Ruth Emond

Children and food practices in residential care: Ambivalence in the 'institutional' home

Using an ethnographic approach, we provide an analysis of food practices in residential care to explore the atypical nature of childrens homes as a three-fold space that combines characteristics of ‘home’, ‘institution’, and ‘workplace’. Residential staff invested considerable effort into recreating a ‘family-like’ home but the practices and ideals they drew on could be interpreted and experienced in different ways. We demonstrate the difficulty of delineating between ‘homely’, ‘institutional’, or work oriented practices. While care workers tried to juggle conflicting demands in child-centred ways, the spaces they created could at times be experienced as constraining by the children and as inhibiting a sense of belonging.

Children's food practices in families and institutions

Food and food practices lend themselves to sociological and geographical analysis. In particular the study of the relationships that develop around and through food interactions and rituals can bring into focus practices that are often hidden from view; part of an everyday and mundane world frequently so taken for granted that their meaning becomes lost. Research in this growing field brings to light the significance of food and food practices, and the manner in which their study can provide a lens to explore other facets of social life (Jackson 2009a) within a range of different contexts. Food is of course obviously linked to caring, nutrition and the body (Cunningham 2003, Metcalfe et al. 2008). The rituals of mealtimes provide scaffolding around which time is organised and through which families and other social groups interact and to a large extent ‘do’ family. However the significance of the role of food can often be forgotten, partly as a consequence of how fundamental it is, and thus left in the background of sociological analysis. Food practices then are powerful mechanisms of socialisation and can convey a power that can emerge strongly in a range of differing contexts. Part of taking a ‘practices’ perspective on food is the view that food works not only on a material level as sustenance but also on a symbolic level as something that can come to stand for thoughts, feelings, and relationships. As a social and symbolic object, food carries and changes meaning with the different uses it can be put to by people in their interactions with each other (McKendrick 2004a, Charon 2007). Part of the objective of studying food practices holistically, within their socio-spatial contexts, is to examine in parallel the ways in which both children and adults use food. Food is not only used as a means by which adults care for children, but it is something through which adults manage their own feelings and relationships to each other which in turn impact on children’s experiences. Interactions around food are consequently interpreted from different perspectives and can involve multiple meanings. This is especially the case within contexts such as residential homes where people are brought together from different backgrounds and with very different past experiences (see Dorrer et al. this volume). There has been an increase in research which explores the social significance of food practices in relation to childhood and in interactions between children and adults (Jackson 2009b, James et al. 2009a). Recent studies have emphasised the role of food in the demonstration of care and its use for an exchange of affection (e.g. Kaplan 2000, Gillen and Hancock 2006, Punch et al. 2009). They have examined how power relationships between adults and children are played out and negotiated via food practices, for example through the contesting of rules for family and school mealtimes (Grieshaber 1997, Alcock 2007, Pike 2008). Such research has Children’s Geographies Vol. 8, No. 3, August 2010, 227–232

‘I Know we Can’t be a Family, but as Close as You Can Get’: Displaying Families within an Institutional Context

Despite often expressed concerns over its apparent demise, the idea (or ideal) of ‘the family’ continues to exert a powerful presence within a range of contexts (McKie et al. 2005). As Weeks puts it: Family is a powerful and pervasive word in our culture, embracing a variety of social, cultural, economic and symbolic meanings; but traditionally it is seen as the very foundation of society. It is also a deeply ambiguous and contested term in the contemporary world, the subject of continual polemics, anxiety, and political concern about the ‘crisis of the family’. (Weeks et al. 2001: 9) We of course need to be wary about referring to ‘the family’ in the singular; Gittins (1993) suggests using the plural term ‘families’ in order to reflect its variety. Whilst this usefully acknowledges diversity, it is also important to consider what is meant by this dynamic and complex term ‘family’. Despite recent critiques of the conventional family, there are still collective views of what families should look like that continue to dominate in many ways today: An ideology provides collective definitions of what a ‘normal’ family is thought to be, what is a ‘proper’ marriage, and what it means to be a ‘good mother’ or a ‘good father’. Family ideologies are held out as ideal ways of living. (Cheal 2002: 72)

Food and Relationships: Children’s Experiences in Residential Care

Children’s access to food, and the negotiations that take place around it, extend beyond the realm of immediate family relations to children’s social and educational worlds. Food can thus play an essential part in their experience of other social and institutional arenas such as schools, hospitals or residential care. Food is both an essential and mundane part of everyday life and our familiarity with it can mean that we often pay little attention to the meanings and actions that surround it. However, the study of food within institutional contexts can offer a fascinating insight into the inner life of the institution and the relationships that can revolve around food practices. Food, we suggest, works not only functionally, as sustenance, but also symbolically and as a way to show care and build relationships. It becomes a means by which children can navigate through much of their daily life. Food practices can also be sites of tension and conflict around which a range of emotions and the multifaceted nature of relationships may be exposed.

'You have a right to be nourished and fed, but do I have a right to make sure you eat your food?': Children's rights and food practices in residential care

Many of the difficulties of applying rights in practice lie in competing interpretations of rights by different groups and organisations. This paper illustrates the complexities of putting a theory of childrens rights into practice within the everyday contexts of residential child care, in particular, as part of the routines of food provision and consumption of staff and children. The challenges of operationalising childrens rights specifically are also associated with different understandings of the nature of adult–child relations. Furthermore, the paper argues that the ambiguities which arise when translating childrens rights into practice are partly due to the tensions involved in striking a working balance between childrens protection rights as well as their participation rights. This paper is based on an ethnographic study that explored food practices in three residential childrens homes in Scotland.

Discussant piece: food and schools

The school has long been regarded as having responsibility for not only the intellectual development of children but also their social and physical wellbeing. As such the school has become one of the most externally surveyed and regulated spaces that children and adults pass through. This is particularly the case in relation to adult’s and children’s food and their accompanying food practices. The school has thus been central in policy interventions in children’s lives through the supply of various food substances (milk, fruit, free school meals) as well as attempts to develop the expected social norms that revolve around and through food practices (e.g. sitting at the table, sharing, serving food etc.) (Dickie 2004). Indeed schools are often seen to be a key social institution through which to supplement, or indeed, counteract food experiences and practices that children may have at home; a space in which they can supervised and monitored in ongoing efforts to instil ‘good’ habits and be made to eat the ‘right’ sort of food (McKendrick 2004a, 2004b, Kime 2008). The preceding two studies emphasise this point that schools are regarded within social policy as an important site to change and influence eating behaviours, in particular, as Daniel and Gustafsson note, with a current emphasis on school as a place where children’s nutritional intake is monitored (Cunningham 2003, see also Dickie 2004 on the school meals in Scotland). School mealtimes have therefore become not only a training ground for children for the learning of life-skills, morality and manners but a way to improve their health and wellbeing. Indeed, as Pike notes, ‘school dinners’ have become incredibly newsworthy and seem to carry a great weight of popular expectation in relation to improving the nation’s health and the health of future generations. This is of course particularly the case with current Government concerns and media obsessions with ‘obesity’ (see Proctor et al. 2008). To this extent, as Pike points out, school dinners have become highly politicised. What is of particular interest in the preceding two pieces is the way in which these large, governed institutions share many of the tensions and fraught exchanges around food with families and other smaller care based institutions (Kime 2008). In social spaces such as schools, where the needs of many must be balanced with the needs of the individual, it can be difficult to assess the impact that food and food practices can have on children, as well as many of the other powerfully symbolic uses of food that are explored in this collection. The dinner hall and school meals generally, as the authors detail, can be sites which involve interweaving asymmetries of power and where classed and gendered discourses are played in a complex ebb and flow of resistance and incorporation. In this way, food often acts as medium through which there is a coming together of formal and informal codes and social mores thus adults and children alike (re)create Children’s Geographies Vol. 8, No. 3, August 2010, 289–290

Parallel Processes: Getting it Write?

Abstract This paper offers a critical reflection on the processes surrounding the writing of a book aimed at foster carers and residential workers. By utilising the concept of parallel process as well as the four modes of reflection identified by Gillian Ruch in 2000, we explore the ways in which the wider context of both direct work with children and reflective practice have been impacted by the tensions between relationally based, child-centred practice and wider managerialist imperatives. The paper draws parallels between these practice tensions and those currently in play within the academy. By employing a dialogical and reflective analysis of the process and interactions surrounding the writing of a practitioner-targeted book, the paper demonstrates the ways in which critical and process reflection post-event took place, considering the heretofore unexplored parallel processes between writing for practice, and practice. In so doing, it identifies the ways in which the authors mirrored practitioners in relation to the management of anxiety, a sense of constrained autonomy and confidence, and an avoidance of recognising and challenging structural and political context. Implications for the creation of practice literature and for the academy are considered.

‘I see a totally different picture now’: an evaluation of knowledge exchange in childcare practice

This article draws on a critical evaluation of a knowledge exchange (KE) project, Food for Thought, devised to promote and develop awareness of the use of food within children’s residential and foster care services. From the 22 qualitative interviews conducted, reflections on the differing forms of knowledge incorporated into the design of the project and its outputs are discussed and the limitations of current thinking on knowledge exchange are explored. Finally, links are made to show how this reflective approach to practice operationalised and enlivened local and national food and care policies.