The duality of the corporate parenting role: a delicate balancing act

This piece discusses the complexity of responding to incidents of offending behaviour in children's residential provision and the duality of roles experienced by our frontline corporate parents and residential childcare workers, in doing so. It draws on the findings of research into the decision making of such staff in responding to offending behaviour, as detailed in the report Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Moodie & Nolan, 2016. This research addressed knowledge gaps about offending in residential childcare in Scotland. More critically, it helped to illuminate and better understand the decision-making process by giving voice to practitioners' experience about what it is like to have to make that often split second decision of how to react to offending behaviour. What we found was that there were multiple, often irreconcilable, factors influencing decision-making and tensions involved, which have been differentiated below.