Childhood Experiences: a Commitment To Caring and Care Work With Vulnerable Children

Abstract

This article draws upon biographical interview material from a mixed-method British study of workers caring for vulnerable children: residential social workers, family support workers, foster carers and community childminders. It has two aims: (1) to identify the contexts — the particular events, circumstances and life course phases — that precipitated a move into their first occupation working with vulnerable children and young people; and (2) to analyse the main narrative resources that informants employed in explaining how they developed a commitment to care in general. It thereby suggests how workers are drawn to caring and when and why they take up this important work that is generally undervalued in the British context. In particular, it demonstrates how childhood constitutes a critical interpretive resource suggesting the importance of negative as well as positive formative experiences in creating a commitment to care for others, vulnerable children in particular.