‘To another’s house’: i the experiences of Muslim young people in foster care

Abstract

Cultural confusion is a common experience among children in foster care. But it can be especially severe for Muslims when their faith, traditional values and way of life are disrespected and when this is exacerbated by removal from familiar home environments. This article describes the experiences of young people affected by this and critically examines how their situation matches the definitions of good practice in agencies and professionals seeking to help them. Four issues emerged: the child’s confusion surrounding separation and moving to somewhere strange; identifying the right placement; intervening in a way that offers children future choices; and the ever-present risk of discrimination. In each of these situations, well-meaning and firmly established fostering practices can be insensitive to the needs and wishes of Muslim children. This confounds their understanding of their self, depresses their sense of social belonging and demands they adjust in order to survive. The article makes recommendations to support Muslim adolescents entering care and to improve the practice of the professionals and agencies responsible for them. The dearth of specialist therapeutic services is highlighted, along with suggestions for future research.

Keywords

Muslim children and young people foster care UK

Introduction

Family belonging, which involves the transmission of faith, culture and language, is important to all children. If a child is cut off from these, the effects can be life long. It is also the case that in every group in society there will be some children who need to be removed from their family for their own protection, or because it is unable to care for them. This may be for a short while, or permanently. It is from the meeting of these twin facts that this study arose.

This project was born from observations and concerns by practitioners working with young people from Muslim backgrounds. It was an exploratory study, centred around qualitative interviews. We would like to thank the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) for granting permission to contact young people identified through its service, and for support of the project through allowing the authors time to conduct the research. The research itself is the work of the authors and is independent of the organisation.

Why study Muslim young people?

It has long been understood that placing any child within a substitute family which does not match his or her cultural needs can give rise to complex issues, although the extent of this continues to be debated (Harris, 2006). Why, then, have we placed a particular focus on Muslim young people?

Islam as a way of life

Islam can be said to place a particular emphasis on a ‘comprehensive order’ (Haynes, et al., 1997) that unites all aspects of life, food, daily routines and spiritual belief. It cannot be reduced to ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ or ‘religion’. Once this interlocking order has been broken, or has not been established, it can be difficult for a young person to make sense of his or her religious identity, particularly when, as in the case of some of those involved in this study, a move from one community to another occurs.

Beliefs about family life

This ‘way of life’ includes a specific religious duty on parents to ensure that their children are brought up in this way (Baig, 2014; Qu’ran, At-Tahrim 6).

Demographic reasons

There are high and growing numbers of Muslims in the UK, most in identifiable communities. Many suffer social disadvantage (Muslim Council of Britain, 2015). It might be hypothesised that this will result in a correspondingly high number of interventions by professionals (Jones and Novak, 1999), many of whom may not understand Muslim practices. Any insights gained regarding such professional intervention will therefore be especially useful.

Recognising tensions

Political tensions over the last generation have resulted in well-documented anti-Muslim sentiment in society, and corresponding defensiveness within Muslim communities (Allen, 2005, 2010; Jackson, 2018; Kundnani, 2014). A child who is moved out of his or her community may experience this at some level, and also be without the familial resources that can provide a defence against prejudice and hostility.

Children in foster care

Much work has been done in recent years to improve child protection strategies for Muslim communities (Vidya and Jammi, 2010). However, these have not generally included those children who are removed from their home area.

From the demography of refugees, as well as the population growth of Muslim families, it appears that these issues will grow in importance. Of course, many lessons learned from a specific group can be transferred more generally and this is our hope here.

Themes from the literature

There have been no studies looking at the experiences of Muslim children in foster care, and it is rarely even referred to, although important pioneering work was carried out by the An Nisa Society in the 1990s and one fostering agency, Foster Care Associates, has a specialist project placing Muslim children and recruiting and supporting Muslim foster carers. However, there are several strands of the literature that help in our understanding.

Demography

The Muslim Council of Britain [2015] has published a clear and detailed analysis of the data from the 2011 Census. It shows the significance of the Muslim population of Britain, including:

Muslims form 4.7% of the population of England and Wales, which represents one-third of the black and minority ethnic (BME) population. Of these, 68% are of Asian ethnicity and 47% are UK born.

As the majority of Muslims [76%] live in inner-city conurbations, this leads to concentrations of population. In London, there are 70 wards with a Muslim population of 40% or more. The population is growing and youthful. One-third of the Muslim population is aged 15 or under, compared with 19% of the population as a whole, and 35% of households are ‘married with dependent children’, compared with the national average of 15%.

This indicates that, as practitioners, we need to be aware of the great diversity within Muslim populations, but also develop a particular understanding of thinking and culture within families. Helpful accounts, with much first-hand material, include studies by Jonathan Scourfield and his colleagues (2013) and Harriet Becher (2008).

Muslim distinctiveness

Muslim lifestyle/practices can be distinctive, and designedly so. The Islamic faith promotes the importance of certain character traits, such as emotional restraint, patience and respect. This is summed up in the term adab, ‘etiquette’. One of the informants in Becher’s (2008) study of South Asian Muslim family life in a London borough referred to this as ‘being inside a boundary’. Parents, says Becher, may prefer their children to have Muslim friends to ensure a ‘suitable moral framework’ (Becher, 2008: 52). Of course, there are a wide variety of lifestyles among those defining themselves as Muslim.

Many British Muslims describe the experience of having to manage multiple and often conflicting identities (Imtiaz, 2011). Although this may be an issue for many young people generally, recent studies suggest that this may be a particular issue for Muslim youth. Since the events of 11 September 2011, observers such as Leonie Jackson (2018) and Arun Kundnani (2014) argue that Muslims have become constructed by society as the ‘other’, and as an internal and external enemy, who experience being the subject of ‘whispered utterances’. Muslim community life may be viewed with suspicion. This has been amplified by social policy, such as the UK Government’s Prevent Strategy (HMSO, 2011) and the focus on the risk of radicalisation. ‘Good Muslims’ are seen as those who come closer to western values (Green, 2017; Jackson, 2018).

One compelling account is that of the journalist and broadcaster Rageh Omaar, Only Half of Me: Being a Muslim in Britain (2006). He writes: ‘Integration… is often about denying or even abandoning half of ourselves… That other half of us is an indivisible part of our existence, wherever we live’ (p. 3).

The force of this effect can be appreciated through the lens of social identity theory (Tajfel, 2010), in which a person’s sense of identity and self-esteem is based on group belonging (the ‘in group’) and beyond this, on identifying negative aspects of an ‘out group’. All this, of course, poses challenges for children who need to move across the ‘boundary’ and back again.

Muslim young people find a range of ways of accommodating to this pressure. A whole new and creative subculture is emerging that enables young people to bring together their Muslim identity and ‘western’ culture (Janmohamed, 2016; Khabeer, 2016). Others have reflected on their relationship with traditional values in sophisticated ways (e.g. Rahman, 2018).

Child protection issues

Some child protection issues, such as forced marriage and radicalisation, lead to increased intervention by local authorities and other professionals. The literature (see especially Gohir, 2013; Izzidien, 2008) suggests two culturally specific vulnerabilities:

Some perpetrators of sexual abuse (from all ethnic backgrounds) recognise how hard it is for a Muslim/South Asian girl or young woman to disclose sexual abuse and the extreme consequences of her doing so, and deliberately exploit this vulnerability.

Mothers can be in an impossible position in which they are controlled not only by their spouse but by wider family members, including threats of violence from them, making them unable to protect their child. Limited language skills and cultural beliefs may add to this. It is not uncommon for such mothers to self-harm, develop mental health problems or even to commit suicide in the face of this situation. Women are often seen as primarily responsible for maintaining family honour (sometimes referred to as izzat).

Radicalisation has also come to be seen as a new category of harm for young people, with associated interventions.

There is little literature that specifically addresses the psychological issues for Muslim young people and their families, despite the enormous challenge that exposure to complex identity issues, such as those suggested by Jackson (2018), Kundnani (2014) and others. Family therapists Rabia Malik and Philippe Mandin present a thoughtful case study in which issues are worked through for two Pakistani grandparents, who were then able to care for their two grandchildren (Malik and Mandin, 2012).

The High Court Case: Re SM

In 2015 there was a High Court case (Re SM et al [2016 EWFC 15]) regarding eight children of Muslim South Asian origin, aged 5 to 17, who had been removed from home due to sibling sexual abuse. The children had responded to removal in very different ways and had diverse needs. One of them, unlike the others, had been keen to maintain his religious observance. The court felt that social workers had ‘lost sight of’ the children’s religious and cultural needs amid the ‘many issues the case involved’. In addressing section 33 (6)(a) of the Children Act 1989, the court’s judgment set out that:

… the law does not give any religious belief or birth right a pre-eminent place in the balance of factors that comprise welfare… The safeguarding of the welfare of vulnerable children and adults ought not to be subordinated by the court to any particular religious belief. (para. 61)

The judgment also stated that, as a child gets older, he or she will make their own choice about belief. It is not the duty of the local authority ‘to sustain the religious persuasion of a child who had decided for himself that he did not wish to follow his parents’ faith’. However, the court ordered the local authority to amend its care plans to include ‘the encouragement of the religious beliefs, education, customs and practice of each child’ (para. 64).

This case fits with the analysis of Suhraiya Jivraj (2013), who sees the approach of English law to non-Christian religious difference as erasure or assimilation.

In Islam and Social Work (2017: 121), the most up-to-date text for social workers in this field, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and colleagues recognise the ‘serious need for more research into the whole topic of accommodation and the subsequent adjustment process’ for Muslim children.

Given these complexities and the dearth of previous research, our study sought to:

listen to, and record, the experiences of Muslim young people who have had direct experience of a welfare intervention, and to identify any common patterns in these experiences;

listen to the experiences of practitioners as they carry out assessments, respond to situations and provide support to young people;

stimulate thinking and raise awareness of the issues that arose.

Methodology

The study comprised three phases.

Phase 1

We sought to identify and obtain views from a wide range of groups, professionals and influential individuals, both Muslim and non-Muslim, and to ask them about the proposed research. This ensured it was seen to be relevant and allowed them to contribute to the process. We gathered views from over 35 people and organisations. We also undertook a comprehensive literature review.

Phase 2

We carried out 12 qualitative interviews with young Muslims who had experienced being ‘in care’ away from their immediate or wider family. They were a nationwide sample aged 13–25 identified through the networking in Phase 1. We felt that this age range would mean that the young people would have the cognitive and verbal skills required to reflect on their experiences, and not be too vulnerable.

The group consisted of 13 young people (one a sibling pair). The median age was 17. There were six girls and seven boys. Five had returned home, two were living independently and six were still in foster care, two of these being in placements with Muslim families. The group had experienced a total of 44 placements, 13 of which were with Muslim families. The young people’s countries of ethnic origin were Pakistan (6), Bangladesh (2) and Afghanistan (5). Reasons for removal from home were witnessing domestic abuse (7), parental mental health difficulties (4) and being an unaccompanied refugee (5).ⁱⁱ This latter category applied to all the Afghani young people (all male), which led to an unexpected split in our sample.

Interviews were conducted by the two authors together in a location most comfortable to the young person. Prior consent was always obtained from the young person and his or her carers. The use of two consistent interviewers – female/male and Muslim/non-Muslim – enabled a good balance.

The interviews were semi-structured and we invited the young person to ‘Tell us how you came to be moved from your family, and to live with [carers].’

After allowing the young person to share their story, we checked:

Did those around you acknowledge your Muslim identity and talk to you about this?

As a Muslim, have you always been treated in a way that made you feel comfortable?

Is there anything that might have been done differently or better?

What did your social worker and foster carer do well?

If your care plan was reviewed, was your faith and identity taken into account?

Is there anything that has particularly helped you?

What advice would you give to social workers, judges, children’s guardians and Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) based on your experience?

We chose not to ask any leading questions about specific discrimination (being made to feel ‘other’) because of their Muslim identity.

Detailed notes were taken and these were analysed using thematic analysis (Guest, MacQueen and Namey, 2011), resulting in 208 ideas which we grouped into 48 themes. These, in turn, formed four overall categories: initial placement; identifying the right placement; shaping future choices; and experience of discrimination.

Phase 3

We shared these findings with the network we had built up in Phase 1 and in particular through two focus groups. The first consisted of social work practitioners and foster carers; the second comprised mostly community leaders and academics. We used these to test and develop the ideas, to enable us to set the themes that emerged from our small set of interviews within the wider set of personal and professional experiences of those attending. These groups were also part of the research in that their ideas would form part of the overall findings.

Findings

We present four anonymised case studies to communicate the experiences of, and the ideas expressed by, the young people. All names have been changed to preserve confidentiality. Each story illustrates one of the four themes we identified. Each detail is an accurate portrayal of what the young people told us and the quotations are straight from our interviews. We present these without comment, leaving discussion for the following section, which also incorporates ideas from the focus groups and other discussions.

Initial placement: Fatima’s story

‘The house was totally strange, but I got used to it.’

Fatima, aged 13, had not expected to be removed, and the situation of her father’s violence towards her mother had always been part of her life. However, she became aware of a lot of meetings after a comment she had made at school. Suddenly, after waiting for her mum to collect her from school, the social worker told Fatima, ‘It’s not safe. You have to go into care.’ Fatima waited at school for what seemed hours while the social worker looked for a foster placement. As it was Friday evening, options were limited. Eventually, Fatima was taken to stay with Denise and Alan. It was a strange and unfamiliar environment. ‘What about food?’ asked Denise. ‘Oh, do vegetarian’, said the social worker, so for the next few days she had mainly chips. Fatima did not know what was going to happen next and ‘I spent the whole next day crying.’ In the mornings, Alan would walk around in his boxer shorts which made her feel very uncomfortable.

The next weekend, Denise took Fatima shopping and asked her to pick the right kind of food. She also put a copy of the Qu’ran in her bedroom. Although Fatima knew Denise did not understand, it made her feel a lot more at ease and welcome. When she saw her mum she had brought her a prayer mat and being able to perform familiar rituals and using a prayer her mother had taught her was a big help. Once, Denise said, ‘If you ever want to go to the mosque, we will never stop you.’ However, Fatima never did go and never mentioned it.

Fatima recalls the subject of religion being dealt with very briefly in her reviews: ‘Just “Are you OK about your faith?” It was like “yes”, “no”, “let’s move onto the next question”.’

Fatima was confused about whether she would be staying with Denise and Alan. She found it very hard to get hold of the social worker, who always seemed busy or on leave. When she did ask her, it seemed there was a different answer every time. She did not really know how to talk to her friends about what was happening, as it felt embarrassing. Gradually, Fatima’s mood became lower: ‘I was a depressed, dark person.’

Identifying the right placement: Hassan’s story

‘My little brother can’t speak to my mum without me.’

Hassan, aged 15, was placed in care with his younger brother Tariq, aged six. Following the first review, Hassan’s social worker understood the need for them to be with a ‘Muslim’ or at least an ‘Asian’ family. There had been a suggestion that a foster family be sought in their immediate community, but their mother had resisted this saying it could ‘cause awkwardness’ and ‘everyone will know our family business’. One afternoon, Hassan and Tariq were taken to Habib and Afreen’s, which was to be their new placement.

Life became very difficult for the boys. Habib and Afreen were from the Ahmadiyya community. They held significantly different beliefs and attended a different place of worship. ‘They were a different kind of Muslim to us. Looking back on it, everything was wrong,’ recalls Hassan. It was not just a cultural and religious difference. Hassan says that Habib and Afreen and their family were looking down on them: ‘The kids said, “You’re dirty.” They always used to put us down.’ The new family spoke a different language, but it was close enough for Hassan to recognise the word kute when he was being talked about in Punjabi. In his own Urdu language, kutta means ‘dog’.

Despite this, Hassan and Tariq remained with Afreen and Habib until they were placed with an Indian Sikh family: ‘It was really difficult because we were older and knew the difference [in religion].’ The foster dad was a very practising Sikh. Hassan eventually changed his surname in order to try and blend into his new family and he was regularly taken to a Sikh gurdwara. At first, he found it interesting, ‘then I realised that it was bad, a really bad sin. I used to do what they did.’ He felt that there was no acknowledgement of his own faith. When asked why he did not raise this with his social worker, Hassan said that he was scared to raise problems with his carers.

By the time Hassan moved placement for a third time, his religious identity was confused. When he met another young Muslim who joined him in the placement, he began to become more interested in learning about his religious identity: ‘I don’t remember celebrating Eid or Ramadan.’

In future placements, although his religious identity was recognised and the carers attempted to act with sensitivity, they could not offer guidance. Hassan was left to make sense of his spiritual and religious practice by himself, but ‘there was nothing to build on’. For example, being provided with a Qu’ran was insufficient when it could not be explained, explored or discussed: ‘I just tried my best. It’s difficult. It really messed with my life because you don’t know what’s normal.’

Hassan also experienced language loss and confusion about what behaviour might be expected of him:

I can’t speak my mother tongue fluently because I never spoke it with anyone. I feel embarrassed at not being able to speak the language. I look a bit of an idiot. It’s shameful.

Shaping future choices: Sumaira’s story

‘I am glad I came into foster care… but no one understands what I have lost.’

Sumaira, now 18, has been in foster care for five years and has had time to reflect on her experience. She realises that she will have further choices to make.

Before Sumaira came into foster care, she recalls that she had ‘no idea’ how non-Muslim people lived. Hers was a ‘close family’ living in an ‘Asian street’. She was discouraged from going out and at school mixed with Muslim girls from her own community. She was expected to care for her younger siblings and anticipated marrying quite young. Although she knew little of the world outside her home and community, she was clear that her parents disapproved of it. When her sister was reported by an aunt to be seeing a non-Muslim boyfriend, she was told: ‘Don’t come back home.’

Sumaira was placed with African-Caribbean foster carers who were practising Christians. Her initial impression was that everything was ‘weird… like being in a different city’. She was especially confused, even ‘scared’ by the role played by the male foster carer, who cooked and cared for the children: ‘I could not work him out.’ Sumaira recalls that ‘everyone was just so nice’ and this helped her to accept her new family. After a few months of being in more mixed company, she decided to stop wearing her hijab or headscarf: ‘I was quite practising, but then I gradually stopped.’ Sumaira began to see some of her more traditional classmates in a more critical light.

After a while, Sumaira stopped praying and reading the Qu’ran: ‘It gradually stopped. They never said I shouldn’t, but there was no influence. They gave me a choice, but I feel bad.’ She felt that the Qu’ran would have been ‘a comfort’ to her.

On three occasions, Sumaira had to go into respite foster care. There, her experiences were much less positive. She was not told that some of the food she was given contained pork and also alcohol, and when she found out, ‘my carers thought it was funny’. Sumaira felt shame at having eaten non-halal food: ‘My dad would say it was my fault. I am such a bad Muslim.’

Reflecting back on her experience, Sumaira says, ‘I am glad I came into foster care. I have been true to myself and have got my goals. I am proud of it.’ In lots of ways, Sumaira was confident in her new identity and she had a good mix of friends. Having lived in a Christian family, she had a better understanding of the meaning of Christmas and other festivals. The ability to compare two ways of life even contributed to her understanding of her faith and culture, for instance the way in which elderly parents are treated: ‘It has made me wiser.’ She added: ‘But no one understands what I have lost.’

Sumaira realises that she has further choices to make, such as ‘Who is going to marry me?’ and to what extent she will reintegrate with her home community. Could she even remember the accepted ways of behaving? Her community might expect her to conform in a way in which she would not be comfortable, but she does not want to lose her connection with her younger siblings. She also admires many things about her community, such as a family’s commitment to elderly parents: ‘Asian women are strong.’

Experience of discrimination: Usman’s story

‘Is it shame?’

When Usman arrived in the UK at the age of 15, he was seriously ill and semi-conscious after a traumatic journey from Afghanistan. He knew nothing of this country but knew that his mother had wanted so badly for him to come. Usman appreciated the kindness he was shown, and ‘everywhere seemed nice and green. I felt safe. I had got lucky!’

For the first few weeks, it was enough for Usman to feel safe. He had been told that ‘all white people are bad’ and the way he himself had seen soldiers ‘shooting the legs of my people’ confirmed this. However, he realised that could not be right: ‘I was wrong about that.’ Once he started to attend school, he was perplexed by the disrespectful behaviour of many of his classmates: ‘I was brought up to respect my elders. I didn’t see much of that. They didn’t appreciate their education at all.’

At first, Usman stayed in a small children’s home. He recognised that there was some definite bad feeling against him as an asylum seeker and once, on behaving in a way he later realised was inappropriate, was shouted at by a member of staff: ‘This isn’t Afghanistan, you know!’ He was also advised not to let people know he was an asylum seeker in case it brought trouble from the neighbours. Usman wondered: ‘Is it shame?’ He chose to spend a lot of time in his room where he had privacy to pray and listen to Farsi radio.

After a while, a Bengali young man came to the home. They got on well and Usman learned more about the Muslim community locally. His English was also improving.

Usman eventually moved to a Bengali foster family where he felt very happy. Even the Bangla and Hindi films they watched were familiar. He could relax about what he was given to eat and could learn about his religion, as well as developing confidence by learning martial arts at a local youth club: ‘I was like a dead person. When I came here, I am alive!’

His foster carers practised a stricter form of Islam than Usman had been used to and he embraced this. This included seeking the support of the family for an introduction to a potential marriage partner at some point in the future. This felt a bit of a concern to Usman, who did not have family. He was thrilled when his foster father agreed to support him when the time came: ‘I feel that I have come to a proper home. This is my home now.’

Being with his Bengali foster family also helped Usman to deal with perceived hostility. He had always been nervous of going to watch big football matches but was amazed when his foster father, dressed in traditional clothes, took him to watch the local team and experienced no racial abuse.

Usman began to excel in education. He found he stopped thinking and worrying about his family in Afghanistan. In any case, it was impossible to obtain any information about them.

Discussion and analysis

This discussion will look at issues for ‘older’ children who, although they may remain in substitute care, usually stay in contact with their family and community. With them, unlike younger children who may be made subject to ‘permanent’ arrangements, there is usually a possibility of returning home. There are other issues for younger children that require a separate study.

Initial placement

The few days and weeks around a child’s first removal are clearly of great importance. This is often a time when less than ideal solutions are available. Yet it is also when a child’s need for comfort and familiarity is at its greatest. A culturally and linguistically matched placement reduces strangeness and in the words of one focus group member, ‘Their eyes can make sense of the household.’ It can also greatly reassure parents and assist their co-operation. One Muslim foster carer was told by a parent on hearing that his child was being placed with a fellow Muslim, ‘My heart is at peace now.’ Sumaira recalls being ‘scared’, even though she later came to respect her new carers. The likely lack of availability of suitably matched carers makes planning, prevention and community education even more pressing.

However, where a child is placed with a non-matched foster carer, a few basic considerations can go a long way to reassuring the child, as was the case for Fatima. It was noteworthy how insensitive some foster carers were, such as serving pork. Young people have an additional burden on top of the stress of entering care if they feel they have to explain and even justify their basic needs.

Matching can involve both religious and cultural dimensions and the distinction between these is not always clear cut. Religious matching on its own can create confusion and there is a need for careful consideration of all relevant factors.

Identifying the right placement

Several informants (young people and focus group members) told us that there was a reluctance for children to be placed with other unrelated families within the community. This could feel intrusive and encourage gossip. Thus, some Muslim children may experience a greater element of difference than children for whom this resource is less of a problem.

Some of the unhappiest placements were ones in which a match had been attempted but was poorly informed, as for Hassan and Tariq where Sunni children were placed with an Ahmadiyya family or where negative conversation in a cognate language could be picked out. There were, in fact, three examples of unintentional mismatching in our study. While carers, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, who show warmth and kindness provide what is most important and most valued by children, the young people we interviewed gave many examples of feeling unnecessarily uncomfortable, for example by alcohol consumption, careless undress and casual comments inspired by the media. Such insensitivity has the potential to undermine otherwise good caring. This danger also applies to social workers. For example, one casually asked a Muslim young man, ‘Have you got a girlfriend yet?’ which was totally inappropriate as he had been brought up in a family where such relationships were actively discouraged.

Shaping future choices

The Muslim faith is rich in symbolic objects and the provision of a prayer mat, a copy or recording of the Qu’ran and halal food really communicated acceptance. This also provides a focus for partnership with the child’s parents who might otherwise feel undermined and excluded. This was seen in Fatima’s story.

Several of the young people commented that ‘not being stopped’ from doing things was not the same as positive encouragement. This is clear in both Fatima and Sumaira’s accounts. Children need behaviour to be modelled by a trusted adult (Bandura and McDonald, 1963) and even more so when he or she may have sensed disapproval and prejudice within wider society. If a carer is not a Muslim, much can be achieved (although in a less satisfactory way) through Muslim befrienders, advocates and buddies who can come into the home, offer advice and take the child out. No care plan or review is complete without properly addressing this.

We learned from the young people such as Sumaira that removal from home to a different kind of placement need not necessarily be a negative experience in the longer term. Observing different practices such as Christmas from the inside can be enriching. One young woman chose to cease wearing her headscarf as ‘my choice’. However, the fact is that a young person who is removed from his or her family and close community may develop along a different trajectory than they might otherwise have done. Awareness of differences and alternatives will be raised. The young person may need help in making these decisions, considering options and thinking about their consequences. For example, removing a headscarf made relating to grandparents more difficult. One girl, having returned to her mother in early adulthood, found it ‘really hard’ when she was invited to a funeral. There were a lot of family members she had not seen for years and she found it awkward and embarrassing, even ‘shameful’, not knowing quite how to behave, whether exactly how to dress, eat properly or use the right form of words. She also felt that it would be ‘fake, weird, because I’ve not been like it’. Consequently, she turned down an invitation to a wedding: ‘I try to avoid gatherings.’

Of course, Muslim and other young people are faced with these decisions in everyday life anyway, albeit in a less intense form. One of the issues for many Muslims is that within western society, children are encouraged to make their own decisions ‘too early’. Additionally, those who have suffered emotional and psychological harm may lack the ability to do this in a balanced way.

Experience of discrimination

The young people gave many examples of thoughtless and insensitive behaviour by social workers, foster carers, residential workers and others, but they did not appear to generalise. They saw how individual personalities and people of different cultures could be different: ‘My social worker said that she found that offensive… she was Indian.’ They also talked of their interest (despite initial discomfort) in observing their faith. However, they were more reserved in what they said to non-Muslims: ‘I read the Qu’ran here, but I don’t tell the social worker.’ There was a sense of there being a rich, private world that outsiders would not understand, a view well expressed by Sumaira.

One major theme was the lack of seeing a Muslim in a professional role, or of their interest in first seeing such a person.

Our sample contained a number of young people like Usman who had come to this country from Afghanistan as unaccompanied minors. The issues for them were very specific. Typically, they experienced enormous relief at being somewhere safe and having their basic needs met – by anyone. As they became settled, they began to feel the need to reconnect with their Muslim identity and found affinity with Muslim carers who did not share their heritage. Several of these young people had experienced terrible loss (see Treisman, 2017) which they bore with fortitude and there appears to be little appropriate therapy available or offered.

Recommendations and conclusions

This was a small, exploratory study. However, although there are no national statistics, the indications are that there are many Muslim children in non-kinship foster care and a significant proportion of these placements are not suitably matched to their cultural and identity needs. One of our informants estimated, by virtue of the number of Eid cards distributed to children in care, that one-third of looked after children in her London borough were Muslim.

While by no means exhaustive, the research produced some realistic ideas to improve practice.

For young people

The first two ideas link with the experience of Fatima and those like her who found the early days of placement uncomfortable:

A carefully prepared pack (for boys and girls of different ages) for every young person who enters non-Muslim care; there is scope for a book telling the story of a Muslim child away from home, which could be included in the materials;

Information for older adolescents, including online and access to an online forum.

Some of the young people, such as Hassan, found themselves isolated. For some respondents, this was intensified by living in an area without a strong Muslim presence.

We suggest holiday activities and breaks to enable the young person to be with others and learn about his or her faith.

Training and best practice

There were social workers and others who showed religious and cultural sensitivity but our respondents portrayed this as rather haphazard. In addition to general training, we suggest more personal and specific approaches that would have helped Sumaira, together with policy level recommendations that will provide a more general safety net.

Training for social workers, children’s guardians and IROs; this could be delivered as a course, a webinar or via material made available as e-learning;

The availability of (and requirement for) specialist supervision for social workers, foster carers and therapists;

The availability of a Muslim befriender or independent visitor for each child and young person.

The requirement for faith and culture to be properly addressed at each review, and this to be the subject of audits. There could be a register of all children in unmatched placements with notes of the current action in place.

Wider strategy for agencies

The following ideas arose from the discussions in the two focus groups:

For each local authority and agency to have a mission statement which expresses its commitment to meeting the needs of Muslim young people who are away from home; this could be available as a leaflet to be given to parents;

Work to assess and recruit Muslim carers, especially those who might not normally be reached. This will require specialist assessment;

Foster panels should ensure that they are open to these applications; they should also ensure that all carers who might take a Muslim child have the appropriate knowledge and attitude;

For mosques to be prepared to support and welcome young people in care, from a variety of backgrounds. This may be a good opportunity for establishing good links.

Therapy

We felt that one consequence of a lack of understanding was that the psychological processes that Muslim young people undergo might be missed. We identified this as a gap in the literature. For Usman and the others in his position, the need is very significant but may also be lost amidst the host of practical arrangements and other needs that they have.

There appear to be very few culturally competent clinical psychologists to advise the court and to work with families. Any work done might usefully be written up in peer journals to raise awareness and stimulate best practice.

The issue of therapy for the many young refugees/asylum seekers who enter the care system having experienced terrible loss is an issue that will increasingly demand attention and specialist resources. Linked with this is life story work and help with family contact for young people like Usman.

In terms of future research, it is not the purpose of this article to provide a theoretical understanding of this area. However, the literature relating to our understanding of the self and its links with social belonging – especially when experienced differently in different cultures – would provide a fruitful approach (e.g. Markus and Kitayama, 1991), as would self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987).

This study also highlighted several empirical questions that need further investigation. These include:

the experience of younger children, and especially dilemmas around permanent placement away from home;

kinship care, and in particular how assessments are undertaken and placements supported;

issues for mixed heritage children, one of whose parents is from a Muslim community, when decisions are made about placement;

the experiences of non-Muslim foster carers who care for Muslim children.

One informant spoke powerfully of an abused child’s feeling of a violated sense of themselves. This was exacerbated by having to fit into multiple care placements: ‘Every placement they put me in, I tried to be what they wanted me to be.’ If we can listen more carefully to the Muslim young people who shared their ideas with us, and the many others like them, both their lives and the whole of society to which they will contribute will be enriched.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the 13 young people for sharing their stories. They would also like to thank Mohammed Bashir of Active Care Solutions and Samia Rahman of the Muslim Institute.

Notes

David Pitcher is a Family Court Adviser/Children’s Guardian with Cafcass, based in Plymouth.

Shabana Jaffar is a lawyer in the High Court Team, Cafcass, Central Office, London.

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