In children’s care systems, identity is now routinely recognised as something that should be supported and sustained. Social workers are encouraged to plan with a child’s religion, culture, ethnicity, and language in mind, and care plans often record these as key aspects of identity. Yet for many children, particularly Muslim children in care, these considerations remain peripheral, outweighed by system pressures relating to capacity, availability, and placement stability. This is reflected in statutory guidance such as the Children Act 1989 and Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations (2010), which require consideration of children’s religion, culture, and identity within care planning.

This opinion piece argues that current approaches to identity are insufficient unless they are first grounded in belonging. For Muslim children in care, this requires conscious engagement with Amanah (trust), spirituality, and epistemic justice. Drawing on social theory and Islamic epistemology, particularly the concept of Amanah, I suggest that care systems must move beyond viewing faith and spirituality as peripheral considerations. Instead, where they are meaningful to the child, they should be recognised as central to how belonging, safety, and meaning are experienced in everyday care.

Belonging as the Ground of Identity

Identity is relational and socially produced, emerging through continuity, recognition, and shared meaning rather than existing as a fixed or individualised characteristic (Hall, 1996; Yuval-Davis, 2011). Belonging is both sentimental and embodied; it is about feeling held within relationships and being understood. Identity develops through this process, rather than existing prior to it. This reflects wider debates within social work that move beyond earlier models of cultural competence towards more relational and contextual understandings of identity.

Within the care system, identity is often approached abstractly or supported through disconnected actions. Yet for children, belonging is lived through every day, familiar practices: how they are spoken to, how their values are respected, and whether their psychosocial realities are legitimised. A muṣallā (prayer mat) in a placement where faith is misunderstood, or culturally familiar food in context where difference is merely managed rather than embraced, does not necessarily produce belonging. Such gestures can become symbolic when they are not accompanied by relational understanding or genuine engagement with the child’s lived experience. When belonging is sidelined, identity-focused practice risks becoming performative, placing responsibility on children to articulate who they are without sufficient relational grounding in where they come from.

For Muslim children in care, belonging may be deeply interconnected with faith, spirituality, and moral frameworks. Religious practice is often reduced to values or rituals, rather than understood as a lived system of meaning. This does not imply that religion holds the same significance for every child. Rather, it requires practitioners to recognise that for some children, spirituality is not an “add-on” to identity but a central way of understanding self, relationships, hardship, and rajāʾ (hope). Practice that attends to belonging therefore needs to explore how these meanings are lived, not simply whether they are acknowledged.

Amanah: Trust, Care, and Ethical Responsibility

Within Islamic thought, children are understood as an Amanah, a trust. Amanah, broadly understood as a moral and relational trust, is an Arabic concept rooted in responsibility, care, and accountability, grounded in moral obligation before God rather than ownership or control (Kamali, 2002). To hold a child as an Amanah is to preserve their dignity and to honour the conditions necessary for their flourishing, including emotional, relational, and spiritual wellbeing.

When Muslim children enter care, the Local Authority assumes the role of corporate parent and may hold parental responsibility. This raises important questions about how statutory systems understand their role and what it means, in practice, to hold that Amanah. Within systems that are often secular and risk reducing duty to procedural compliance and risk management, it is not always clear whether spiritual continuity and relational belonging are understood as part of this role. This reflects a tension within statutory systems, where relational and spiritual needs may be present but not always formally recognised.

Amanah reframes safeguarding as a relational ethic of stewardship rather than surveillance. It centres inherent dignity (karāmah) and moral responsibility, asking not only whether risk has been mitigated, but whether the child’s wholeness has been protected. For practice, this offers a framework through which Muslim children’s spiritual and moral needs can be understood as integral to wellbeing rather than exceptional or optional. It invites practitioners to consider continuity in meaning, community, and spirituality as core components of care planning and relational work.

Epistemic Justice and the Marginalisation of Spiritual Knowledge

Contemporary social work discourse has shifted from cultural competence towards humility and curiosity. While well intentioned, these shifts raise deeper questions of epistemic justice: whose knowledge is recognised as credible, whose interpretations are trusted, and which worldviews shape decision-making. At its core, epistemic justice concerns whether different ways of understanding the world are taken seriously within professional systems.

Within care systems, Eurocentric frameworks often function as default epistemologies. This aligns with wider discussions in social work around the limitations of dominant frameworks and the need to recognise diverse ways of knowing. In contrast, children’s and families’ understandings of care, spirituality, patience, loss, or belonging may be treated as subjective, secondary, or irrelevant. For Muslim children, spirituality may shape how they interpret change, experience comfort, and understand their place in the world. Concepts such as ṣabr (patience), tawakkul (trust in God), and qadr (life trajectory) may be central to their resilience and coping.

When these forms of meaning are excluded from assessment, care planning, and support, children’s inner worlds risk being rendered invisible. In practice, epistemic injustice occurs not only when children are unheard, but when the frameworks through which they understand their lives are not recognised within professional systems.

Epistemic justice therefore requires recognising children’s spiritual and moral understandings as legitimate forms of knowledge that can inform care, where this is meaningful to the child. This does not mean uncritical acceptance, but relational engagement: listening carefully, asking open questions, and allowing children’s own meaning-making to shape how support is offered.

Care Systems as Intercultural Spaces

Care systems function as intercultural spaces where different moral, cultural, and epistemic worlds meet. This reflects broader literature on intercultural and cross-cultural practice within social work.

Muslim children and families may bring faith-based understandings of care, relational responsibility, and wellbeing. Yet institutional processes often prioritise what is legible within professional frameworks rather than what is meaningful to the child. When spirituality is treated as peripheral, children may experience a disconnect between their inner world and the care they receive, perpetuating forms of hermeneutical injustice.

Belonging in this context is not about uniformity or the imposition of religious practice. It is about recognition, being seen and understood in ways that align with how a child understands themselves. Where faith or spirituality matters to a child, its marginalisation can undermine trust, even when other aspects of care are well intentioned.

Re-centring Belonging and Spirituality in Practice

What might it mean to re-centre belonging and spirituality in practice?

First, it requires shifting from asking “How do we acknowledge this child’s identity?” to “What helps this child feel grounded, safe, and understood?” For some Muslim children, spirituality will be central to this; for others, it may not. The task is to respond to the child, not to a category.

Second, spirituality should be understood as part of wellbeing rather than a cultural preference. Where it matters to the child, faith continuity, spiritual routines, and moral meaning-making should be considered alongside emotional and relational needs within care planning.

Third, practitioners need space and confidence to engage with spirituality without fear of overstepping professional boundaries. This does not require theological expertise, but relational openness and institutional permission to treat spiritual meaning as relevant to practice. This aligns with professional guidance emphasising ethical, relationship-based practice, including the BASW Code of Ethics and the Social Work England Professional Standards.

Finally, care systems must reflect on how their structures and routines either support or marginalise children’s inner worlds. When spirituality is consistently treated as peripheral, children may learn that parts of themselves do not belong in care spaces.

Conclusion

For Muslim children in care, identity-informed practice must move beyond surface recognition toward deeper engagement with belonging, trust, and meaning. Amanah offers an ethical framework that reframes care as stewardship, one that includes, where important to the child, spiritual and moral dimensions of wellbeing. This requires care systems to move beyond procedural recognition of identity and towards forms of practice that engage with how children understand themselves and their place in the world.

Belonging is not just a concept, and spirituality is not an optional extra. Together, they shape how children experience safety, dignity, and the possibility of becoming.

Reflective Questions for Practice

The following questions are intended to support reflection and discussion within practice settings:

• How does your organisation understand belonging, and how is this experienced by children in everyday care?
• When spirituality matters to a child, how is it recognised as part of their wellbeing rather than a peripheral identity marker?
• Whose knowledge is treated as authoritative in care planning, and how are children’s own meaning-making practices engaged with?
• What support do practitioners need to engage confidently and ethically with children’s spiritual worlds?
• What would it mean to hold children in care explicitly as an Amanah; a trust that includes their inner as well as outer lives?

Faisa Abdirahman is a Senior Social Worker in Children’s Services, specialising in work with children in care and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Of Somali heritage, her practice and research interests centre on identity, belonging, and relational care, with a particular focus on faith-informed approaches to supporting Muslim children. She is the founder of The Faceless Social Worker, a platform that shares practice insights and supports social work practitioners. She is currently developing a doctoral research proposal exploring spirituality, epistemic justice, and alternative frameworks for social work practice.

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