Exploring supportive challenge in residential childcare through a constructive developmental lens

Overview
How residential childcare staff respond to children's behaviours, requests and distress significantly shapes care home cultures (Anglin, 2002; Ward et al., 2003). Care home cultures can become ameliorative environments where children feel safe, loved and respected (Steckley, 2020a, 2020b). Conversely, abusive cultures can develop, with traumatic consequences (Frizzell, 2009; Kent, 1997). The protection of children and development of ameliorative cultures are dependent on the degree to which individual staff effectively challenge substandard practice which is, in turn, influenced by organisational cultures. Yet 'supportive challenge' (Anglin, 2002), defined here as questioning or confronting practice in a constructive, developmental fashion, is poorly understood in residential childcare research, theory and practice. The aim of this research, then, is to explore how cultures of supportive challenge are facilitated and/or inhibited through an examination of the dynamics, experiences and effects of staff's peer-to-peer-level challenge (or lack thereof) in residential childcare settings, using a constructive-developmental lens.

Main research questions:

-To what extent are residential childcare staff reporting practice encounters that inhibit or facilitate supportive challenge? (RQ1)
-How do residential childcare staff respond when they encounter practice they perceive as falling somewhere on a spectrum ranging from substandard care to abuse? (RQ2)
-What influence does the culture of a children's care home have on residential childcare staff actions or inactions, when they encounter practice that falls on a spectrum of substandard care (including their perceived ability to identify and supportively challenge where appropriate)? (RQ3)
-What influence do inquiry and review reports, statutory legislation and non-statutory legislation have on residential childcare staff thinking, actions or inactions when they encounter practice that falls on a spectrum of substandard care? (RQ4)

Method
This research study will identify two care homes, one where supportive challenge appears to be used frequently and one where it is not. Through a mixture of participant observations and qualitative interviews with practitioners at these homes, data will be gathered and then analysed using several techniques (outlined below) and Kegan's constructive-developmental theory as a lens through which new insights will be made regarding the interplay between practitioner values, house cultures and regulatory frameworks to identify and explicate the factors that promote or inhibit practitioners use of supportive challenge.
The different data sets generated will be analysed, separately and combined, using techniques of constructionist analysis [observations] (Marvasti, 2014), thematic analysis [vignettes] (Bell and Waters, 2018; Willig, 2014) and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) [interviews] (Smith and Osborn, 2007) to: reveal insights into how house culture, policies and procedures are influencing practice; uncover meaning-making processes that staff use to make sense of practice encounters that involve or warrant supportive challenge; and possibly identify indicators of the influence of external legislation/inquiry reports on staff/house culture.