Do you love me? An empirical analysis of the feeling of love amongst children in out-of-home care

Abstract

Questions about whether love can be offered in residential child care units, whether combining child protection and safeguarding in social work with loving care or care with love is possible, and whether children and young people feel loved by someone who is paid to care for them, have raised long-standing issues. Social pedagogy puts such questions at the core of its philosophy and practice, and has been a fundamental part of care in Denmark for many years. Drawing on a Danish survey of 1,400 children in out-of-home care, this paper analyses the subjective feeling of love amongst children living in out-of-home care. The main moderating factors for feeling loved are the feeling of security and the feeling of social support, the tangible counterpart of Honneth’s concept of recognition.

Stories of Care Leaving: The Experiences of a Group of Resilient Young Adults on Their Journey to Interdependent Living in Ghana

“…The young adults identified the love of the staff as a key ingredient enabling and supporting their relationships, like the findings of other studies (Lausten & Frederiksen, 2016; Thrana, 2016). The love given by the staff was expressed through their interest, commitment, and care for the participants, which went beyond the procedural tasks of providing for the physical needs of the young adults.…”

Young Teenagers’ Views Regarding Residential Care in Portugal and Spain: A Qualitative Study

“…Within recent research focused on children's subjective well-being (SWB), several studies have concluded that the subjective well-being of children in residential care is significantly lower than that of children living with their families (Heastbaek 2016;Lausten and Fredriksen 2016;Delgado et al 2017Delgado et al , 2019. Additionally, those studies concluded that children in residential care presented a higher rate of school failure and have fewer opportunities to decide on the use they make of their spare time, especially with regard to family relationships or leisure activities.…”

Honneth and positive identity formation in residential care

“…It is acknowledged that the concept of “love” is also contested in residential care and not without its complications given the risk averse society in which the service is delivered (Smith et al, ). In this article, it is suggested that love is understood as a form of recognition and as such permits expressions of warmth and affection including physical touch (Eber, ; Steckley, ), hugging, brushing a child's hair, snuggling in to read a book together, watch a film, cook meals, and do households tasks together (Almquist & Lassinantti, ; Kendrick, ; Lausten & Frederiksen, ). Although these elements of daily care are apparent in some residential child care settings, it is also the case that in the risk averse macroclimate surrounding the delivery of residential child care, these more intimate aspects of daily care have been compromised by worker fear and a lack of clarity regarding role (Brown et al, ).…”