PhD Studentship: Understanding Child Protection and Culture

Forced displacement of people within and from their home countries has reached an all-time high across the globe and responses to supporting refugees fleeing from conflict have needed rethinking. None of the collaborative efforts to overcome the challenges of forced migration have addressed difficulties encountered by refugee carers and children. Understanding the needs of vulnerable groups, especially children, has become urgent, not only because they now represent over half of the displaced, but particularly because of their increasing vulnerability within host communities. Child protection issues have emerged as a concern as global populations bring local challenges. Children may be alone or have experienced physical or sexual abuse during flight; many live within unconventional family groupings; posttraumatic stress is high compromising mental health of children and young people and the adults who care for them; and some risk exposure to radicalisation. Within host countries families can struggle to make sense of in-country child-rearing behavioural norms and expectations. Some practices (such as female genital mutilation) may be illegal; and in trying to keep their children from harm (e.g. substance abuse), parental punitive practice may be more controlling and physical than locally acceptable. At the same time, health and social care professionals struggle to find a balance between respecting individuals’ traditions, behaviours and beliefs and protecting a child. Some of the most extreme examples of migrant children’s deaths at the hands of carers in the UK resulted from practitioners’ lack of knowledge of how to address inappropriate carer behaviours which were attributed to cultural norms in the country of origin; or because there was undue language reliance on parental or sibling accounts, rather than talking to the child directly.

Child maltreatment is a public health issue of global concern. It is particularly prevalent where families are struggling to survive; where poverty is rife; physical and mental health are compromised; family integrity is ruptured; and where emotional turmoil caused by the humanitarian crisis has enforced flight, traumatic journeys, and resettlement in a new social environment. In such circumstances even the most resilient of parents may struggle to keep their children safe. Within a child protection system that is already at capacity, practitioners lack appropriate tools to help them determine which children are at most risk, how to respond appropriately; what mechanisms would support increased carers’ resilience and how risks can be ameliorated.

The scale and pace of the refugee crisis has mediated against the development of appropriate services and facilities. Thus, children who have experienced abuse remain traumatised or at risk of further abuse. Moreover families are left in a position where they do not know how to protect their children appropriately and which responses fall below host country expectations. At the same time the child protection process may not be sensitive enough to particular refugee situations and has not yet found a sufficiently nuanced response to addressing risk and harm whilst building resilience. Understanding such factors is essential if we are to develop policy approaches to reduce the vulnerability of refugee carers and children.

The PhD will address gaps in knowledge about the resilience employed by families whose children have been exposed to abuse across the refugee journey and the ways protective parenting is manifested. It will contribute to practitioner understanding and response to situations where there are refugee child protection concerns. Using socioecological and resilience theories and a narrative interview approach we will examine refugees’ own constructions of protective parenting in host countries, enabling identification of critical events and classification of the resources employed for ‘good enough’ parenting, as well as refugees’ evolving priorities of how they might be better supported. Working from refugees’ perspectives, we can develop understanding of particular moments when victims need psychological or emotional support (and what that support should be). We will also interview a range of multidisciplinary child protection workers, to understand the key decision points and influencing factors in determining risk and response. These understandings will become an important step towards identifying the support needs of refugee parents, developing solutions and advocating for policies to strengthen their resilience while driving policy and practice changes.