Violence in residential child care : a review of a symposium on practitioner experiences

Throughout the history of residential child care (RCC), concerns about violence perpetrated against children who are looked after away from home have been persistent. These include the misuse of restraint, as punishment or to force compliance. Currently, proposed solutions to restraint reduction encompass increased regulation, training, and monitoring of workers in RCC. However, this neglects the reality that children sometimes exhibit violent and aggressive behaviour that necessitates restraint. We argue that advising against restraint is not sufficient, and that the environment needs to be conducive to this, including the physical and psychological safety of workers. In the current discourse on RCC, workers’ experiences of being subject to violence in their roles are seldom mentioned. To better understand how RCC workers manage and cope with violence, we held a ‘symposium on violence’ with 20 RCC workers from one organisation in Scotland. In this paper, we present the main themes identified through reflective meaning-making discussions of participant accounts. These issues are discussed alongside relevant research and theories, with the aim of developing an understanding of violent behaviour as a complex phenomenon and, in doing so, offering initial learning from the symposium. The discussion concludes by outlining the need for safe spaces where practitioners can reflect on their experiences of violent behaviour to recover, learn, and maintain a healthy caring culture.