Navigating personal beliefs in professional practice: perspectives of Virtual School educational professionals working with care-experienced children and young people

Virtual Schools hold a distinctive position within the English education system, operating at the interface of education, social care, and wider multi-agency networks to promote the educational achievement and wellbeing of care-experienced children and young people (CYP). Professionals working within these contexts navigate complex ethical, relational, and systemic demands, often while supporting CYP for whom experiences of trauma, displacement, and identity disruption may make belief particularly significant in their lives. While existing literature explores professional values, ethics, and identity within education and social care separately, there is a notable absence of research examining how Virtual School professionals navigate their own personal belief systems within practice. This research addresses this gap by exploring how educational professionals employed by Virtual Schools navigate the intersection of their personal belief systems (religious, atheist, or secular) and their professional responsibilities when working with care-experienced CYP. Situated within a critical realist framework, the study adopted a qualitative design, generating data through semi-structured interviews with seven professionals and analysing them using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Findings are organised around four themes: belief woven into practice; different ways of navigating belief in practice; belief acting as a moral compass; and when belief meets institutional reality. Belief was found to shape professional identity, decision-making, and perseverance, often below conscious awareness, while institutional cultures offered limited space for reflection on how belief shapes practice. The study contributes to understanding of how belief is navigated within Virtual School practice and highlights implications for Educational Psychologists in facilitating reflective, ethically attuned practice. Limitations relating to sample size and self-selection are acknowledged, and future research directions are proposed, including work centring the voices of care-experienced CYP.