girls to take part.
During these situations, Dr Ellis sought to behave as a non-threatening onlooker, following the principle laid out by Alison Leibling of ‘appreciative inquiry’ (Leibling, 2015). This theory starts with the idea that often the people who are working in institutions are doing the best they can with the resources they have, and so throughout she was very careful not to criticise members of staff or anything else within the setting.
After her PhD research Dr Ellis resolved to utilise the frustration she felt about the injustices experienced by children in care and formulated a new research project to explore best practice for children leaving care, which led to the report on Pathways to University for care leavers (Ellis & Johnston, 2019 & 2020).
“I decided to flip my research, and my next project focused on the experiences of young people who had been in care and then come out of the other side and gone to university,”
This project design was quite different, as in this instance she was working with adults, so the research could be co-produced with care leavers.
“Because these young people were now grown ups, they were over the age of 18 and at university, the project design was much different in that I could set up my aims generally to the funder in terms of what I wanted to look at, and when I got the funding I was able to pay three care experienced researchers to work with me with the project for the whole three years.”
She found that coproduction had a really positive impact throughout the project, in terms of input into the questions asked, some of the terminology used and also increasing the effects of the finding of this report. For example, during the report it was found that many care leavers did not answer questions on the UCAS website (the website used to apply to university) asking whether they were care leavers, as they felt afraid they would be rejected because of their background.
Following the report, the way UCAS asked this question was reformatted and accompanied with additional information, reassuring young people that data was collected to ensure they were receiving appropriate support at university. In a similar theme, the report also found that often universities were not adequately communicating what ‘support’ for care leavers meant, e.g. fees being paid and accommodation provided, and some care leavers were not taking up this support.
The Pathways report was endorsed by the latest Independent review of children’s social care and Dr Ellis’ recommendations for care experienced students have been incorporated as 'best practice' by UCAS, NNECL, OfS, UUK.
“It felt a much more positive experience, there was a synergy between findings and the care experienced community. The education sector embraced the project findings and have made real changes to the everyday lives of care experienced students”.
Dr Ellis provided some thoughts and reflections that other PhD researchers interested in carrying out more ethically complex research within a contested space could use when considering their approach.
Choose a topic that means something to you and which you have different and varied experiences in, and that you feel committed to identifying and addressing the injustices that you see there.
Utilise your existing personal and professional network in this area to form new connections with people that are aligned with your feelings and who have access to the kind of space you want to work in.
Consider the needs of the gatekeepers involved and what they need to feel comfortable with a researcher's presence- ensure clear and honest communication throughout, and that you understand the ethical responsibilities of working in these settings.
Ground the research in a wider context that makes sense to potential gatekeepers and communicate that research interest to them- for example, in this case, how children make decisions in difficult places.
Finally, recognise the importance of research in these contested spaces, but also the natural emotional challenges and difficulties, and ensure you have the personal networks and support system in place before you start.
Ellis, K. H. (2016). 'He's got some nasty impression of me he has': Listening to Children in the Secure Estate. The British Journal of Social Work, 46(6), 1553–1567. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcv114
Ellis, K. (2018). Contested Vulnerability: A Case Study of Girls in secure care. Children and Youth Services Review, 88, 156–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.02.047
Ellis, K. (2019). Blame and Culpability in Children's Narratives of Child Sexual Abuse. Child Abuse Review (Chichester, England : 1992), 28(6), 405–417. https://doi.org/10.1002/car.2590
Ellis, K., & France, A. (2012). Being Judged, Being Assessed: Young People's Perspective of Assessment in Youth Justice and Education. Children & Society, 26(2), 112–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1099-0860.2010.00328.x
Ellis, Katie; Johnston, Claire (2019): Pathways to University from Care: Findings Report One. The University of Sheffield. Report. https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.9578930.v3
Ellis, Katie; Johnston, Claire (2020): Pathways to University - The Journey Through Care: Findings Report Two. The University of Sheffield. Report. https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.13247639.v3
Ellis, Katie; Johnston, Claire (n.d.). Pathways to University from Care, accessed from https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/health-sciences/our-research/nursing-themes/child-and-family/pathways-university-care.
Gov.co.uk (2022) Independent review of children’s social care, accessed from https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/independent-review-of-childrens-social-care.
Liebling, A (2015) ‘Appreciative inquiry, generative theory, and the ‘failed state’ prison’, in J. Miller and W. Palacios, (eds) Advances in Criminological Theory. New Jersey, Routledge Publishers, pp. 251-270.
The Independent Review of Children's Social Care (2022). Supporting Evidence, accessed from https://childrenssocialcare.independent-review.uk/supporting-evidence/.