For most, if not all of us, friendships have shaped our lives in profound ways.
We learn from our friends. We experience the ups and downs of life together, give each other emotional support and may even make life-changing decisions because of them.
Friendships can also be messy and challenging; yet none of us would suggest that life would be as meaningful without them.
While relationship-centred practice is a cornerstone of social care – the importance of positive relationships is well known and highlighted in Josh MacAlister’s 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care – its focus is often solely on strengthening the relationships between family members.
We don’t wish to discount the importance of family relationships, but argue that this focus should be extended to include friendships.
Research on the impact of friendships
There is a small but significant amount of research about friendships.
In a 2020 Coram Voice report, titled ‘What Makes Life Good?’, care leavers listed friends as the most common source of emotional support.
They further emphasised how having friendships significantly improved their wellbeing, making them feel “less lonely and stressed, happier with how they looked, settled, [and] positive about the future”.
For young people who had lost contact with their families, friendships were an even more vital lifeline. They described friends as people they could have fun with, turn to for support and talk to when they needed someone who truly understood them.
As researcher Dr Claire Baker, who contributed to the report, told us: “Friends are an important source of support and help reduce social isolation. Yet young people don’t always feel these relationships are prioritised by those supporting them.”
Helping care experienced mothers connect with one another
In partnership with the University of Lancashire, we recently brought together 15 professionals (including some with care experience) working across children’s homes, social work, foster care, virtual schools and housing, in two focus group discussions. They too highlighted the positive impact of friendships on the young people they supported.
One example came from The Village, an online community of care experienced new parents co-created by The Why Not? Trust, a charity for care experienced young people.
One mother described feeling lonely and isolated while expecting her son, until she found the group.
“I was always worried about being lonely as a mum, because I don’t have family and didn’t have any friends,” she said.
“But when I joined The Village, I felt included in a community – that there was support out there if needed.”
Importance of friendship ‘frequently underestimated by professionals’
The community’s executive director, Moira Greentree, told us the friendships within this group had often proven to be a lifeline.
“The transformative impact of community and friendship is frequently underestimated within professional settings,” she said.
“By fostering inclusive communities and encouraging the development of meaningful, supportive peer relationships, we have witnessed individuals thrive – gaining confidence and competence as they support one another and become less dependent on professional intervention.”
Kelly Mottram, director of practice at the National House Project, a charity supporting young care leavers to move into their own accommodation, added that friendship was “a vital part of a young person’s journey to becoming interdependent”.
It is why part of the charity’s work involves bringing young people together to establish their first home, helping them “build lasting relationships that strengthen their sense of belonging and community”.
Restrictive policies around children’s friendships
However, participants also frequently highlighted the systemic barriers that prevented practitioners from supporting care experienced young people in fostering friendships.
These included restrictive policies – such as requiring friends’ parents to undergo Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks before sleepovers could take place – along with the disruption caused by far away placements, which frequently result in children losing contact with established friendship groups.
Time pressures on social workers were also cited as a factor limiting their ability to prioritise children’s social relationships.
One participant pointed out that social services’ single-minded focus on family relationships deprioritised the relevance of friendships.
“There’s a legal duty that actually means local authorities need to maintain that link [with the young person’s family],” they said.
Risk-averse practice
Another major issue raised was that risk assessments and professional attitudes often placed excessive emphasis on the potential risks of friendships.
Both focus groups expressed ongoing concerns about the impact of risk-averse practices among professionals.
They shared examples of social workers or other professionals judging a friend to be a negative influence and expecting children’s home staff to restrict, or even prevent, contact with that friend, including on digital platforms.
While it is true that children in care can be more vulnerable to exploitation by people posing as friends – experiences of trauma can make it harder for them to recognise healthy friendships – this only reinforces the importance of supporting positive peer relationships.
Rather than approaching friendships primarily with caution, professionals should be engaging children in conversations about what good friendships look and feel like, helping them recognise the qualities of a supportive friend.
This also involves creating opportunities for young people to form positive friendships and to learn how to navigate the ups and downs that are a normal part of these relationships.
‘Friendships are vital for human growth’
Most importantly, sanitised views of friendship miss a critical point.
While not all friendships have a positive impact, they are vital for human growth and development.
As one participant mentioned: “It’s a developmental imperative that children spend time with other children, and it feels like we all need to focus on this more”.
When young people do experience fallouts with friends or face exploitative peer relationships, practitioners can, instead, support them in navigating these complexities and help them learn important life lessons, develop relational skills and gain a stronger sense of agency.
“A lot of it sometimes [is about] helping them figure out, ‘How do I navigate coming back from that?’”, said one participant.
“Because often, I think, that’s one of the challenges young people [face] – they haven’t got that [skill]. So actually, [ask yourselves], ‘How can we work through that?’”
Making friendship a priority
In light of these discussions, we believe there must be a growing awareness of the importance of friendships among social care professionals.
Organisations also have a responsibility to empower and enable their staff to actively support these relationships.
Based on the focus groups, the following key points highlight how practitioners can best foster and sustain young people’s friendships:
- Let’s see friendships as a protective factor, rather than a risk. The absence of friendship is linked to loneliness, social isolation and a range of mental health issues (Heinrich and Gullone, 2006).
- We need to challenge the sanitised version of friendship that we often believe a young person should have. Thinking about our own adolescent friendships – complicated and messy as they sometimes were – can help us move towards a more realistic and supportive understanding of the role friendships play.
- Friendships need to be mentioned alongside family relationships during assessments and care and pathway planning. These can act as prompts to remind social workers to include friends in relationship-centred work.
- There are practical ways of supporting friendships for example, giving a young person a lift to see their friend’s house, ensuring that foster carers have the contact details of a friend’s parents to arrange play dates, or encouraging them to invite a young person’s friends over.
- Let’s have more conversations around friendships across our network of professionals and share information about who is important to a young person.
- Let’s be more explicit with young people about how important we believe their friendships are. By asking and paying attention to young people rather than relying on case notes or other professionals, we can demonstrate that we support their existing relationships and are committed to helping them build new ones.
Article written by: Lowis Charfe and Gabriel Eichsteller (Community Care)
