Children Webmag

In This Issue: September 2009

Editor — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:59:13 +0000

Theme of the Month : Social Pedagogy

The big theme for this issue is Social Pedagogy, and in addition to the Editorial, we have a dozen or so articles and a book review on the theme.

Subjects include the current state of Government policy by John Chowcat, introducing social pedagogy to the UK by Abby Ladbroke and the pilot programme by Claire Cameron, a group of six items by Gabriel Eichsteller which give an excellent introduction to some of the main ideas underpinning social pedagogy, with articles on the 3 Ps, the Common Third, the Zone of Proximal Development, the Learning Zone Model and a particular emphasis on the importance of taking risks, as well as a piece on social pedagogy and UK traditions of social work. Bettina Terp writes about the social pedagogy model in Vienna. Valerie Jackson looks back at the impact of pedagogical teaching on early childhood work. Keith White asks what’s so new about it. There is a description of ThemPra. And there’s a Book Review about empowering photography.

But that’s not all: two important items to make you take a new look at things. A radical plan to shake up youth work is advocated by Tony Taylor, while Robert Shaw fundamentally questions the whole basis of social work during the last century.

There are also seven Book Reviews - two by Maureen O’Hagan on Montessori and an EYFS text book on physical development, two by Valerie Jackson on health care and resilience, and three more by Valerie with help from children at Alpha Kindergarten on books for children - Dot and Dash, Before You Sleep and Mister Maker.

Finally, there is an advert for the CCHN Conference on child care ethics, and of course, News Views.

For those interested in networking about social pedagogy, we have a notice about SPIN, and we hope to have more social pedagogy items next month.

Editorial: Social Pedagogy- Panacea, Practical Programme or Professional Trompe l’Oeil?

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:57:31 +0000

Clearly we would not have selected social pedagogy as the theme for this issue if we did not consider its introduction into the United Kingdom as an important step forwards in child care services. Equally clearly, there is considerable debate about the value of social pedagogy, its applicability to the UK, and the extent of the services to which it could be applied. And there are a lot of people who are wondering what social pedagogy is, perhaps feeling a bit suspicious of it and uneasy that something foreign is being foisted onto them which they do not quite understand.

We hope that if you read the contents of this special issue, you will have a good idea what social pedagogy is, and that if you were uneasy, you feel satisfied that you have the measure of it and could explain what it is to colleagues.

Some of the articles explain basic thinking about social pedagogy; some talk of the latest news about the pilots being established in this country to test the idea in practice; some express a degree of scepticism. We hope that there is something for everyone, whether you know a lot or a little.

The variety of views expressed is not surprising. Social pedagogy goes back a long way. Valerie Jackson quotes Rousseau. In continental Europe social pedagogy (or social education, its southern Europe equivalent) has been the main profession for people working directly with children over the last sixty years. So there has been plenty of time for ideas to be expanded, modified by professional thinking or adapted to the laws and systems of different countries. Any concept worth considering is likely to grow and change in this way. The fact that there is no single tight definition need not worry us.

The real question is whether the approach to work with children associated with the term social pedagogy makes sense here today. If we end up with our own definitions or additions to the concept, so much the better; we will have helped the idea to evolve.

From an editorial angle, there is one key point we would wish to re-iterate. Unlike other major professions, such as teaching or medicine, people working with children and young people in this country have been splintered into about thirty professional groupings of various sizes, but all of them small by comparison with the big professions. Social pedagogy offers a possible banner for all these groupings to unite and their combined impact could be considerable. Specialisms will always be needed within work with children and young people, but there are so many shared features of the work and of professional training that it is our view that the establishment of a shared over-arching professional identity is a matter of real importance if the work is to carry the right level of influence in circles of power.

To answer the question in the title, social pedagogy is not an answer to everything, but it does offer a positive framework and range of concepts which can both give greater purpose to many of our child and youth care services, and can offer a common identity which can help to impact on the nation as a whole. And it certainly not should not be dismissed as a short-term fad, a flash in the pan, a will o’ the wisp which will drift away with the break of day.

Thanks are due in the production of this issue in particular to Gabriel

Social Pedagogy and Government Policy in England

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:55:39 +0000

Where do matters stand in terms of current Government attitudes in England towards the international experience of social pedagogy, with its holistic approach to individual learning needs and distinct methodologies for working with children?

Exploration

The Government’s significant Building Brighter Futures: Next Steps for the Children’s Workforce document, published in 2008, and subsequent related policy pronouncements contain limited but interesting references to the broad concept of social pedagogy. A three-year pilot project is being centrally funded “to explore the value of a social pedagogic approach” in the specific context of residential children’s homes, and separate plans have been initiated to establish a new

Introducing Social Pedagogy

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:53:38 +0000

Any definition of social pedagogy should highlight the importance of its relationship to its social context. As an academic discipline social pedagogy is concerned with human beings’ learning, well-being and inclusion in society. Social pedagogy emerged to address culturally specific social problems through educational means (see H

The Social Pedagogy Pilot Programme 2008 - 2011 Progress to Date

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:51:59 +0000

In Care Matters: Time for Change (DfES 2007) the Government committed itself to funding a pilot programme to evaluate the effectiveness of social pedagogy in children’s residential care. This commitment followed a period of comparative research and feasibility studies carried out at Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education University of London. These studies found that continental understandings of social pedagogy as a discipline focusing on direct practice with children, in a range of circumstances and settings, produced better quality of life and outcomes for children in residential care in Denmark and Germany than those young people in England were experiencing (Petrie et al. 2006).

Social pedagogy may be defined as

Some Basic Concepts 1: The 3 Ps

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:49:00 +0000

The pedagogic role can be split into three dimensions: the professional, the personal, and the private.

The private pedagogue sets the personal boundaries of what is not shared with others and should therefore not be part of the relation with a child in care. The private pedagogue is who you are with your own children, your partner, your closest friends etc.

What is private to you is your decision, nobody else’s. You have to feel comfortable with the extent to which you share something with a child, but also recognise that they might feel the same way about sharing very personal information with you.

The personal pedagogue represents what you offer to the child, your way of bringing yourself into the relationships you are forming and into other areas of your work. Human relationships are always personal, and it’s important that you role-model what positive relationships are about.

Being reflective is a vital way of helping you be personal and be affected by your work, be empathic. Constant reflections ensure that you know why and with what aim you do what in the relationship, and it requires authenticity and self-disclosure in the relationship with a child.

The professional pedagogue helps you look for explanations for a child’s behaviour, so that you can really understand them in their actions, for example when a child is being abusive or rude to you or others. Knowing theories and concepts from psychology, sociology and education can enlighten you in this as they provide possible explanations and strategies to use in practice.

By developing self-awareness the professional pedagogue supports and protects you in having a personal relation to the child; it helps you make sense of the child’s actions and reactions, relating them to various theories and using professional concepts to direct and reflect your own practice.

Some Basic Concepts 2: The Common Third

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:47:21 +0000

“It is not possible to teach.
But it is possible to create situations,
Wherein it is impossible not to learn.”

The concept of the

Some Basic Concepts 3: Zone of Proximal Development

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:45:55 +0000

The Zone of Proximal Development is a model developed by Vygotsky. It states that learning is most successful in a social context, meaning that people learn more and develop further when they are supported by somebody who is more advanced in a certain area and functions as their mentor (= pedagogue).

Vygotsky defines the zone of proximal development as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers”. In this sense the pedagogue could be a practitioner or another child!

According to Schwartz (2001), the Zone of Proximal Development can be extended through four different scenarios of supporting children in their learning:

Starting from the child’s motivation to learn

Children want to learn and are interested in finding out new things - this provides a great opportunity for pedagogues to support their learning.

Starting from where the pedagogue thinks the child

Some Basic Concepts 4: The Learning Zone Model

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:43:33 +0000

“If you want to feel secure
Do what you already know how to do.
But if you want to grow …
Go to the cutting edge of your competence,
Which means a temporary loss of security.
So, whenever you don’t quite know
What you are doing
Know
That you are growing …”

(Viscott, 2003)

In order to learn, we have to explore: we already know our environment, our Comfort Zone - this is where things are familiar, where we feel comfortable, where we don’t have to take any risks. The Comfort Zone is important, because it gives us a place to return to, to reflect and make sense of things - a safe haven.

Yet, in order to get to know the unknown we have to leave our Comfort Zone and discover the Learning Zone, which lies just outside of our secure environment. Only in the Learning Zone can we grow and learn, live out our curiosity and make new discoveries, and thus slowly expand our Comfort Zone. Going into the Learning Zone is a borderline experience. We feel we’re exploring the edge of our abilities, our limits, how far we dare to leave our Comfort Zone.

However, beyond the Learning Zone lies the Panic Zone, wherein learning is impossible, as it is blocked by a sense of fear. (Any learning connected with negative emotions is memorised in a part of the human brain that we can access only in similar emotional situations.) This is why, in the transition from Comfort Zone to Learning Zone we need to be careful when taking risks that we don’t go too far out of our Comfort Zone - beyond the Learning Zone - into the Panic Zone, where all our energy is used up for managing and controlling our anxiety.

Importantly, these three zones are different for different situations and different for each person - we all have our own unique Comfort Zone, Learning Zone and Anxiety Zone. This means that we must never push someone into their Learning Zone, as we cannot see where it starts or begins. All we can do is invite them into it, value their decision, take them seriously and give them support so they won’t enter their Panic Zone.

Towards a Pedagogic Conceptualisation of Risk

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:41:32 +0000

Introduction

“One should teach children to dance on a tightrope without a safety net,
to sleep at night alone under the sky, to row a boat out on the open sea.
One should teach them to imagine castles in the sky instead of houses on the ground,
to be nowhere at home but in life itself and to find security within themselves.”

H.H. Dreiske, German poet and social worker

Feeling secure comes from within, if we believe Dreiske, from being nowhere at home but in life itself, from knowing how to enjoy life and growing through challenges. The life Dreiske envisions for children seems full of dangers and risks, yet reminds of literary characters like Huckleberry Finn or Pippi Longstocking and their imaginative, colourful and adventurous lives. Their ways of exploring the world were often connected with risks, with daring stunts that took them to the limits of their physical abilities.

But what also emerges from their stories is the growth from taking these risks, their growth in self-esteem, in knowledge, and in competence. And, as the German paediatrician and child psychologist Eckhard Schiffer (1993) argues, their ability to live their dreams, to fill their lives with fantasy, pleasure and excitement is fundamental to their well-being and health. In his book

Out-of-Home Care: Bringing up Children in a Professional Way

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:40:09 +0000

It might be thought that bringing up children is the most natural thing to do. Parents do it day by day, and they do it without training or theoretical knowledge. But the education of children in the context of out-of-home care is not only a matter of bringing them up.

Working in institutional or residential care demands a high level of personal involvement and a willingness to deal with challenging situations. Beyond that, expert knowledge is (of course) one of the fundamentals of social pedagogic work.

Needs and Strengths

What do we face, when working in out-of-home care? We face children with specific needs, with particular deficits, with traumatising life stories. These children can be aggressive, reclusive, apathetic or ambivalent - or they can behave in many other ways. Whatever they present, we have to deal with this.

We can also identify resources, - mental and physical and familial resources - but you need the knowledge that there are resources, somewhere hidden behind each child’s particular attitude, and you need to know how to bring these resources to light.

To meet the demands of these children, to meet the demands of social pedagogic work, it needs more than personal dedication. It needs pedagogic, psychological, therapeutic, psychiatric and sometimes even medical basic knowledge.

A Social Pedagogue has to get a clear picture of the situation in which the child is living, has to encourage and support the child in developing the skills needed for every day life, has to work with all relevant persons (Social Workers, parents, Teachers, Psychologists and Psychiatrists), has to cooperate with Teachers and has to find solutions for the next steps in the child’s future. To meet these demands the Social Pedagogue needs a solid background of professional knowledge.

Standards in Vienna

Finally, I would like to describe the standard for Social Pedagogues from the Viennese point of view. The Viennese standards for out-of-home care say that Social Pedagogues have to demonstrate:

1. Professional qualification

a diploma or vocational matriculation examination in Social Pedagogy

expertise in different fields of social pedagogic work

systemic understanding and awareness

work-relevant legal knowledge

2. Reasoning power and sagacity

competence in holistic assessment of complex (family) systems

competence in problem-solving

3. Ability and motivation

ability to work under pressure

competence and motivation to work and take independent decisions

motivation for personal, social and expert further development

4. Working technique

methodological plurality

creativity and flexibility

organising ability

5. Social behaviour

empathy

conflict management

high communication skills

willingness to work in a team

If we summarise all these specifications, it seems evident that the first request is the demonstration of professional vocational education. Professional training is inescapable if we want to meet the children’s needs. Children in out-of-home care need a lot of assistance and encouragement. And they deserve the most professional support they can get.

Social Pedagogy and UK Traditions of Social Work

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:39:16 +0000

Work with Families

As with UK social work, social pedagogy has a strong emphasis on working with families, and working in partnership with parents. Where children are in care, the pedagogues are expected to work with families as well as the child. Foster-carers are often offered elements of social pedagogy training, or may themselves be trained social pedagogues. Such staff work at helping children maintain links and to return home where possible. As they are trained in a range of practical skills (games, sports, arts and creative activities in general) and in specific methods of working, pedagogues would usually be expected to work with families, in the sense of encouraging parents to develop parenting skills, and supporting parents to resolve difficulties in managing their children.

We can see from this that the pedagogue role has some similarities to that of residential workers, except that pedagogues are trained to engage fully with families. In continental Europe children in care and families would still have social workers, with similar roles to the UK (for example, assessment and case management) but the pedagogue is available to undertake work in identified areas.

Reflective Practice

Reflective practice is seen as a major element in social pedagogy training, as it is in the UK in social work and other professions. This involves workers being trained to reflect on what they are doing, and why, and linking theory to practice. In teamwork situations pedagogues are expected to reflect with each other, giving feedback and suggestions to one another.

It is a notable feature of recent social pedagogy initiatives in the UK that both foreign social pedagogues and British staff notice that the British system of care seems to be dominated by concerns about risk and

Social Pedagogy: the Impact of Rousseau

Valerie Jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:37:20 +0000

When I was a student at teacher training college, tomes which influenced my development as a teacher included the Plowden Report* (1967) and the history of education including, due to its centenary, the history of the *board school. An additional text was the book of Emile by Rousseau. Looking back, I acknowledge that I was privileged to have what I considered to be the best preparation to become a teacher of small children by being trained by professionals who actually cared about their work and the influences they had on our scatty lives.

Rousseau

Rousseau was a very strange individual. He accepted that he had no real skills as a parent - in fact he put all of his own children into orphanages stating that they would better off being looked after there. He even identified that as a teacher he was useless. What he did instead was to conjure from his imagination, a perfect child - Emile, and he would become his perfect teacher or pedagogue. The book traces Emile’s

What’s So New about Social Pedagogy?

Dr Keith J. White — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:35:57 +0000

Over recent months the government in the UK has been discovering “social pedagogy”, while in other nations such as Denmark social pedagogy has long permeated mainstream life and thought.

Social Pedagogy Implementation Network

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:34:46 +0000

“Reality only emerges through dialogue.”

Heinz v. Foerster, Austrian constructivist

Facilitation: ThemPra Social Pedagogy C.I.C.

Organisers: NCERCC, ThemPra, TCRU, Jacaranda, FICE-England

our idea …

In our effort to support the construction of a British tradition of social pedagogy, we would like to bring together the various social pedagogy pioneers across the country. We believe that the links between these pioneers and the sharing of their experiences is very important for the further development of a cohesive approach to social pedagogy.

An implementation of social pedagogy can only be successful where it follows underpinning social pedagogic principles of working in partnership, learning from each other, engaging in dialogue, valuing diversity and building strong relationships. With the Social Pedagogy Implementation Network we hope to bring these principles to life by providing an opportunity for dialogue and learning.

… becomes reality …

The network provides an excellent forum to connect those who have already been active in implementing social pedagogy or eager to do so, with invitations going out to the UK child care sector through the organisers and at the NCERCC conference.

To keep the development of social pedagogy diverse and colourful, we want to enable as many organisations as possible to be part of this dialogue. Therefore places are free but limited to 2 delegates per organisation/local authority. A total of 60 places will be available.

Essex County Council have offered to host the first network event, and NCERCC will provide the finances to kick-start the network. After this it is hoped that organisations agree to host an event, providing a venue and refreshments for the day.

The first full-day SPIN event will take place on Thursday, 27 November 2009 and aim to:

ThemPra

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:33:04 +0000

It will be apparent from a quick look at the Contents of this issue of the Webmag that much of the basic descriptive material about social pedagogy has been made available by Thempra. Both Sylvia Holthoff and Gabriel Eichsteller are directors of this community interest company, whose full name is ThemPra Social Pedagogy. We therefore asked them to provide a brief description of their company and what it does.

The name stands for a strong connection between theory and practice of social pedagogy. In our understanding, theory meets practice for one single purpose: we believe that children and young people deserve the best and we are dedicated to improving their life experiences through holistic and child-centred services.

ThemPra’s way of contributing is through the promotion and sustainable implementation of social pedagogy in social organisations - through personal and professional development courses, capacity-building and projects - with the aim to encourage practitioners and organisations to explore the relevance of social pedagogy for their specific working field.

We feel that social pedagogy offers a coherent framework, allowing practitioners to make best use of their professional, personal and practical expertise. As various research studies prove, this has a strong positive impact on improving children and young people’s wellbeing and personal and social development.

We see our main activities in designing and delivering personal and professional development courses and in developing projects which create holistic learning space to explore the dimension of a social pedagogic approach in social services throughout the UK. In order to promote social pedagogy nationally, we are also working in partnership with organisations that share our aims, in particular the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care and FICE-England.

To learn more visit their website at

In Praise of Emancipatory Youth Work

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:32:26 +0000

“Thirty years ago youth work aspired to a special relationship with young people. It wanted to meet young women and men on their terms. It claimed to be ‘on their side’.

A Historical Tragedy

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:31:02 +0000

A Bad Start

While I understand the frustration which social workers in England and Wales feel at the ways in which they are portrayed in the media and by politicians (A Tear of Reflection by Claudia Megele, August) I think we need to look beyond the past twenty years to understand how this has happened.

Social work got off to a bad start when the course set up in 1903 by the Metropolitan Relieving Officers Association with the London School of Sociology and Social Economics and the Charity Organisation Society collapsed and the initiative was taken up by the London School of Economics in 1912 (Crowther, 1981). The sociologists at the LSE saw themselves as the scientists of sociology and social workers as their technicians and this status relationship has generally been preserved within academia in England and Wales.

Consequently, the theoretical underpinnings of social work are assumed to depend on other academic disciplines and progression within academia depends on undertaking research into social work from within another discipline, normally sociology or social policy. It isn’t possible, as it is in medicine, to combine high level research with practice and so there is no way in which quality practice can be recognised within academia. This has implications for identifying quality practice outside academia, for the quality of teaching and for the quality of supervision in practice placements.

Legislation - but No Change

In the 1960s social work with children became identified with anti-residential care ideas but, after the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act, the number of children in care ballooned as the social workers in the newly formed Social Services Departments were unable to match rhetoric with reality. When the Department of Health and Security (1981) examined the effect of the 1969 Act, it found that it had made no difference to the percentage of young offenders in residential care.

Much the same thing happened after the 1989 Children Act; though the number of children in care did not balloon as it had in the 1970s, the percentage in residential care remained the same, as secure treatment centres and prison increasingly began to be used instead of local authority residential care. So, though the 1989 Children Act should, like the 1969 Act, have brought about positive changes for children, it did not, as Sir William Utting (1997) and later Alan Johnson (Department for Education and Skills, 2006) were to point out.

Problems - Solving but Not Preventing Them

Among the reactions to the perceived failures of social work in the 1970s was the shift towards short term solutions to social problems such as task-centred casework (Reid and Epstein, 1972). The `problem’ with problem-oriented approaches, as the former civil servant, Sir Geoffrey Vickers, (1981) observed, is that everything has to be reformulated in terms of a problem. So the client is immediately turned into a patient on whom the social worker has to work. This model underpinned the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 with social workers being given the responsibility for assessing user needs, thereby creating an immediate dependency between social worker and client.

Of course, there are many situations where problem-solving approaches can give appropriate and immediate relief, which is why many social workers and their clients do feel positive about the work they do. But preventive work is about preventing the problems arising in the first place, not about assessing and dealing with them when they arise. In the 1980s local authorities largely withdrew from genuine preventive work because they could not see any point in intervening in situations where there was no obvious problem.

Yet we have known for over thirty years that most problems in adolescence arise from situations in the primary school years (Rutter, 1978). Waiting until children become adolescents to deal with these problems is bound to fail; the only way of preventing them is to deal with the conditions which create them in the primary school years.

Where Next?

Getting out of this situation is going to be difficult for social work; it suits academia that it can largely teach the same material, with a few cosmetic changes in terminology, as it has been teaching for the past thirty years and does not have social workers whose quality of practice and research credibility can challenge these ideas. It suits managers to be able to blame social workers; as Berridge (1985) and Cliffe and Berridge (1992) found, much poor practice was a result of management decisions and there was little evidence in Alan Johnson’s assessment (2006) that this had changed. It also suits politicians to have social workers as `problem solvers’ rather than people who address the long term needs of children and young people.

However well social workers do their jobs and however many short term problems they successfully resolve, they are convenient victims for those who don’t want to look too closely into the longer term issues of providing a quality service for children and families.

The way out for social work is to find a patron who is intellectually and morally robust enough to challenge the dominant stereotypes. After an operation, William Morris was sufficiently impressed by the work of the anaesthetists that he offered to endow a professorship at Oxford University. “But they are only technicians; why not endow something with more status?” However, he insisted that he would only endow a Chair in anaesthetics and the rest, as they say, is history.

References

Berridge, D (1985) Children’s homes Oxford: Blackwell

Cliffe, D and Berridge, D (1992) Closing children’s homes: an end to residential childcare? London: National Children’s Bureau

Crowther, M A (1981) The workhouse system 1834-1929: the history of an English social institution London: Batsford

Department for Education and Skills (2006) Care matters: transforming the lives of children and young people in care Cm 6932 London: The Stationery Office

Department of Health and Social Security (1981) Offending by young people: a survey of recent trends London: Department of Health and Social Security

Reid, W J and Epstein. L (1972) Task-centered casework London: Columbia University Press

Rutter, M (1978) Early sources of security and competence In J S Bruner and A Garton (Eds.) Human Growth and Development Chapter 2, pp. 33-61 Oxford: Clarendon Press Wolfson College Lectures 1976

Utting, Sir W B (1997) People like us: the report of the review of safeguards for children living away from home London: Stationery Office

Vickers, Sir G C (1981) The poverty of problem solving Journal of Applied Systems Analysis 8

Robert Shaw is in the process of completing a history of residential care.

Beyond Caring: Chapter 2

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:29:40 +0000

Is there a future for a boy with a past?

In Chapter 1 Aaron was admitted to Templewood, a children’s home, and he met Rebecca, his keyworker, but he was not going to let himself be easily impressed. If you would like to read Chapter 1 first, please click here.

While the days drift past, they start to fill the house with Christmas decorations.

‘Children in Distress’ by Alec Clegg and Barbara Megson

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:27:52 +0000

Alec Clegg and Barbara Megson (1968) Children in distress Harmondsworth: Penguin

Sir Alec Clegg (1909-1986) was, from 1946 to 1974, the Chief Education Officer for the West Riding of Yorkshire, at the time the largest local authority in England, covering an area the size of the Netherlands. The authority had pioneered comprehensive schools in the 1940s and over a thirty-year period gradually introduced them across the whole county, closing or merging many smaller secondary schools in the process. But this book is not about the authority’s policies or even their effectiveness but about the much wider issue of how far good quality education can influence the life chances of children.

Key Ideas

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‘Children who Wait’ by Jane Rowe and Lydia Lambert

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:25:19 +0000

Jane Rowe and Lydia Lambert (1973) Children who wait: a study of children needing substitute families London: Association of British Adoption Agencies

With the passing of the Abortion Act 1967 there was a significant fall in the number of infants available for adoption and the queue of prospective adoptive parents lengthened. Adoption agencies began to look for alternative sources of children to satisfy this demand, among them children from ethnic minorities and children with disabilities. This study sought to identify whether there were children in the care of local authorities or voluntary organisations who might benefit from long-term foster or adoptive parenting. In the event, it also provided a useful snapshot of the state of child care in Great Britain.

Key Ideas

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News Views

Editor — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:24:47 +0000

Something Old or Something New?

Keith White asks in his column this month what there is that is new about social pedagogy, and it is a question touched on in some of the other articles this month.

Our view is that social pedagogy provides a conceptual framework which enables a lot of other things to make sense. At conferences we have seen experienced practitioners’ faces light up with enthusiasm as the social pedagogy approach helped them to fit the various pieces of theory and practice together which were already in their repertoires.

Give us the springs and cogs that make a watch, and it will remain a heap of bits. But if an expert puts it together, it all makes sense and works. Put the jigsaw together and you get the picture, with its message. While it is a pile if pieces, who knows what it is all about? Social pedagogy teaching offers the blue print and assembly instructions for the watch, or a sight of the picture on the jigsaw box.

And when they are all put together they make sense and work. Which helps motivate staff. Which is necessary for good child care practice.

Respite Care

The practice of providing respite care while children are fostered seems to have grown up over recent years, and it is a trend we find worrying.

Children who are fostered have usually had major problems at home, or they would not need fostering. There may be relationship difficulties; they may be missing school; they may be subject to abuse or bullying; they may have disabilities; they may be offending. Whatever their problems, their experiences will be part of the baggage which the children carry to the foster home. To cope with them, they will need personal care, love, stability, and individual attention.

When a child gets to the foster home, s/he will find a family with a different way of living, different expectations, different language perhaps, possibly a different school and a new circle of social contacts. The foster home may of course be very loving, flexible and tolerant, but the foster child has to do a lot of the adapting - despite being the one with the problems.

If, then, a respite placement is built in, the foster child has to make a further set of adaptations to fit in with a third setting. We recall some research from many years ago which suggested that children can typically relate to four significant adults, and it makes sense. Beyond that, relationships tend to be shallower and less important. If a child is bombarded with multiple adult carers, they find ways of adapting - settling quickly and conforming, but anaesthetising themselves against the pain of continual separations by declining to bond and form close relationships - a sort of institutionalisation.

We recently came across a case where the package planned for a child consisted of two foster

‘The Loveliest Girl in the World’ by Miina Savolainen

David Lane — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:21:54 +0000

This book is unique. It is a coffee table book, described as an art book by the publishers, but it is also a serious text about meeting the needs of ten children in a children’s home. It is a pedagogical text book but it reads like poetry. It is three-quarters pictures, but they are indispensable and tell their own story. It is expensive, but it is worth every penny. As I said, it is unique.

Miina Savolainen, the author, is also a photographer, and she has worked for many years as a social educator in a children’s home in Finland. (The book is in Finnish, but with a parallel translation in excellent English, and the pictures of course need no translation.)

In 1998 she started a project, which she continued over ten years. It so happened that there were ten girls in the children’s home at that time, and so the book focuses on girls; hence its title.

The aim of the project was first to build up the girls’ trust in Miina. The relationship between photographer and subject was different from that of child care worker and child in a children’s home. The children had control over how they wanted to be seen. Miina’s role was to take the pictures and try to help each individual in their own way to look good, to look beautiful, to become a princess.

Over time, the girls gained confidence. They enjoyed the individual attention. The photographs made them look good, and enhanced their self-images. Given the increased self-confidence they were able to look at themselves - both at the images they projected and at their inner selves.

Eventually, when the project ended, the photographs were made into a display, of which the girls and their parents were proud.

So, despite the title, the book is a pedagogic text book which describes the use of photography as a therapeutic and pedagogic method of relating to children and working on the things that matter to them. The project description spells out the process and the outcome.

It is a good example of the use of activities in social pedagogy as a means of forming relationships between social pedagogues and children. For a start it focuses on the positives, rather than being problem-orientated, offering individual attention, a pleasurable activity and a rewarding outcome. This is a good way of developing good working relationships. In the longer run it is also a means of creating a situation in which child and social pedagogue can work together on the child’s deeper problems at a time of the child’s choosing.

No doubt it will encourage others to take up the idea, and in Finland there are training courses. (In passing, it is worth noting the really excellent quality of service that can be provided in a children’s home. So let’s consign to the bin the image still prevalent in some quarters in the UK that residential care has to be considered harmful.)

The book is also poetry, both in the cadences of the language and the way the reader is taken through the thought processes of the people involved. The design is beautiful, creating a gorgeous setting for the photographs. The pictures of the girls are perhaps the most moving part of the book. A bunch of ten girls have been turned into princesses, but this process has not been some trite makeover for television. It has been part of a pedagogic programme, designed to help the girls come to terms with themselves. The real change is not the clothes and beautiful settings but what has happened within the girls themselves.

And the price? At 48 Euros, it is expensive, but the price is not excessive for this sort of art book and the quality of production. It costs a lot less than going to a conference, and if it sparks off a new project for a residential child care worker, or if a child in care reads it and picks up something of the message, it will have proved its worth. It’s unique.

Savolainen, Miina (2008) Maailman Ihanin Tytto (The Loveliest Girl in the World)

Blink Entertainment, Helsinki

ISBN978-952-92-2522-4

www.empoweringphotography.net

The book is not available through bookshops, but has to be ordered by email from Finland: maailman.ihanin.kirja@welho.com . The book costs 48 Euros, plus shipping, though bulk purchases are cheaper. Please email the publisher for details.

‘Physical Development in the Early Years Foundation Stage’ by Angela D Nurse

Maureen O'Hagan — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:19:14 +0000

The aim of this book is clearly stated as being a support for practitioners who have to deal with the introduction and implementation of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

The chapters are easy to follow with good practical examples throughout. The chapters are divided into an introduction on the area of the EYFS being discussed e.g. what physical development means for children, followed by a section which puts forward the practical aspects of the awareness of what this means for the child/children.

All of the material is very clearly headed throughout, making it easy for the practitioner to access the information they are looking for and how it is linked to the EYFS principles. Within chapters there are useful headings such as specific scenarios, look, listen and note, planning and resourcing, home links etc.

Some of the chapters have a questions section which is specifically aimed at the practitioner, to reflect upon and question their own practice and understanding.

‘Child’s Play: Montessori Games and Activities for Your Baby and Toddler’ by Maja Pitamic

Maureen O'Hagan — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:17:01 +0000

This is a very interesting and practical book for parents, practitioners and anyone else working with or caring for young children. It is aimed at children between the ages of 6 months and 3 years and has a total of 70 play ideas, all based upon the Montessori method of early learning. The key principle of Montessori was that children should learn through experience and the activities in this book certainly conform to this theory.

Each activity is clearly labelled with the age of the child/children that it is suitable for. Every chapter offers a development timeline to indicate what children of a particular age group can do. Each of the six chapters covers a different set of activities for example, Exploring Senses, Co-ordination, Arts and Crafts, Games and Movement etc.

What I did find the most useful were the descriptions of the way the activities were set up and how they could be extended etc. In many cases it was rather like reading a recipe; there was a list of materials that were required and what to do with these and then a numbered list of how you use these with the children. In addition there is a box that tells you how the activity can be extended and also a Tip Box of points to note and where necessary a Safety Point if there is a potential hazard.

I was most impressed with this format, as it made it very easy for parents, practitioners and anyone else using the material.

‘S/NVQ Level 3 Health Award’ by Julia Watling and others

Valerie Jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:16:27 +0000

What is the book about?

This is a standard text book for students working to gain a Level 3 national qualification in Health Care. It is relevant for professional carers or health workers. It is an updated version to include the latest legislation and standards in Health Care.

The chapters link to national qualification units and include different aspects of professional conduct, knowledge and skills. The listed core units are a universal standard for anyone wishing to work with children and young people, the elderly or sick and other vulnerable members of society. The content of the core units include effective communication, safeguarding and preventing harm, developing effective practice and the provision of care to an equal and diverse client group.

The other chapters are health-specific, in keeping with the qualification, and cover aspects of practice such as control of infection, anatomy and physiology, specific medical and health treatments and maintaining a clean and antiseptic environment.

How is the book presented?

Throughout the book there are very clear and relevant photographs and charts to illustrate aspects of professional practice and knowledge. Each chapter begins with an introduction about what the candidate should learn and what evidence should be gathered to demonstrate knowledge and learning. There are practical and theoretical tasks and activities and plenty of guidance towards best practice. Each chapter offers scenarios and examples from life so that at its end, candidates have a thorough work out on the issues involved.

How portable is the book?

This is book which could be carried to and from classes in a case, but it is heavy and most probably would be used as a reference source and check to knowledge unless it is also used as the class text book. The language is straight forward and clear. Everything is in English.

How useful is the book?

As a text book, this is an excellent choice. It is a

‘Promoting Resilience - Supporting Children and Young People Who are in Care, Adopted or In Need’ by Robbie Gilligan

Valerie Jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:13:57 +0000

What is the book about?

This is specifically for children and young people who are in the care system or who have been in care and have since been adopted or returned home. The idea is that there are stories, questions and answers in order to enhance and enrich the experiences of these young people instead of having to accept that this is just the way it is. It talks about

‘Dot and Dash at the Beach’ by Emma Dodd

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:11:16 +0000

What is the book about?

The book is one of a series of stories about Dot and Dash and their friends Big, Tall and Small. In this particular book, they go to the seaside and have a fun time. The book is a board style, with plenty of lift-up pages and touchy textures. The colours are bright and irresistible to small children.

Who is it written for?

This is a suitable book for very small children to share with adults until they wish to

‘Before You Sleep’ by Benji Bennett

Valerie Jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:09:30 +0000

Who is it written for?

This is a tricky question to answer. The contents are a list of how much Adam, who is an angel, loves his family. Any parent who manages to read this without crying may wish to present it to their child at bed time. The book is written by Benji Bennett, who was - and still is - Adam’s father.

A donation goes to the Barretstown charity in County Kildare in Ireland, where children who live with life-shortening conditions or debilitating illnesses have therapeutic education - or what they call “serious fun”. Children and their families visit Barretstown not only from Ireland, but from many other countries, as the programme of activities encourages recovery. See www.barretstown.org if you’d like to learn more about the charity.

Children will love the imagery and the beautifully illustrated pages. Adults will keep re-visiting the book, but only a page at a time.

Bennett, Benji

Before You Sleep

Adams Printing Press

ISBN: 1-906818-00-2

Mister Maker Let’s Make it

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:05:57 +0000

What is the book about?

It is a practical book aimed at encouraging creative skills for children aged between 3 to 6 years. It has pages full of things to do and make, as well as quizzes and challenges to keep the children occupied. It is designed to complement the television programme of the same name.

The book is hard back and has colourful pages with lots of activities to carry out - mainly with an adult to help.

Who is it written for?

It is the sort of book that

The Child Care History Network AGM and Autumn Conference

Webmag — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:03:45 +0000

November 11, 2009

AGM: 9.00 - 9.50 Conference: 10.00 - 4.45

Venue: Barns Conference Centre, Planned Environment Therapy Trust

Church Lane, Toddington, Cheltenham, Glos. GL54 5DQ

THE PLACE OF ETHICS IN THE HISTORY OF CHILD CARE

The ethics of child care are being examined as they have never been before. In what is ostensibly an ethical and altruistic field, how have we arrived at a situation where we wrestle with the kind of ethical issues which are thrown up by the case of Baby Peter in the United Kingdom and the Ryan Commission into residential child care in Ireland? How should this influence how we record, handle, and research these matters? This day will be an opportunity for delegates to explore the history and make what may well be a controversial examination of these troubling issues.

Read more…

In This Issue: August 2009

Editor — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:59:06 +0000

There was no planned theme for this month, but in many of the articles there is a common strand - the desire for understanding of the author’s predicament, and perhaps also for support.

The third part of the mother’s story about adoption speaks movingly of a phase when things got difficult. We have the first chapter of a book written by A.J. Stone, Beyond Caring, which gives a graphic child’s eye view of admission to a children’s home. Valerie Jackson writes about the needs of individuals, both young and old, and assesses what quality of service may realistically be provided. From the other side of the fence, Claudia Megele asks for understanding for social workers.

Keith White considers the effect of time in giving us new perspectives and understanding of our lives. Both the Key Texts also speak of children needing to address their needs at their own pace - Aichhorn and Bettelheim, two classics from the psychotherapeutic era. Chris Durkin talks about the provision of counselling.

There’s an appreciation of the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, encouraging you to go, and a couple of Book Reviews, on healthy eating and the history of Liverpool reformatories respectively. And there’s an advance notice of next month’s theme, social pedagogy, with a plug for the Slovenian journal on social pedagogy.

Finally, in the Editorial we announce that Children Webmag is a registered

Editorial: We’re a Charity Now

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:57:43 +0000

Children Webmag has been published on the first of (almost) every month since 1 January 2000. It is therefore approaching its tenth anniversary, it has published about sixteen hundred articles, and it now has a large and growing subscriber list.

The Webmag has not yet achieved its full potential, though, and there are many ways in which we want to improve the quality and variety of material presented. So Children Webmag has been registered as an educational charity with a Board of Trustees.

Dr Keith White, who is directly involved in child care as well as lecturing and writing, is the Chair of the Board. Mike Jones, who had a career in business, is the Treasurer. Gill Wilton was a journalist for many years and ran a company which published child care magazines prior to retirement. Valerie Jackson and Maureen O’Hagan both had varied careers in early years child care, including lecturing, examining, writing and consultancy.

To date, the Webmag has been run on a very modest budget, and to expand and improve the Webmag, additional funding is required. The Board will therefore be seeking grants from charitable foundations, and it is also prepared to receive sponsorship, either for columns or for specific issues, and advertising.

The aims of Children Webmag remain the same. The overall aim is to improve and maintain standards of services for children and young people, but to achieve this, the Webmag seeks to inform readers, to stimulate debate and to share ideas. Children Webmag believes that the key to good child care is a top quality committed workforce. This not only entails workers who are knowledgeable and skilled, but the fostering of the right motivation, attitudes and values. Child care needs to be sensitive to the differing needs of individuals, creative in thinking up ways to meet the needs of individuals, and positive in seeking to bring out the best in children and young people, whatever their circumstances.

Children Webmag is keen to support the creation of a strong child care profession, whose voice is heard nationally. It believes that new developments such as social pedagogy and restorative practice should help to encourage the professionalism of the workforce. Its independence as a charity means that it is not beholden to any Government, employer or other power group, but it does believe in fostering partnerships and sharing material in order to spread ideas. Children Webmag is also keen to take advantage of its electronic format by sharing ideas from around the world.

If you can help Children Webmag continue to develop, improve and achieve its aims, please get in touch, whether as a writer, reader, advertiser, funder or complainant.

Adoption - A Mother’s Story : Part 3

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:53:52 +0000

The first part of this account appeared in the March 2009 edition of the Webmag and the second part in the May 2009 issue. Click here if you would like to read them first.

The Worst Time

The foster carer came round to my house accompanied by the child’s social worker. My social worker had arrived in order to support me. The foster carer gave us a very different view of the baby, and said that she was very clever and was doing all sorts of things that were not evident in the reports from the doctors and social workers. She told me that she’d been very upset by the recent medical report which more or less described the baby as

Beyond Caring : Chapter 1

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:49:59 +0000

Is there a future for a boy with a past?

The closer I long to be with mum, the further they take me away.

A Tear of Reflection…

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:45:58 +0000

There has been continued talk about Baby P and how the social work system has let itself and everyone else down, and how social workers are useless inept creatures that must be banned from the universe of civilised discourse. In the midst of this whirlwind of confusion where everyone is on their high horse of morality, bashing the immoral social workers, let us shed a tear of reflection on the course of events and the status quo.

A New Approach

The Children Act 1989 ushered in a new era in social policy, aimed at transforming the culture of Children’s Services from a reactive and exclusive culture of crisis intervention dedicated to a small group of children with child protection concerns, to a proactive and inclusive culture of prevention and enhancement of children’s life chances for all children in need. This shift in social policy has challenged local authorities with an ambitious agenda for identification of needs and provision of resources and services.

However, the lofty ideals of the current policy have not been matched by an equally enhanced professional image and identity for social workers and an appropriately increased budgetary support for local authorities. Therefore, the recent Government pronouncements aimed at raising the status of social workers and attracting

“Time is a Great Healer”

Dr Keith J. White — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:43:57 +0000

One of the pieces of counseling wisdom that has become widely accepted is the belief that “Time is a great healer”.

Of Dissertations and Disclosures

Chris Durkin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:41:10 +0000

Twenty-seven years ago I was in my final year of my social work training. It was to be a momentous year, ending in 1983 successfully both professionally and on a personal level with the birth of my daughter. In September 1982, however, I had my final placement to do and a 15,000 word dissertation to write. For all students the dissertation becomes a noose round their neck, a real trial of strength; it is the time as a student you are given freedom to write about a subject of your choosing. This freedom causes students immense anxiety; what topic should they choose and how do you write such a long essay?

Although I had completed placements in Probation and at an Age Concern centre, my final and most important placement, was to be in a Social Services child care team in Canterbury. This turned out to be a very interesting placement and was also helpful in developing my ideas for my two final academic pieces of work. Like any good student I looked for ways to reduce my workload, identifying cases that would help with my studies and which would ensure there was an overlapping theme between both pieces of work, thus hopefully reducing the amount of reading that needed to be done. Both were to focus on young people, albeit my case study concentrated on family therapy as a technique of intervention.

I cannot remember what my dissertation was called, although looking back I don’t think it was a very good piece of work. What I can remember was that it had a subtitle based on the old maxim that

Who Cares?

Valerie Jackson — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:39:38 +0000

I recently returned from helping to clear my ageing aunt’s home of clutter so that she can return to live out her days in her own home.

It is something she has been dreading, yet it must have been a realistic consideration on her part given that she is now 95 years old. All of her life she has been an independent and solitary woman by her own choice. Suddenly she finds herself subject to the timetables and regulations of others as she waits for assessments and plans to be proposed and carried out. For the first time in her life, she feels vulnerable and frightened. She cannot believe that we all want what would be the best for her - to remain at home - despite acceding that now there must be people in and out and she will be restricted to where she can go in her own house due to her very limited mobility.

She has lived an interesting yet restricted life. I suppose part of the restriction was in being the dutiful unmarried daughter who returned home after her work with Queen Alexandra’s Nursing Corps during the Second World War to look after my grandfather who was debilitated by a brain tumour. It was removed successfully, but the process also removed a lot of his strength - he used to be a blacksmith and horseman - as well as some of his speech and self-help skills. She remained at home supporting her parents and achieved the local status of midwife, health visitor and respected professional.

Now she needs help and we are struggling with what is better for her and what is best for her.

We Don’t Trust Outsiders

The family has a healthy cynicism of

‘Yesterday’s Naughty Children’ by Joan Rimmer

David Lane — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:35:57 +0000

This is a modest book in scale, format and scope, but it is fascinating reading. I came across it by accident in a list of the late Neil Richardson’s publications. He published a multitude of shortish books cheaply on subjects relating broadly to the history of Lancashire.

Joan Rimmer, the author, was a Manager and Trustee of Red Bank School at Newton-le-Willows, which had originally been set up by the Liverpool Reformatory Association. She therefore had access to all the archives, going back to 1855 when the Association was set up.

Including the covers, which carry text, the book is 120 pages long with tightly packed text and quite a lot of illustrations. For aesthetics the book will win no prizes, but for recording a lot of information simply and cheaply (

‘Wayward Youth’ by August Aichhorn

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:35:39 +0000

August Aichhorn (1951) Wayward youth London: Imago (first published 1925 Verwahrloster Jugend Wien: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag)

August Aichhorn (1878-1949) draws on a wider range of experience of working with delinquents than most of the authors cited in the Key Texts. Originally a teacher, he worked in a child guidance clinic operating a diversion from custody scheme (if his treatment was successful, the young person got a non-custodial sentence) and he also ran an experimental training school for delinquents. So he is not concerned about the merits of a particular method of dealing with young people but with the general principles that should underlie work with delinquents and he takes for granted working with the families of the delinquents he is asked to help.

Key Ideas

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‘Love is Not Enough’ by Bruno Bettelheim

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:33:37 +0000

Bruno Bettelheim (1950) Love is not enough: the treatment of emotionally disturbed children Glencoe IL: Free Press 0 02 903280 6 (reprint)

Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990) was an Austrian Jew who, before the Second World War, together with his wife, had fostered a girl whom he later described as autistic. He was one of many Jews rounded up and sent to concentration camps but then released in a public gesture in 1939, after which he emigrated to the US. His accounts of concentration camp life were initially vilified (1968) but he was eventually sufficiently accepted to obtain a post at the University of Chicago where he directed the Orthogenic School. Love is not enough (1950) was in effect his manifesto for the school and A home for a heart (1974) his retrospective on those experiences.

Key Ideas

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Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood

David Lane — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:31:26 +0000

This museum is - in my experience - unique, in that it is both about childhood and for people who are still going through it. It therefore has collections of games, dolls, clothes and the paraphernalia needed to care for children, as any adult museum on a specialist subject would have, but it also has play areas and explanations of exhibits designed to interest and involve children. It makes for an interesting mix.

The name had discouraged me from visiting. The thought of trekking out to Bethnal Green and having to wander round in a part of London I did not know in order to find the place had been subliminally off-putting. But the Museum is within a couple of hundred yards of the Central Line tube station, next station along from Liverpool Street. You walk past a little park, and there it is, as easy to reach as any of London’s great museums.

The Place

The building itself is extraordinary. After going through the entrance hall, the main part is a single spacious hall with massive round arches, and with galleries on three sides, displaying the best of Victorian engineering and design, giving a message of self-assuredness and reliability, combined with lightness and welcoming into an important space.

On first impressions I thought it must have been a redundant market or perhaps a small railway station. I was quite wrong. It was first built as the original Victoria and Albert Museum, but became redundant when the current building was put up. The V&A wanted to encourage culture throughout London and offered to set up offshoot museums in the four quarters of London. Only Bethnal Green responded, as so they got the Museum of Childhood, and it has been on its present site since 1866.

The Collection

The collection is impressive. Whatever your age, you will find the toys and games you played with as a child, the clothes you wore, the prams or pushchairs you were wheeled round in and probably the bibs and potties which you used. The oldest exhibit is an Egyptian paddle doll (so-called because of its shape) dating back to 1300 BC and there are items from the twenty-first century such as Lord of the Rings film memorabilia.

There is King Charles I’s rocking horse and, because the original now looks rather mangy, a recent reproduction to show not only what it would have looked like but also built using the tools and techniques available in 1610. While talking of rocking horses, there was one built in the late nineteenth century at the London Orphanage in Regents Park, to a design very similar to the one I bought in the late 1960s made by the young offenders at Aycliffe Classifying School.

There are puppets, teddy bears of all ages, construction toys such as Minibrix and Meccano, a superb collection of dolls’ houses, automata, and case after case of other items. And in and out of the cases play areas are sited, being well used by little children when I was there.

I had the impression that the Museum was favoured by au pairs and nannies looking for somewhere to take their charges that was cheap (entry is free) and kept them busy, while there is a chance for a snack too in the caf

Social Pedagogy - in the UK, and in Slovenia

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:29:18 +0000

Next Month

Next month we will be focusing on the theme of social pedagogy. The subject is attracting increasing interest, and schemes involving social pedagogues are being piloted with Government support.

But there are plenty of people who are still wondering what it is all about. What is social pedagogy? Is it what we’ve been doing all along, but under another name? Is it something suspicious from abroad being foisted onto the child care workers of Britain? Is it a panacea? Is it for people working with certain age groups?

We hope that the articles we publish we help to answer some of these questions. If you are a writer and you have something to say on the topic, please send us an article by 15 August.

This Month

We have just received the latest version of Social Na Pedagogika. Don’t let the title put you off. Although the journal is put together in Slovenia, this edition is all in English, and the Contents include some interesting titles. What is more, Slovenia has an excellent reputation for the quality of its social pedagogy and training courses. We have not yet read the 218 pages of Volume 13, but here are the six titles:

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‘Healthy Parent Healthy Child’ by Karen Miller-Kovach

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:29:11 +0000

Essentially this is a practical book, designed to help people establish sensible life-time patterns of eating and exercise. It is aimed at parents and children because it is in childhood that habits are adopted which may last for decades, and because parents need help and advice in encouraging their children to adopt the right approach.

Of course, what goes for the children goes for parents too, and they may need to unlearn some aspects of their own way of life. Since the book has come out, research has indicated how girls model themselves on their mothers and boys on their fathers, and if we are to overcome the growing problem of obesity it means that some parents will have to change their eating and exercise patterns if they are to be good models for their children. As it says on the cover, Healthy parent, healthy child.

The book is well set out, with sections on what they call the “healthy-weight home”, parents’ roles, adapting to the needs of different families, recipes, the “family action plan” and a lot of references. The recipes are attractive and easy to follow.

One nice feature is that the approach was trialled before the book was published, and there are success stories dotted around throughout the book to encourage readers to go and do likewise. (Apparently it was mostly the mothers who lost weight.)

As noted at the start of this review, it is essentially a practical book. It does not ban any foods, but encourages moderation. It takes a sensible reasoned approach, with sound advice and tips. A key underlying point is that it urges readers to develop a whole package approach, involving not only exercise and diet but their whole life-style.

The advice given in this book is not only sensible, but the publishers’ blurb asserts that it is also scientifically well-founded; the author is Chief Scientific Officer of Weight Watchers International.

At

News Views

Webmag — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:25:16 +0000

Adding to the Ennals Annals

Last month we reported Paul Ennals’s knighthood. This month he has been appointed Chair of the Children’s Workforce Development Council, following the untimely death of Mike Leadbetter. It is good news for the CWDC, as Sir Paul is an enthusiast, but level-headed, well connected and well respected, i.e. just the sort of person they need if they are to have the impact they seek, influencing Government, trying to attract the necessary funding in the face of the recession, and needing to motivate and professionalise the workforce. It is a tall order, but if anyone can provide the inspiration Sir Paul Ennals will.

Toni Julia

Most readers of Children Webmag will not have heard of Toni Julia. Top entertainers, sportspeople and politicians are known world-wide, but not child care workers. Toni was a major - and very energetic - figure in the European child care scene, playing a large part in AIEJI. He did much to promote the profession of social education / pedagogy, especially in Spain and in the Spanish-speaking world. He also had a great impact on the children in his care. He died on 17 July 2009 of leukaemia; he will be much missed and remembered by those who knew him.

Stephen Shaw

Stephen Shaw has sent us an email (attached here), arguing in detail about the housing needs of young adults and other homeless people in Cornwall, and requesting support. As we have not checked the story, we are simply drawing readers’ attention to the case he makes.

Certainly the clientele he has served need both housing and support. Given those, they may achieve the stability they need to address other problems and perhaps gain employment. People who have the “three-legged stool” of home, job and social life have a chance of success. Without any one of the three, their chances are seriously diminished. If any reader can advise Stephen Shaw, please respond. If any of the authorities involved wish to reply, we shall be pleased to publish their views.

A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good

That is what they used to say, and certainly young children, left to themselves, will orally test out just about anything which they can get into their mouths. We remember one child who had to be confined in the family car because he had such a penchant for eating sand when he went to the beach. This process may, however, have helped us during childhood to consume small quantities of all sorts of things and so gain immunity against a variety of lurgies and chemicals.

Our bodies contain, use and indeed manufacture a very wide range of chemicals for different purposes, often in very weak dilutions. The chemicals which we take in when downing pills and medical potions, we suspect, are fairly blunt weapons by comparison, which could be the cause of side-effects.

There is still a lot to learn about the way the body copes and how we can best help it. In a recent piece of research Dr Pamela Ewan of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge has enabled twenty patients who had peanut allergies to take minute quantities and build up the amounts until they can now eat a handful of peanuts. They have found this a liberating experience.

This is good news, but it’s not new news. Mithridates VI of Pontus accustomed himself to drinking small amounts of poison, in case anyone tried to kill him. He eventually died at the age of 71. Unhappily for him, he tried to poison himself and was unsuccessful, as he was immune, and according to Appian he had to ask his bodyguard to finish him off with his sword.

We wish those with peanut allergies a happier outcome.

Cleared to Make Contact

Philip Pullman is one of a number of authors who have objected to the introduction of vetting. He described it as “ludicrous and insulting”. He may be well-known and we certainly have no evidence that he or his fellow-objectors pose any threat to children, but just because they were not vetted in the past does not mean that the system should never be introduced, and the fact that some of them are famous does not mean that all of them necessarily have impeccable credentials. Unfortunately some famous people do not, and there is no reason to suppose that writers are more moral than everyone else.

We think that they should come off their high horses and be like the rest of us. The rule is that if we are likely to work with children we need to be vetted. Tough.

It reminds us of a well-known psychiatrist who was visiting a secure unit for children when a fire practice took place. He declined to take part. He finished dictating his reports and, as he was leaving, he said to the Senior Fire Officer, “My uncle was a fireman”, getting the response, “And what does that make you, bloody fire-proof?” The assembled staff and children who had just completed the practice did not sympathise with the psychiatrist.

Backing Jackson

Both in life and in death Michael Jackson attracted a massive amount of attention and caused a massive amount of controversy - as a fetching child singer, a pop superstar, an inventive musician and a somewhat strange person who had something of Peter Pan about him.

What fascinated us, however, was the general reaction to his death. Whether the allegations were true or not, it had been alleged that Michael Jackson shared his bed with teenage boys and that he had paid a large amount of money to avoid court action. For this sort of thing paedophiles have been locked up for life, hounded out of their homes and had their lives destroyed. This did not happen with Jackson; his fans stood by him. Why?

Was it just the power of money? Was it that nothing was ever formally proven? Was it that fans simply could not believe that he would abuse children? Was it the childlike qualities which he had, which made him at times seem more of a peer than a parent figure to children? Was it that he was so adored for his music that fans were prepared to overlook his foibles? Whatever the reason, others, such as Gary Glitter, have not got away with it.

From a Report by a Residential Worker

I sign in, and cheek which staff are on duty.

In This Issue: July 2009

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:59:07 +0000

The theme of this issue is residential child care, and a number of writers have contributed. The two Key Texts are classics of residential child care - A.S. Neill on Summerhill, and David Wills on Richard Balbernie’s work at the Cotswold Community. Charles Sharpe has raised the issue about the inadequacy of training for residential workers, describing them as an undervalued, unacknowledged and untrained profession. In the Editorial we ask why there are still so many anti-residential field social workers.

There are also a lot of other items. Charles Sharpe has written to introduce the latest edition of the e-journal goodenoughcaring. Robert Shaw has written a thoughtful piece about values, following last month’s Editorial. Charles Pragnell has identified the serious problem of sociopath fathers, some of whom kill their children. We have a report of a recent FICE conference in Budapest, and one of the speeches. There is a report on Young Addaction Liverpool’s campaign to raise public awareness of the help for drug addicts. Chris Durkin questions the practice of sending children to prison. Christina Lancucki announces the founding of BSA’s Childhood Study Group. Delma Hughes has written about Siblings Together, the holiday camp programmes which her organisation runs to offer brothers and sisters the chance to meet and share activities. And, of course, there is News Views.

Residential Child Care, the Under-valued, Unacknowledged and Untrained Profession

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:57:25 +0000

A Personal Statement

I believe that a significant number of troubled children and young people are best helped by the provision of residential child care. Amongst these I would include those who, though they may for the time being not be able to live with their families, nonetheless have such a strong feeling of belonging that they do not wish to make themselves available to substitute family care. I would also include those children who find the intensity of family relationships too much to bear, and those for whom, as a consequence of past experiences, the notion of family life is too threatening.

I am a residential child care worker. I am proud of much of the work my colleagues and I have done over the last 40 years. I think we have achieved much for a large number of children and young people. I fear also that we have made many mistakes in that time. This may have been due to the nature of our task. In residential child care we work with very troubled young people, some of whom we may not under any circumstances have the capacity to help, and some whom we may let down because we are not provided with the quality of training which might have give us the multi-layered skills and knowledge needed to help them.

Dashed Hopes and Social Pedagogy

When I read about the latest initiative to promote social pedagogy as a model for residential child care in England I felt both excitement and despair.This most recent project is the proposal to introduce social pegagogues from Europe into a selected number of children’s homes in Essex (Gentleman, 2009). My excitement stems from my elation that once again the idea of giving residential child care workers the professional standing and the training their role deserves is still alive. My despair flows from an awakening memory which reminds me that this is not the first time this particular flag has been raised and soon afterwards struck.

In 1984, I was fortunate to have been seconded by my local authority to a place on the Advanced Diploma Course in Residential Child Care and Education at the University of Newcastle, where the course leader, Haydn Davies Jones, in analysing the complex and critical tasks of residential child care workers in children’s homes, advocated the provision of a professional training for these workers. In so doing, he introduced students to social pedagogy, which was already prevalent in a number of countries in Europe as the distinct profession for those who work with people in need of care and support in the place where those people live. Davies Jones believed that the training offered to students of social pedagogy in Europe could be used as a model for the training of residential child care workers in this country.

Since then a number of reports published following government initiated inquiries into child care have stressed the need to have properly qualified residential child care workers (for instance, see Wagner,1988, Warner,1992, Utting, 1997), but this torch has never been convincingly picked up.

The University of Newcastle course and a similar course run at the University of Bristol no longer exist. Though it is an encouraging sign that the Institute of Education in London will soon be running a Master of Arts course in Social Pedagogy and there is the Master’s course in residential care and boarding education at York University, currently in England no full-time training and education at graduate, diploma or post-graduate level is available specifically for residential child care workers, who, like the social pedagogue carry out the distinct and complex occupation of working with children and young people in their life space.

Petrie et al (2002) informatively demonstrated that this kind of work requires a training which is different to that of a social worker, or indeed, to that of a teacher, and they made it clear that in Europe training for such a role is at the same academic/professional level, if not a higher one, than that for the training of these two other professions. That this is so reflects the value these countries place on this kind of work.

What We Expect of Residential Child Care Workers

I am not advocating that we should like sheep jump immediately into the social pedagogy fold. Contrary to what can seem like received wisdom, there are examples of residential child care practice in this country which are sensitive, imaginative and effective. I would cite in particular the therapeutic community model based on psychodynamic principles for one, but there are many others.

This is why there should be concern - not only in relation to the education and training of similar workers in other European countries, but also in relation to the training of other related professions in this country - about why we set our sights so low when we consider the training of residential child care workers. These workers are responsible for caring for our most troubled young people, and are charged with the task of containing the problematic symptoms brought about by the complex emotional turmoil these youngsters experience. In order to succeed, residential child care workers are expected to be able to make sense of this turmoil not only for themselves, but for individual young people, for the resident group of a children’s home, for parents, for social workers, for teachers and at times for the community at large.

They are expected to have the professional and personal skills to develop trusting relationships with young people whose unfortunate childhood experiences have not provided them with the social or emotional resources to achieve positive relationships easily. Once, in the face of these difficulties, the tentative roots of such a relationship begin to grow, residential child care workers must be able to cultivate them by using a variety of social, creative and recreational skills. Simultaneously, a worker must tread carefully, sensitively, and helpfully through the vicissitudes of a young person’s family relationships as well as providing encouragement, and engendering motivation in what is almost invariably a problematic relationship between the young person and school.

In addition to all this, the worker must be :

- able to facilitate group living;
- effective and articulate as an advocate in meetings;
- skilled in written communication;
- able to hold or access a wide range of child protection and child care legislation information, and
- be enthusiastic about creating a physically nurturing environment by mastering the domestic skills this requires.

This adds up to a very sophisticated role requiring insight and intuition, yes, but insight and intuition which is informed by experience and study, and developed by both professional and personal reflection. Many of these are not skills which can be neatly ticked off in boxes as competencies. Furthermore, they are elements in a role which asks for a different knowledge base, different theoretical understanding, and different practical abilities than those required, for instance, of a social worker or a teacher. They add up to a role which is just as complex as that of other qualified professionals.

The Troubled History of Residential Child Care : Altruism and Abuse

Sadly, the history of children’s homes is littered with too many cases of institutionalised child abuse. It is reasonable to conclude that this is related in a significant way to the prevalence of untrained staff who have lacked the sense of empowerment and confidence which good professional training and education brings.

Mark Smith (2009) has argued that residential child care alone has borne the brunt of condemnation rather than other professional disciplines who work with children. This has meant that residential child care has come to be viewed with antipathy and that even those who are proponents of residential care can seem at best only apologists for it.

It is my belief, however, that the regimes of most children’s homes are at least well meaning, and that most people are attracted to working in children’s homes because they have an altruistic intention to help troubled young people and certainly not to abuse them.

Unfortunately, uninformed altruism is no substitute for experience, insight, knowledge and reflection. As Adrian Ward (1999) puts it, “Intuition is not enough”. For emotionally troubled young people the ‘common sense approach’ does not always provide an answer. In my experience the indirect, unintended form of disadvantage which is experienced by young people in children’s homes is a consequence of well meant, but ill-informed and so ineffective staff practice. This disadvantage is more prevalent than any direct abuse by staff, evil though that may be.

Appropriate training based on a sound body of knowledge and established practice, informed and developed by continuous research would provide residential child care workers with an ethos, a standing and a confidence which would promote the development of a healthy nurturing care environment in children’s homes.

Power and the Reluctance to Give Residential Child Care Workers a Credible Training

Why, then, is it that a national government-backed institutions like the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) and the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), which set standards for the training of residential child care workers, ask only that they be trained to National Vocational Qualification Level 3 ?

CWDC is currently carrying out a review of this policy but the guiding statement for this review is “NVQ Health & Social Care may [my italics] not be sufficient to meet the continuing development needs of employees working with vulnerable groups in residential care” (CWDC,2008). The ‘may’ does not convince me that there is a desire to move on from NVQ which, I think it is generally agreed, has never fitted the bill as a suitable qualification for residential child care.

In my view, NVQ may only loosely be called a training. NVQ trainees are not required to study the theories which seek to explain what lies behind the development and behaviour of young people. They are not encouraged to use reflection informed by study, professional experience, personal reactions and professional guidelines as a method of developing their practice. The NVQ approach to training does not ask trainees to consider the dynamics or processes of residential child care, such as those evident, for instance in the development of the relationship between a young person and a residential care worker. The Training Organisation for Personal Social Services (TOPSS, 2000), just one of CWDC’s predecessors, acknowledged the NVQ approach is more a method of assessment than a training.

At times it can seem that bodies like CWDC, with some responsibility for training standards in residential child care, feel they have an unspoken mandate to keep residential child care directly or indirectly under social work control. In recent years, no doubt for good reasons, a divide has been created. It is the divide between social work and social care.

In my view there is a tacit but actual general understanding that social work has a high status, and social care which includes residential child care, has a lower status. In practice this means that those who work in residential child care often feel their responsibilities are curtailed, their possibilities for creative work are limited, and their level of accountability is diminished, because what they do, or what they might want to do (as relatively untrained or less qualified staff), is contingent on, and subservient to, the wishes of qualified social workers.

Of course it is important that someone takes overall responsibility for a child’s case, but the scales have tipped too far. Residential child care staff feel that their contribution to the care of a young person is ignored and not valued. They feel de-skilled by what seem like arbitrary decisions made by a social worker concerning a young person in their care without any consultation with them. For the worker in the children’s home it can appear that social workers not only have the legal authority to act like this, but that they also have the qualified professional status which give their judgments and decisions greater weight.

Some may argue that the boundary between social work and social care has been become blurred, but while social workers, as residential child care workers see it, retain the arbitary power to decide whether to continue or to close a child’s placement in a children’s home then the power dynamic between qualified social worker and the unqualified residential child care worker remains the same.

The notion that there is an issue about qualified status is lent credence by anecdotal evidence. In recent years some local authority policy documents have been warning against referring to staff in children’s homes as residential social workers because this may give the erroneous impression that they are social work qualified. From the point of view of a worker in a children’s home it may now be sensible to use the term residential child care worker rather than residential social worker, if only to stress the distinction between the role of a worker in a children’s home and that of a social worker.

Still, the symbolism of these policy documents is clear. For this reason there is a need to approach the new integrated services for children with caution. The effects of competing disciplines, some given higher status than others in the decision-making process may have a negative effect on outcomes. Smith (2009) argues this is particularly significant for residential child care as residential workers, because of their lack of training and consequent low professional esteem, do not have as positive a view of themselves in relation to others.

Why is there a reluctance in the United Kingdom to give the residential child care workers professional status in their specialist field? The answer may lie in the unconscious need of one profession to maintain its status in relation to another. It may lie in the continuing lack of commitment towards residential child care of government and local government, in the negative attitudes of social care and social work management towards residential child care and finally it may be situated in the reluctance of social work training institutions to provide for the real training needs of residential child care workers.

If the social work profession has a latent institutionalised desire to have a higher status than - and retain a control over - the residential child care worker then it appears to me that social work has lost its way. To be sure, the unhealthy exercise of power and status does not rest easily with the social work ethic. This is not to be unsympathetic to the under-resourced, over-worked and tragically misunderstood social work profession, but such an exercise of power over workers who are identified as being even further down the pecking order, and who are a treated accordingly, is of no help to young people in our children’s homes.

Another Opportunity Beckons

While there is no political and consequently financial commitment to provide residential child care workers with a distinct and high professional status, residential child care will remain the under-valued, unacknowledged and untrained profession. This reflects poorly on our community as whole.

Residential child care needs to recruit and retain high quality staff. To bring this about, residential child care providers must be able persuade applicants and new recruits that they are taking up a profession which is generally held in high esteem. In its forthcoming review of the training requirements for residential child care workers CWDC has an opportunity to take positive steps towards this. (I first wrote this last sentence about a TOPSS review of residential child care training in 2002! The opportunity I speak of was not taken up then).

If CWDC lobbies for residential child care workers to be professionally qualified to practise the skills and to have knowledge distinctive to their role, it would be morally difficult, despite any of the financial implications, for a government, as well local authority, voluntary and private sector employers not to accept this. In turn this would encourage higher education and training institutions to develop courses that meet the training and education needs of residential child care workers. Not to take this opportunity would make a powerful statement about how much we value the kind of care young people in our children’s homes receive.

References

CWDC (2008) Professional Standards for Residential Child Care Worker accessed online at: http://www.cwdcouncil.org.uk/social-care/professional-standards-for-residential-child-care-workers on 18 June 2009

Davies Jones, H. (1987) The Social Pedagogue in Europe - Living with others as a profession FICE: Zurich

Gentleman, A. (2009) ‘Children in Care : Experts Fly in to Tackle Crisis’ in The Guardian 21.04.09

Petrie,P,. Boddy, J., and Cameron,C. (2002) ‘All-Round Friends’ in Community Care 12.02.02

Smith, M. (2009) Rethinking Residential Child Care : Positive perspectives Policy Press: Bristol

TOPSS, (2000) Modernising the Social Care Workforce - the first national strategy for England Leeds: TOPSS

Utting, W. (1997) ‘People Like Us’ The report of the review of safeguards of children living away from home

Wagner, G (1988) Residential Child Care : A Positive Choice. Report of the Independent Review of Residential Child Care London: National Institute of Social Work/ HMSO

Ward, A. and McMahon, L. (eds). (1998) Intuition Is Not Enough : Matching Learning with Practice in Therapeutic Child Care Routledge: London

Warner, N. (1992) Choosing with Care : The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Selection, Development and Management of Staff in Children’s Homes London: HMSO

Editorial : A Prejudice that Needs to be Shifted

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:56:55 +0000

For the last forty years - or maybe more - there has been a substantial number of field social workers who have been implacably opposed to residential child care. Many of them have moved into managerial or lecturing jobs, and they have taken their opinions with them, influencing the policies of the agencies they work in and the tone of the training of the next generations of social workers.

This is not just a matter of a balanced and rational debate about the merits and demerits of different types of service. There is a real depth of feeling. For a small number the closure of residential services has been a matter of campaigning, and a few authorities have actually disposed of all their children’s homes. There is no other service for children and young people which has attracted such opprobrium and negativity. It is a matter of gut reaction as much as any intellectual analysis.

It has to be acknowledged that antipathy for residential child care is not universal among field social workers. There is a whole spectrum of views. Some tolerate it as a necessary evil, to be used when there are insufficient foster placements. Some are neutral, seeing it as one of a range of options. Some positively value residential child care, and are happy to seek placements when they feel it is right for the children and young people for whom they are responsible.

Questions and Answers

But the antipathy felt by a sizeable proportion of the workforce is still there after forty years. It has had an impact on services, but residential child care services are still there, still needed. So, the questions are: why the antipathy? what impact has it had? what should be done about this unresolved issue, which has been a weeping sore for so long?

If there were easy answers to these questions, they would have been resolved long ago. It would be presumptuous to suggest that they can be resolved in a short Editorial. What we can do here is to highlight the issue and suggest lines of thought in the hope that others will take up the debate.

Scandals

First, it has to be acknowledged that there have been scandals in residential services, in which children have been abused and when practice has been institutionalised. There have, of course, been examples of abuse in foster care, or of appalling field social work too. The fact that there are examples does not mean that the services are necessarily bad per se. It means that there are instances where practice, management, support or training should have been better. The lesson should be that standards need to improve, rather than cleansing the system by disposing of a whole category of provision.

There are those who would argue that residential services are more prone to bad practice than other services, because of their nature. Children and young people are in the care of residential staff 24 hours a day, and there is plenty of opportunity for covert abuse. The same is, of course, true of any setting in which children are brought up. We are unaware of any evidence to suggest that residential care is more prone to failure than foster care in this respect. If anything, the number of workers in residential care could act as a check on abuse, whereas foster carers have more unmonitored access to children. Sir Ronald Waterhouse’s inquiry in North Wales found abuse in both foster care and residential care, and the widespread attachment of stigma only to the latter appears to be irrational.

Institutions and Individuals

Secondly, residential care is criticised for being institutional, denying the individuality of the children and young people and treating them uniformly and insensitively, without paying attention to their personal wishes and needs. Clearly, any formal social grouping has to establish ground rules for its participants, and in residential child care, if they become set, they can dominate the lives of the children in ways which are counterproductive in meeting their needs.

On the other hand, informal groupings have their rules too. If a child is to settle into a foster home, it is likely that the child will need to adapt more to the way that the household works than that the household will change its fundamental modus vivendi to suit the child. There will of course be give and take, but the child will have to adapt more. Indeed, for some children, it is the continual adaptation to new foster placements which institutionalises them, developing their skills in settling quickly while making only superficial relationships.

There are plenty of examples where residential child care provides greater space - both physically and emotionally - for children to create the way of life which they choose, away from what they perceive as the stifling demands of the family setting. In this respect, residential care can respond more sensitively to the needs of individuals than families. It is a question of matching the child and his/her needs to the appropriate placement, rather than the common approach of priority always being given to foster care.

Rights and Roles

Thirdly, there has been a growing emphasis on children’s rights over recent decades, and increasing importance has been attached to involving children and young people in planning their futures, giving them choice and treating them as individuals. This has been reflected in the increasingly complex paperwork to be completed for reviews and in care planning.

The emphasis on children as individuals is no bad thing, but they are also members of their families, pupils at schools and members of peer groups. They are not just individuals in isolation, but also social beings, in part defined by their relationships. While the trend in casework has been to focus on the individual, a large element of residential child care has traditionally been to see them as members of their residential communities.

Indeed, in the past it was seen as one of the strengths of residential care that children learnt how to socialise and be members of the wider community by having to fit in with others, to make compromises, to listen to others and adapt. The group was seen as being a therapeutic force for good in working with children with behavioural and emotional problems, and the skill of the workers was in creating a positive and constructive group atmosphere in which children could genuinely help each other.

Unfortunately, recent trends have undermined this strength. Some homes are now so small and the turnover of residents can be so speedy that it can be hard to develop any continuity of group feeling among the children. It then falls to the staff to build relationships with individual children, which fits happily with the fieldwork model, but makes no use of the real strengths of residential care. The home risks becoming a place where a number of individual children happen to be living in the same building for a time together, but without any sense of cohesion or group loyalty.

The turnover of resident children is another spin-off of field social work thinking. In field work, the primary aim is to address clients’ problems, find solutions and then close cases. In working with children residentially the primary aim is to deal with the whole child, not just the problems, and to address the child’s problems at some point, possibly of the child’s choosing, but in the meantime helping the child develop - and enjoy life - in all sorts of ways. The two philosophies are both valid, but different, and in so far as the field work philosophy has been applied to residential care, it has sometimes led to discharges and turnover when stability of placement would have been preferable.

Qualifying Training and the Creation of Assumptions

This argument may have moved some distance from its starting point, but it may have helped to identify the different bases of the two types of work. Unhappily, over a thirty-year period, specialist training for residential child care workers was abandoned, and much of the learning was lost. Residential child care workers have been trained on social work qualifying courses which have often been fundamentally hostile to their work, and local authority departments have often been managed by professionals promoted from field social work backgrounds with similar attitudes.

It is time that the hostile attitudes were dropped. Residential child care need not be institutional. For some children it is the setting of choice, and some need to enjoy stable periods in residential care. Homes are here to stay, and any field social worker with residual hostile feelings needs to re-examine the grounds for their views and be prepared to change them.

That is not to say that everything is now rosy in the residential garden. There are many improvements to be made, not least re-learning some of the lessons abandoned with the loss of specialist training back in the 1970s.

Goodenoughcaring

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:53:19 +0000

If, as a child, your favourite comic magazine dropped into your letter box, were you even more excited when you found that it was a ‘bumper’ issue with more pages and more stories ? Well, you may not quite get that visceral thrill now that the goodenoughcaring journal has just dropped into your virtual letter box, but we hope that you will be interested and excited by what you find inside our ‘bumper’ issue at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com.

Lorea Boneke reflects on the factors which influence the resilience of children in care.
Claudette Brown writes about the role of the learning mentor.
Douglas Cameron tells us what it feels like to work in a children’s home for the first time.
Athlene Derry describes her work helping a youngster return to mainstream school.
John Fallowfield looks at ways an understanding of attachment theory can help social workers engage with children and their families.
Leon Fulcher provides one of texts for a child care training workshop he will be introducing at the forthcoming IFCO conference in Dublin.
Simon Hammond examines how life story work with children could be changing in our more technologically proficient age.
Joel Kanter writes about Clare Winnicott (too often seen in the shadow of her husband) and her major contributions to child care and child development.
John Stein considers the problems of finding the right name for the child care profession.
Keith White considers The Growth of Love in child care from his Christian perspective.
Alison Poltock reviews Helena Trestikova’s film Rene.
Charles Sharpe reviews Mark Smith’s book Rethinking Residential Care : Positive Perspectives.

On the home page your attention is also drawn to forthcoming events

Please post us your short comments about the journal and of course we welcome your articles for publication and your ideas about new articles. Remember if you want to make a long comment it is likely to be a potential article, so please email it to charlessharpe@dsl.pipex.com.

Best wishes,

Evelyn Daniel, Siobian Degregorio, Jane Kenny, Ariola Vishnja and Charles Sharpe.

Maintaining Values

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:51:14 +0000

In the June Editorial David Lane drew attention to a number of common threads in recently publicised failures, in particular those involving failures to care for children. In some cases, there is a lot of agonising about such failures; in others, they are dismissed as ‘unfortunate’ one-offs, and little is done to address the issues that caused the failures in the first place.

However, it has long been clear from the numerous enquiries that have been undertaken that knowing how things went wrong doesn’t stop them happening again; like punishment, they don’t tell us what to do, only what not to do (Sheldon, 1995). So it seems worth reflecting on what might help people to maintain their values.

Developing Values

Nearly thirty years ago Carol Gilligan (1982) showed that there is a natural tendency for people to move towards more inclusive moral positions. She was building on earlier research by Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg who had argued that moral development was associated with cognitive development but, unlike them, she did not link the stages in moral development with particular ages; rather they follow a general trend and not everyone may reach the broadest stage of caring for self and others. Her general approach has been supported by other research (Vander Ven, 1981; Jaques, 1986) into the ways in which people’s views evolve over their lifetimes from childhood egocentrism towards broader perspectives.

Gilligan found that a key factor in moving to a more inclusive moral stage was a personal crisis that caused a re-evaluation of current ways of thinking about things. She also appears to suggest that extreme pressure can cause people to drop back to an earlier way of thinking. These ideas suggest a number of reasons for the current failures.

Firstly, however principled people are in theory in adolescence - a subject addressed by Kohlberg and Gilligan (1971), how they put those principles into practice evolves over their lifetimes and older people are generally more able to see the issues in the round than younger people, however intelligent they may be.

A key way of learning about values is by seeing them put into practice by a more experienced professional, whether a tutor at college, a practice teacher on placement, a manager/colleague at work or an experienced researcher. People will talk about the way in which an older, more experienced colleague inspired them and one source of inspiration is the values which that person brings to their work, the ways they talk about and interact with people. Such interactions will often cause a younger worker to re-evaluate the ways that they work and so bring a broader perspective to their work.

The UK and Ireland

The problem within social work and child care in the UK is that these options are almost non-existent; relatively few tutors are experienced practitioners and the emphasis on research and publications in higher education makes it very difficult for experienced practitioners to transfer to higher education. Unlike in medicine, practice teaching is largely done by people who have had a few years in practice and see it as a good career move; the opportunity to work alongside a practitioner in their fifties and draw on the depth of their experience has almost completely disappeared as experienced practitioners are sucked into management posts rather than being allowed to develop their practice.

Similarly, the vertical, hierarchical management structures that dominate most welfare agencies distance young practitioners from experienced ones. You only have to travel from Hull to Rotterdam on the overnight ferry to see that this is a cultural problem. At breakfast you will see the Dutch managers from the most senior to the most junior all sitting round the same table chatting; you never see a similar group of English managers.

Neither social work nor child care have developed as independent academic disciplines; so if you do a research degree, it is normally linked to another discipline, whether in social science or education, and consequently even those researchers with a deep involvement in social work or child care research are not identified as such and most young researchers cannot expect to find a supervisor in their fifties with the breadth of experience needed to inspire and sustain their work.

Secondly, even if a younger person is fortunate to encounter inspiring people early in their careers, unless they receive sustained support to develop their values or go through a crisis which causes them to re-evaluate their values, they are likely to remain at a particular level. Gilligan, for example, argues that many women do not move from the intermediate stage of caring for others and not for themselves because that attracts a lot of social support. The problem is that, if people continue to care for others without receiving the support to care for themselves, they gradually wear themselves out and become unable to care for others.

Similarly, it seems likely that many of the Irish Catholics who abused children were sent into very difficult situations in Ireland at a time when Ireland was not the economic powerhouse it has since become and without any real support to address the problems they were facing. It was assumed that, like women in general, they would as religious people continue to care for others without any support or input to address their own needs.

Thirdly, as Gilligan’s analysis suggests and other research supports (Maas and Kuypers, 1974; Schaie and Willis, 2001), some people simply do not move on. They have a set of values which does well enough for them in their current situation but which is too narrow to deal with wider problems. This has become the case over the last thirty years as child protection has come to dominate thinking in the UK.

The problem is that child protection takes a very narrow perspective on a child’s life, a focus on adult-child relationships, which may provide a useful handle for a younger person to think about practice but which ignores all the wider issues of development, in particular how attachments are made and sustained and how peer group relationships contribute to development. In the long term, peer group relationships are at least as significant for development as adult-child attachments (Ladd, 2005). Indeed, there is an argument that child abuse is more likely to be sustained in a culture which ignores peer group relationships because good peer group relationships are one of the best protections from victimisation and abuse.

Carrying on Developing

So where does that leave those who abuse or neglect others deliberately or unintentionally? As David Lane rightly says, everyone has a personal responsibility and professionals have a personal responsibility for their professional development, for ensuring that they do not settle into a comfortable status quo surrounded by fellow professionals who have no time for their own professional development, let alone anyone else’s.

As Gilbert Highet (1963) argued many years ago, good teachers always have outside interests; they always have opportunities to interact with peer groups outside their own profession who have different values which may enhance or challenge their own values. The teacher who becomes an expert rock climber has to know about caring for others on the rock face as well as caring for themselves so that they do not become a liability to others.

Child care workers and social workers whose peer groups consist only of those who share their values, who never becomes members of peer groups where their values are broadened or challenged, will never have the capacity fully to develop themselves in their professions. Working in vertically organised and specialised structures does not help; that was one reason why Poor Law staff never developed a professional identity (Crowther, 1981), and much the same situation now faces child care workers and social workers. Like the Irish Catholics, many have become a race apart with very little interaction with other professionals.

Creating the Right Environment

But such a situation can only be sustained if those responsible for them - the bishops in the Catholic church, the managers in children’s or social work departments, the professors in academia - fail to carry out their professional responsibility for helping those they are responsible for to sustain and develop the values that are needed to carry out the work with which they are entrusted. In the practice context there are two situations in which values can be examined, challenged and broadened - in the ideology of the facility and in supervision.

As Wolins (1969) pointed out, good child care establishments always have an ideology based on a set of values that informs practice. Those values should inform every aspect of practice from how a child or young person is admitted to the facility, the relationships staff make with them and their family and friends and the plans that are made for their eventual departure. This is not simply a matter of ticking boxes but of active exploration of the values that should inform every aspect of care.

Supervision should enhance professional development by, among other things, helping the worker to think about their practice and its implications for those they are seeking to help, their families and others in the facility; in the normal course of events, it should be impossible to avoid discussing values. The problem within the UK is that, for the most part, it has come to be seen as part of line management, something which managers ought to do but over which there are many difficulties, not least that no-one is going to be fully open with a manager who has line management responsibility for them. There are alternative models for supervision which do not depend exclusively on the line manager doing it, though the line manager still remains responsible for making sure workers receive it (Payne and Scott, 1982; Brack and Grauwiler, 1993).

In the end, maintaining and broadening people’s values entails not being afraid to place people in situations where their values will be challenged and their perspectives broadened - not a comfortable situation for someone who wants to have as little trouble as possible from those they are managing. The person who stands looking at an accident and does nothing to help the injured would be rightly condemned; yet that is what many of those who have seen professionals in difficulty have done. A profession whose professionals lack the breadth of perspective to echo with Donne, “No man is an island” and take positive action in all spheres of professional practice, not just face-to-face contact between worker and child, to change that situation will find itself repeating history.

References

Brack, A and A Grauwiler (1993) Konzept zur Supervision/Praxisberatung Z

Back to School?

Dr Keith J. White — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:49:30 +0000

In June I was lecturing in Thailand and Malaysia as usual, and the children were getting back to school after a two-week break. So it was that many children I met, whether playing games, in the swimming pool, and around the neighbourhoods where I was staying, were getting ready for a new term, and I wondered what they really faced and how they felt about it. I have come to realise that you have to get to know people really well in Asia before they will entrust you with their real feelings, particularly anything that seems negative or critical.

It so happened that one of the courses I was teaching, Childhoods in Cross-Cultural Perspectives, took education and schooling as one of the main strands, and so the students (all of them mature graduates, and many qualified teachers) who came from ten nationalities, were able to give me some insights into what goes on behind the scenes. I asked them to rate or grade the schools and school systems that they knew best on a scale of 1-5 against the criterion of whether the system fostered and nurtured the growth of love in and between pupils and staff. There were five elements to be considered:

* were the children fundamentally secure (safe) while at school;

* were the boundaries predictable, appropriate, shared and clear;

* was each child able to see and feel that she was significant personally as an individual because of the quality of relationship with at least one teacher;

* was the school a community characterised by common values, good patterns and rhythms of life through each day, week and year;

* and last but not least, was the school a place that encouraged and celebrated creativity in its many and varied forms?

Depressing Realities

The responses of the students were as depressing for them as they were for me. Quite apart from the sad excesses (learning by rote; the suffocation of the whole system by the importance attached to exam results; harsh corporal punishment; class sizes that ruled out the possibility of more than a few significant personal relationships between children and teachers) the picture that was painted was of sombre hue. The consistent message was of a whole way of operating that institutionalised forced transmission of data and information at the expense of the quality of life, spontaneity and relationships. The one element that scored positively in some countries was that of community: several students felt that schools did provide a positive sense of local culture and social solidarity.

This all reinforced a growing sense I have been gaining as I travel quite widely, listening to what local people tell me, that education for children as it is delivered in schools all over the world, parallels the factory system of production. In the nineteenth century in much of Europe there was population migration into cities and urban areas; most of the working class adults worked in factories, while their children went to schools (if they were lucky), and the schools mirrored the ethos of factories with “school work”; “home work”, targets and predicted outcomes measured by exams and tests.

Despite the creative ideas and philosophies of the likes of Makarenko, Montessori, Pestalozzi, Steiner, Rousseau, Froebel, and alternative models of educational philosophy, the default method always seems to be that of the production line. This requires that you work back from the outcomes that a particular society’s adults want to see, and try to find effective ways of “producing the goods”.

However creative the ideas promulgated in books and teacher training colleges, the trend is unrelenting and universal: pupils are helped to attain levels of performance and targets measured in a number of ways. So much so, that we may well be unable to conceive of other possible methods of going about providing children with a setting and atmosphere in which they are encouraged to explore and discover things and their relationships for themselves, individually and in groups.

Achievement as Success

Let me share with you one example of the way we institutionalise problematical values in schools. If we use Erikson’s stages of human development, school-age is a period characterised by “industry versus inferiority”. Work done successfully gives a child a sense of achievement and worth. So educational systems set out ostensibly to encourage children to achieve, and thus, through appropriate praising, to gain a sense of self-worth. (Let us leave out of this those many children who come to feel themselves inferior as a result of the whole system.) The problem is that achievement can become a way of dealing with an underlying issue that lies deep within each human heart and being: what is the meaning of my life, and what am I worth to myself and others?

The psychologist and theologian, Professor James Loder, whose book The Logic of the Spirit (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco: 1998) I have been studying in the past three weeks, is honest enough to describe how the process can be found at work at home as well as at school. He tells of his daughter coming into the family kitchen on a school day, full of life and chatter, when he was not paying much attention to her. She responded by telling him that she had managed to tie her own shoe laces up that very morning. He immediately stopped what he was doing and expressed appreciation. Not very surprising you might say, and on the whole rather good news. But Loder points out that the message he had given her was that she was more important for what she could do than for just being there. Her worth was to be found in her achievements, not in her presence (p. 182).

Giving Love Priority

Isn’t it pretty obvious that schools all too easily become places where achievement dwarfs the value of children as human beings? If so, it is little wonder that when set against the five elements that are necessary for love to thrive, most educational systems are found wanting. And where this is so, isn’t it likely that whole societies value achievement above the existential worth of each citizen. Where this is so, we might find dysfunctions that require anti-depressants (often for girls) and Ritalin (often for boys), bullying that achieves a perverse sense of worth at the expense of another, and an obsession with attainments and outcomes.

I came home pondering all this rather deeply, and matters were made worse when it was pointed out to me that a growing problem in Asian schools was that some of the high achievers were choosing to become sexual escorts in order to help them acquire consumer desirables. Where does this addiction to achievement, possessions, and status reliant on effort end, I wondered?

It would be unrealistic at the present time to believe that a paradigm shift in education throughout the world is likely for some time (although I happen to believe that there are some factors in place that make it more likely than it seemed, say twenty years ago). But it might help an improvement if each and every school were to assess itself and be assessed against the criteria I offered my students. If the whole of life is to be measured in terms of achievements, then the fact that we all die should be a salutary reminder that helping pupils with a sense of worth in the face of ultimate being and nothingness would make a lot more sense.

If we bring love into the domain of the educational system then we at least have a chance of putting the whole achievement, outcome-driven perspective into a more holistic, overarching framework. And if we start seeing how best to nurture security, boundaries, significance, community and creativity, then the whole of society, not just teachers, will find it has a role to play in the process. We may not all be able to help a child with particular aspects of knowledge and skills, but we can all help to increase their sense of self-worth and esteem, by encouraging them when we meet them.

Families, clubs, groups, neighbourhoods, and faith groups are among the elements of society that can support schools and teachers in this most important of all tasks. And perhaps schools and teachers would find that they more naturally turned to others for support in the process. To get facts into a child’s head requires a single person; it takes a village to help love to grow in a child.

Note: The criteria mentioned can be found in The Growth of Love (Abingdon: BRF, 2008).

A Recipe for Disaster

Chris Durkin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:48:22 +0000

I spent my first years in social work working for the probation service at a time when probation was still a part of social work. In my considered view it was a retrograde step when they severed the link between social work and offending behaviour. The vast majority of offenders I worked with had problems that were not just about offending; there were many who had mental health problems, and yet more who had drug and alcohol problems.

The politicians’ usual response to offending is so often to ratchet up the issues vying with each other to see who can provide the toughest response to the latest headline. Although I have always accepted that there are a number of people who should be locked up for the remainder of their lives, incarcerating a person rarely helps; it only provides society with a break. This break may be welcome for residents whose lives have been made difficult by antisocial behaviour, but it is unlikely to address the underlying issues that have led to the offending.

Prison: A Dumping Ground

Because prison is so frequently used it has becoming largely an institution of containment; its power to educate and reform has been lost. As the Prison Reform Trust put it in a report published last year:

Our prisons have become a dumping ground for those failed by other public services and the scale of the problem is now immense. Each year over 132,000 people go to jail and 70,000 children enter the youth justice system. According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, during their school years a staggering 7% of children will experience their father’s imprisonment. Last year more children were affected by the loss of a parent through custody than by divorce. Our reliance on prison is such that it appears difficult for politicians to present a clear, authoritative case for alternatives to custody. (Prison Reform Trust 2008: 3)[i]

This startling assertion graphically illustrates the failure of the prison system; it also highlights the consequences for the rest of the family.

I am writing this article a few days after the publication of the Prison Reform Trust’s latest report [ii]on the remand of young people and the disturbing evidence not only of the number of young people being remanded in custody but more worryingly the numbers on remand that are ultimately going to be acquitted or be given a community-based sentence.

What Should be Done?

They mention Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 which states that prison for young people should be used “only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time”. Despite this Government’s commitment to the Convention why do we as a country lock so many of our children and young people up?

The Trust report proposes a 12-point plan to address these issues including changing the bail law providing incentives for local authorities to reduce custodial remands and reducing the disproportionate number of black children locked up on remand. This plan is a good start, but it seems to me that it is only part of a wider debate that needs to recognise that many of the children and young people who are imprisoned are like many of the children in the care system in that they have complex and difficult histories that are at the core of their problems. What we also know is that a high number of adults in prison have been through the care system.

People are Complex Individuals.

On Saturday mornings I often listen to a radio programme called Saturday Live which has a slot called inheritance tracks, in which a celebrity talks about a track they have

Sociopath Fathers : The

Charles Pragnell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:47:27 +0000

This article has been composed largely from my professional experiences over many years in child protection work and child/family advocacy, from the contributions of professional colleagues, and from the personal testimonies of mothers and children who have been subjected to domestic violence and abuse.

The sociopath is referred to in psychiatric terms as having Antisocial Personality Disorder, which is characterised by an individual’s common disregard for social rules, norms, and cultural codes, as well as impulsive behaviour and a complete indifference to the rights and feelings of others. This condition is included in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and in the World Health Organisation’s ICD10.

However, the problems presented by the sociopath tend to be mostly social problems rather than symptoms of mental illness or criminal behaviours, although these are not excluded in some sociopaths. It is estimated that 3% of the male population are sociopaths and they inhabit all walks of life, from business and commerce where their ruthlessness can make them highly successful, in politics where their absence of empathy can enable them to be elective autocrats with a capacity for corruption and callousness, in organised crime often involving drug dealing, and in many other professions.

What Sociopaths are Like

They view the rules and expectations of society regarding acceptable behaviours as inconvenient and unreasonable and impediments to their inclinations and intentions. They are extremely adept at

Training and Education: A Message from Valerie Jackson

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:45:05 +0000

A few months ago, an invitation went out to our readers to let us know, if they were professionals working with children and/or young people in whatever capacity, to contact us and inform us about the qualifications and training within their countries.

We didn’t receive a particularly positive response. In fact there were about three people who contacted us. We would like to try again.

If you have been trained in any aspect of working with children or young people, please let us know:

What entry qualifications you needed if any?

What was the qualification?

How long did you need to study?

What would you need to do in order to gain higher or more complex qualifications?

My colleagues and I wish to start a section in the Magazine specifically for informing and resource identity relating to qualifications and training.

I look forward to readers’ responses.

The Social Educator in a Globalised World: AIEJI World Congress, Copenhagen, 2009

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:43:20 +0000

AIEJI, the International Association of Social Educators, held its 17^th World Congress from 4 - 7 May in Copenhagen. Attended by over 700 delegates, the Congress brought together social pedagogues/social educators from more than 40 countries for a series of key note speeches, workshops, field visits and social events. All the main proceedings were in English with simultaneous translations in French, Spanish and Danish.

The first indication that the Congress might be different from

Twenty Years On

David Lane — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:41:43 +0000

1989 and Before

1989 was quite a year, a turning point in the history of Europe. The Berlin Wall was pulled down. Eastern Europe opened up for people to travel, both in and out, and Communism was acknowledged as a spent force politically and economically. In Hungary the Communist government acknowledged that elections should include other parties.

It was against this background that FICE-Hungary was re-established. FICE (Federation Internationale des Communautes Educatives) is the biggest international professional association for people who work with children and young people, and there are organisations which act as its National Sections in about thirty countries.

Because of the way that organisations often follow a cycle, being founded, growing and dying away again, there are times in FICE when National Sections are wound up and times when they are refounded. (There is a Steering Group working on re-establishing FICE-England & Wales at the moment.)

Hungarian children’s communities had been involved in FICE-International from its foundation in 1948, but for much of the period after that the country was represented by an organisation with the backing of the Communist Government. Indeed, it was one of FICE’s achievements that throughout the Cold War a dialogue was maintained between child care professionals in Eastern and Western Europe.

However, with the ending of Communism, a new era came in - politically, economically and socially - and this had a significant impact on services for children and young people and for the child care profession. In Hungary the Communist Government agreed to open elections in 1989 and the Third Republic was ushered in. Child care professionals started to reconsider the future of their profession, and the new Government looked for people who could lead and influence the development of child care.

The people who refounded FICE were first approached by the Ministry. It was in 1989 that FICE-Hungary was inaugurated, and it was in 2009 that this event was celebrated with a conference held at the European Centre in Budapest.

1989 and After

Anyone visiting Hungary in 1989 found a country where the economy was stagnant and there was a massive need to reconstruct the country. Visit now, and - despite the current recession - you will find a busy modern country. In 1989 little Trabants were belching smoky fumes throughout Budapest; now cars are as modern as in any country in Europe. The change in the last twenty years has been dramatic.

This is true too of FICE-Hungary. Its achievements over that period have been considerable. It has had a busy programme of activities for its members. It has provided training and achieved accreditation for the courses it provided. It has arranged visits for members to other FICE countries, which have led to a dramatic re-appraisal of the child care services that should be provided in Hungary. It has been consulted about child care legislation, which was updated recently. It has published a variety of materials - books, reports, bulletins and training material, both originally in Hungarian and translated from other languages.

Indeed, FICE-Hungary has proved to be a model of the way that modest investment by the Government, coupled with energetic leadership within the National Section, can have a dramatic impact on the development of the child care profession and professional thinking. So there was plenty for FICE to celebrate at the conference in Budapest.

Celebration

At the end of May, about fifty FICE-Hungary members gathered at the Budapest European Centre, with its dramatic views of the city - the sweep of the River Danube, Margaret Island, the splendid Parliament building, Fishermen’s Wharf, the Cathedral of St Matthias, the Palace, and Gellert Hill - one of the most beautiful city vistas in Europe. The conference was also attended by a number of speakers and supporters from other countries, including the President of FICE-International, Monika Niederle.

Following a message from the Ministry by Dr Erika Pehr, the start of the conference was retrospective. I spoke from a FICE-International viewpoint, and Dr Julia Blumenfeld gave an account of the way that the National Section had developed and what it had achieved. She spoke about the dramatic impact which a visit to FICE-Netherlands had had, leading to a fundamental reassessment of Hungarian child care methods. In particular there had been very little fostering twenty years ago, and it is now a significant element in the range of provision for children. There has been a reduction in the maximum size of children’s homes.

Other visits to Israel, Finland and Iceland were described by Julia Blumenfeld as “burn-out tours” - incredibly exciting and inspiring. The impact resulted in part from major policy ideas, but in part also from minor - but significant - points such as the respect shown by Dutch staff for the privacy of the children. At one home the children had decided that they did not want any visitors, and the staff respected their decision, which would have been unthinkable in Hungary. Ideas have been developed also as a result of research.

Evaluation

Dr Judith Cseres then ran a session in which participants spoke about their individual experiences as FICE members - the benefits which they had received from the FICE meetings, training programmes, the international visits and the publications, such as Can we help? - guidance for children on health care.

Among the developments which had impressed members were the introduction of craft activities, in which children had enjoyed the chance to be creative, the Children’s Parliament, student placements and trips organised for children. Often it was the small things which had the biggest impact. On visits to other countries, FICE members saw children having their own individual wardrobes, growing vegetables in kitchen gardens, and opening their own mail. In the Netherlands they witnessed a more friendly, open approach to children.

As a centrally-controlled Communist country, child care practice had been uniform and often limiting. The impact of FICE’s visits and activities on Hungarian child care was that a more individualised approach was developed, and staff in children’s homes took more initiative and were given more autonomy. This meant that it became more difficult to develop centralised policy and training, which had to be adapted to the staff’s changing needs.

Children’s Parliament

Miklos Radoszav spoke about the development of the Children’s Parliament, which had been set up to consult with children in care, to listen to their views and concerns, and to create a more child-centred atmosphere within the care system.

The first Parliament met in 2001 and since then there had been fifteen sessions, all held in important buildings in different parts of the country, to demonstrate that the event was being taken seriously. The sessions were reported in the media, feedback had always been positive, and the exposure had changed the public attitude to the care system. Furthermore, the children and young people involved had had to learn how to cope with speaking in public, and a tradition had now gradually built up, giving them confidence. The older hands were now more relaxed about speaking out, and the newer recruits had the model of the experienced delegates.

Issues covered included practical issues such as grants for books, pocket money, problems with college fees and housing allowances, as well as larger policy issues such as the need to place children in homes near to their own families, the mix of age groups in family homes and better aftercare.

Wherever sessions have been held, the local Mayors have been involved, and attention has always been paid to the conclusions of the sessions, both by local authorities and central government ministries.

Assessing Children’s Needs in Finland

Jukka Sirtamo of Finland described a reception home in Vantaa, called Potkuri, which means propeller or pushing force, a suitable name for a place from which children are expected to move with a sense of direction. The home works closely with families, with a key aim being to reduce the amount of time that children need to spend away from home.

Potkuri is a 28-place home in three units, and the children admitted have a range of problems - educational, domestic violence, running away, drugs and alcohol, as well as dysphasia, ADHD, dyslexia, Asperger’s and behavioural disorders. The programme provides a combination of family work, personal counselling for the children, occupational therapy and networking with other agencies to obtain the full picture and develop supportive links for the future.

Usually the process goes through three phases - building up trust between the child and the staff, then assessing the child’s needs and finally organising services to meet the child’s needs.

Interestingly, occupational therapists play a major role in the assessment of the children at Potkuri, not only being involved in a wide range of activities with the children (sports, play, cookery and so on), but also helping the children to devise strategies to cope at school and at home, and carrying out assessment tasks which might be undertaken by residential workers or psychologists in other countries.

Once a week families are

‘Summerhill’ by A.S. Neill

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:39:06 +0000

A. S. Neill (1962) Summerhill: a radical approach to education London: Victor Gollancz (originally published 1960 Summerhill: a radical approach to child rearing New York: Hart)

Born between August Aichhorn and Anton Makarenko and beginning his experiment in education at around the same time, A.S. Neill (1883-1973) was the only one of the three to survive into the second half of the 20th century and to be associated with the same establishment for over 50 years. A teacher, he grew frustrated with conventional approaches to teaching and, falling under the influence of Homer Lane, he began his experimental work in Germany and Austria in the early 1920s before moving first to Summerhill House, Lyme Regis and then to Leiston, Suffolk where he retained the name Summerhill for the school. He initially offered children analysis but later decided that it was superfluous because those who didn’t receive analysis got better anyway.

Key Ideas

- Fit the school to the child, not the other way round.

- Children will learn when they are ready to learn.

- Using a meeting of staff and children to manage the running of the establishment.

- In order to show approval to children, adults must approve of themselves.

- In order to help a child, adults have to be on the side of the child.

- Children do not have sexual difficulties if adults talk naturally to them about sexual matters.

- Moral instruction causes more problems than it solves.

- “Love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of love is indifference”.

Contents

Summerhill is a collection of extracts from That dreadful school (Neill, 1937) and other papers produced by Neill (as he was always known).

In the Preface he briefly outlines the beginnings of Summerhill and his own experiments with psychoanalysis before he realised that the children who didn’t come for analysis were also cured. He argues that education should produce people who are both individual and community persons and wonders why mankind does so much evil and why people thwart love.

In A word of introduction he argues that all crime can be reduced to unhappiness and that at Summerhill children are reared to happiness.

In Chapter 1 Summerhill School he describes how the school, founded in 1921 in Austria, eventually moved to Leiston, Suffolk (where it retained the name Summerhill from the hotel in Lyme Regis where it had briefly been based). It has around 25 boys 20 girls of all ages up to 16 divided into three groups, the youngest, the intermediates and the oldest. Each group has a housemother and the children are mostly in rooms of three to four.

The idea is to make the school fit the child, so there is a timetable for the teachers but children decide whether they attend. Children, other than the kindergartens, avoid lessons for on average three months, the longest being three years. When he suggested a punishment of being banned from lessons, the children argued he was being too harsh. Children who want to can be taught to university standard.

The normal routine is breakfast at 8.15 - 9.00, lessons at 9.30, lunch for the kindergartens and younger ones at 12.30 and lunch for the seniors and the staff at 1.30, lessons having ended at 1.00. The afternoon is free; tea is at 4.00 and activities begin at 5.00; on Saturday that is the General School Meeting.

The girls tend to be less creative and participate less in General School Meeting but they are often sent to Summerhill by their parents after problems elsewhere and removed after their ‘problems’ have been solved. There has always been the problem of parents who don’t believe in the ethos of the school.

He outlines how conflicts are handled, noting that there is little aggression, because only young people full of hate need to fight. They take the normal precautions to keep pupils safe. There are no favourites and the staff room is happy. But Summerhill is an island; if it wasn’t, they would have to compromise and fulfil various legal requirements.

Evil continues because young people are taught to ‘know’ rather than to ‘feel.’ Though the school has been successful and free children spend more time on creative activities, the approach is not successful with all children.

He gives a number of examples of his

‘Spare the Child’ by David Wills

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:37:27 +0000

W. David Wills (1971) Spare the child: the story of an experimental approved school Harmondsworth: Penguin 0 04 080215 0

Like A.S. Neill (1962) and Mr Lyward (Burn, 1956), David Wills had grown up under the influence of Freudian approaches which he applied and wrote about in a number of settings (e.g. Wills, 1970) but for his final book he turned to the experiences of a colleague, Richard Balbernie, in trying to create an approved school based on therapeutic principles.

Key Ideas

- The relationships the staff have will inform the relationships the residents have.

- Masculinity involves personal self-confidence in relationships, not relying on impersonal hierarchies, rules or bullying.

- Delinquency can mask serious emotional disturbance.

- Care and control have to be combined.

- You don’t have to intervene in a system directly to change it; you can do so by changing a related system.

- Leadership is not expressed by doing but by facilitating.

- Children will learn what they need to learn when they are learning what they want to learn.

- Values are more important than interventions.

Content

In Chapter 1 The children of the perishing and dangerous classes, he begins by reviewing the changing words used to describe children from those “who might become a nuisance” (1756) through Mary Carpenter’s description, “children from the perishing and dangerous classes” (1851), to “children in trouble” (Home Office, 1968) and argues that the decline in the ’success rate’ of Mary Carpenter’s approved schools (as they came to be known in 1933) from 79% in 1921 to 38% in 1962 lay not so much in the schools but in the changes that had taken place outside the schools.

The original approved schools attracted as staff people who were motivated by social attitudes which equated poverty with moral depravity and who wanted to recreate in the schools the deferential attitudes to which they were treated in wider society The regimes they instituted were then mimicked by the residents and, as they became institutionalised across the system, change was resisted because the approach suited everyone in the system. The Children and Young Persons Act 1969 will change that.

In Chapter 2 Ending the old way, he describes how the Rainer Foundation had set up an approved school in 1940 which had had two headmasters before 1967 when the Foundation decided that the school needed radical change and appointed Richard Balbernie as Head. He had started Swalcliffe Park school for maladjusted children in 1951 but, deciding he was insufficiently equipped for the task, had resigned to pursue further study, one result of which was Residential work with children (1966).

Balbernie came to what was to become the Cotswold Community with the idea that the boys needed to learn true masculinity and that would require staff who could act in a truly masculine way, not relying on hierarchies or a system of punishments. He soon found that there was a subculture of violence among the boys which mimicked the hierarchy of grades and punishments meted out by staff. He abolished punishments and grades and told staff that, if the school did not turn itself around, it would close - which he recognised was also a coercive act.

He abolished the use of surnames and instituted meetings with the staff to explain the concept of a therapeutic community. A series of community meetings involving staff and boys ran for eight to nine weeks during which their hostility to his new ideas found ample expression. The hostility was so great that he had to send his own son to boarding school to save him from the harassment he was receiving from the boys. However, out of the community meetings committees were formed to hammer out ways in which the new community could work.

In Chapter 3 Beginning the new, David Wills describes how Balbernie eschewed the role of fount of all knowledge and authority, seeking advice from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and creating four ‘first-line managers’ to be responsible for the group living, education, finance and domestic arrangements. He also refused to advise even those staff who supported the changes on how they should behave, as he believed that they had to learn to make decisions themselves. Other staff used this period to test him to destruction. In order to support staff, he brought in people like Barbara Dockar-Drysdale as consultants.

David Wills describes how a long-standing member of the staff later encapsulated the changes: now the boys were boys; they would play friendly tricks on staff, something they would never have dared to do in the old days. However, before this, the place had been vandalised, and breaking the subculture of violence among the boys had necessitated removing many of the more long-standing residents. The hostility of staff extended to those who had begun to support Balbernie and their families. It also became clear that, under the veneer of delinquency, lay a number of seriously emotionally damaged boys; so provision was made for separate accommodation for boys with different needs in the available accommodation on the estate.

In the middle of this the Rainer Foundation decided to withdraw from the project to concentrate on intermediate treatment, another aspect of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969.

In Chapter 4 Complications, David Wills describes how, with Home Office support, Wiltshire County Council became involved in the management of the school alongside the Rainer Foundation because Derek Morrell, the Home Office civil servant responsible for steering the Children and Young Persons Bill to its conclusion, did not want to lose what Richard Balbernie was doing.

In Chapter 5 The community begins to take shape, David Wills describes the establishment of Thames House as a model for the future and the Cottage as a unit for the most seriously emotionally deprived boys alongside the two remaining units which were really marking time. This was accompanied by the departure of many of the staff and their replacement by staff more in sympathy with the new approach and by continued acts of vandalism and misbehaviour, some of which were quietly encouraged by the staff who were hostile to the changes to demonstrate the futility of the new approach.

Eventually the boys were dispersed into four ‘new’ houses around the grounds; but the departure of many of the long-standing staff did not make things any easier because few of the new staff, even if they had already been qualified, had any experience on which to base what they needed to do and found the combination of being responsible for making a relationship and for discipline difficult to handle. Yet achieving this level of maturity in staff was essential if the boys were to have as a sound model of masculinity on which to base themselves men who would not ignore their delinquency but confront them with it in a constructive and caring fashion.

In Chapter 6 Polytechnic, David Wills describes how education was modelled around what the boys wanted to learn and how in learning what they wanted to learn, they began to learn things they had never ‘wanted’ to learn. This involved breaking down the traditional distinction between vocational and general education, for example, by using the name ‘Polytechnic’ for everything concerned with work and education including the hobbies and activities that had replaced the old evening activities. Just as this stage had been reached a proposal by the County Council to turn the site into a caravan park and the death of Derek Morrell cast a shadow over the whole project.

In Chapter 7 A man’s world, David Wills describes how the role of women changed from being excluded from the care of the boys to being part of it, pointing out that unlike other professions where, at the time, women professionals were regarded as sexless, in residential care, women had to be both professional and feminine. A major step forward came with the use of young women on Community Service Volunteer projects who came to the community without any of the hang-ups or preconceptions of the staff or people who had worked or been trained elsewhere.

In Chapter 8 Towards a single culture, David Wills argues that, rather than trying to understand and permeate the boys’ culture as was fashionable at the time, Balbernie had changed their culture by changing the culture of the staff so that responsibility was shared and those who had responsibility always consulted with others. This entailed communication and so the habit of communicating became more firmly embedded in the culture.

In Chapter 9 The modality being love, David Wills argues that the approved school system had become the last resort for those for whom everything else had failed and that only the most skilled interventions could help them. One institution will never be able to meet the needs of all young people and there will need to be a range of institutions devoted to the different needs of young people. While the model at the Cotswold Community will not suit others, the concern for the welfare of the individual will, a concern which David Wills argues was encapsulated in a speech by Derek Morrell:

And this is the purpose of education: to foster the growth of loving persons - who are aware both of their individuality and of their membership one of another, who accept one another, communicate with one another, and who (understanding their own interdependent nature) choose to use their experience creatively, in cooperation with other people. In short it is to enable people to live creatively in a creative community, harmoniously blending their own independence with the independence of others, the modality being love (Wills, 1971, p. 153).

Discussion

In starting from the assumption that he had to change the relationships the staff and the boys had, Balbernie was following in the footsteps of Winnicott and Britton (1957) and, in trying to avoid giving people answers, he was following the footsteps of Homer Lane (Bazeley, 1928). Like Makarenko (1936) he found he had to make some tough decisions about staff but he also made decisions about getting rid of some of the boys which, in the light of Millham et al. (1975), may not have been as constructive as might have appeared at the time. As Winnicott and Britton suggest, one consequence of getting rid of certain boys may have been to suggest to others that he would not be able to cope with them, thereby accelerating behaviour on their part which would lead to their removal. Though Winnicott and Britton do not say so, a similar dynamic may also have affected staff attitudes.

Mary Carpenter (1853) had argued that juvenile delinquents are a heterogeneous group and the Protestant approved schools in England and Wales had for some years had a classifying system whereby boys with particular needs were matched to particular schools. However, in splitting the boys into further groups, Balbernie may have been suggesting that the classification system was not working as intended or that it needed to be more fine-grained. A few years later Martin Wolins (1973) was to suggest a theoretical basis for splitting children to meet their needs at different stages in their development.

In combining work and education and in focusing on the culture of the institution he was following in the footsteps of both Homer Lane and Makarenko. But uniquely at a time when gender issues were not on the agenda for most men, he identifies masculinity as a key issue both for the staff and for the boys.

Though by today’s standards David Wills’s discussion of gender issues is timid, Balbernie’s stress on the importance of models of masculinity was prescient in the light of the recent finding that males who harass are no different from those who do not on most measures, except in attempts to be masculine (Lundberg-Love and Marmion, 2003) . Indeed, the focus on femininity (and feminism) in the intervening years may have obscured the need for men generally to understand that neither true masculinity nor true leadership consist in the exercise of power.

Apart from the focus on understanding masculinity and the idea of splitting children into groups to meet their needs, Spare the child does not develop new ideas; rather it provides a contemporary account of the environment within which the Advisory Council in Child Care (1970) was working and shows an alternative way of integrating ideas from the past into a modern approved school setting - one, however, which lacks the ideas of child participation and parental involvement which were to animate the texts of the next decade. Perhaps the Advisory Council was moving a step too far, because the Cotswold Community continues to have an impact on ideas about child care in England, whereas the Advisory Council has largely been forgotten.

References

Advisory Council in Child Care (1970) Care and treatment in a planned environment: a report on the community home project London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office See also Children Webmag December 2008.

Balbernie, R (1966) Residential work with children Oxford: Pergamon

Bazeley, E T (1928) Home Lane and the Little Commonwealth London: Allen & Unwin See also Children Webmag February 2009

Burn, M (1956) Mr Lyward’s answer London: Hamish Hamilton See also Children Webmag May 2009.

Carpenter, M (1851) Reformatory schools for the children of the perishing and dangerous classes and for juvenile delinquents London: Charles Gilpin

Carpenter, M (1853) Juvenile delinquents, their condition and treatment London: W & F G Cash See also Children Webmag November 2008

Home Office (1968) Children in trouble Cmnd 3601 London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office

Lundberg-Love, P and S Marmion (2003) Sexual harassment in the private sector In M A Paludi and C A Paludi Jr (Eds) Academic and workplace sexual harassment: a handbook of cultural, social science and legal perspectives, pp. 77-101 London: Praeger

Makarenko, A (1936) Road to life: translated by Stephen Garry London: Stanley Nott Originally published as Pedagogicheskaia po

Sixty Years of FICE-International

David Lane — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:33:50 +0000

This speech was given at the FICE conference held in Budapest in May 2009 to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the refounding of FICE-Hungary. A report on the Conference, summarising some of the contributions, is elsewhere in this edition.

It is a pleasure and an honour to have been invited to speak at this conference, celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the refounding of FICE-Hungary. I joined the FICE Federal Council in 1988, and so I have had the opportunity to witness the contribution made by FICE-Hungary over those twenty years.

FICE-Hungary

I am aware that Dr Julia Blumenfeld is the next speaker on the programme and she is due to speak about the achievements of FICE-Hungary, but perhaps I may be permitted to comment briefly as a foreigner. My wife Kathleen and I have visited Hungary on several occasions during those twenty years. We have not only been looked after well and seen the sights as tourists, but we have also both been most impressed by the range of activities carried out by the National Section within the country.

We have, for example, taken part in training sessions for child care workers and managers. We have joined in discussions about new legislation, policies and approaches to child care. We have visited a wide range of children’s homes. (We remember being surprised when we visited one in Esztergom to find that the last visitor before us was our Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.) We have attended the Annual Ball, a very splendid occasion, obviously enjoyed by the young people who were participating. And, most recently, I witnessed the Annual Cooking Competition, held not far from Lake Balaton. We have nothing like these in England.

Furthermore, FICE-Hungary has always shown willingness to act as host to FICE-International’s Federal Council. The first Federal Council meeting in Budapest was in 1950, and in recent years we have had the pleasure of meeting in this Centre. Indeed, in its activities within Hungary and its contribution internationally, FICE-Hungary could be described as a model National Section, and we would wish to offer you our congratulations on the range and quality of your activities.

FICE-International

My role is to speak about FICE-International, which has now been in existence for over sixty years. I could spend my time by giving you a detailed account of those six decades, but they are recorded in the history written by Robert Shaw and published by FICE last year, entitled Children, Families and Care. I will give you some of the basic background information about FICE, but I think that our time will be best spent if I focus on a number of the key issues which emerge from the history and try to explain why I think that they are of importance here today.

History

The first key issue is to recognise the massive changes which there have been during the last sixty years, and by contrast to note the things which have not changed.

When FICE was founded in 1948, Europe was still recovering from the Second World War, which had had a devastating impact on millions of children in countries stretching from France in the west to Russia in the east, from Norway in the north to Greece in the south. A survey in 1946 found twenty million homeless children in Europe, including one million in Hungary. There were so many orphaned children that the only way to cope was by creating large residential communities such as children’s villages; Hajduhadhaz was an example in this country.

FICE was founded with the support of UNESCO. People working in the children’s communities scattered across Europe found that they were having to help children and young people who had been seriously disturbed by the War, and their communities were places of therapy and healing. It was difficult work, and there was a desperate need to share ideas and offer each other support.

In the early days each children’s community had its representative in FICE, which is why initially it was called the Federation Internationale des Communautes d’Enfants, and Hungarian children’s communities participated from the start. The name was changed in 1982 to Federation Internationale des Communautes Educatives after much debate, thus keeping the initials while broadening the scope of the organisation.

Since the Second World War there have been conflicts in Europe such as the events in this country in 1956 and in the countries of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but thankfully millions of adults alive today in Europe have not known war and its trauma in their lifetimes.

By contrast with 1948, we are in an age of travel and electronic communication. At Ferihegy Airport I was welcomed by immigration officers wearing face masks; why? - because of an outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, halfway round the world. The current concern about the spread of the flu reflects the sheer numbers of people travelling between countries today. The instant news from countries round the world shows a massive change in the speed and types of communication. If you are able to read the FICE history, you will find that Nigel Cantwell’s introduction gives a masterly description of the changes in the context within which FICE has developed over the last six decades.

So what can history have to tell us about working with children and young people today?

One answer is that the problems which we face are often cyclical. I have been reading The Storm by Vince Cable, a book about the current economic crisis, which has pointed out that there have been stock market crashes and recessions at intervals since the 1700s. The time between the crises is usually long enough for people to forget the last time, and to make the same mistakes again.

Turning to child care, some of the earliest recorded discussions in FICE were about children’s rights. During the lifetime of FICE, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has been negotiated, agreed, endorsed by almost every country of the world, and monitored. Yet it has not been a simple matter of progress; the rights of children are still a live issue.

I suspect that this is for two reasons. The first is that children are vulnerable, weak and politically powerless. They are reliant on adults for protection, and there are times such as war when their rights are completely overlooked and the treatment of children is appalling. Where you find conflicts in the world, you will find that children are still exploited and abused. They are involved as child soldiers; they are raped; they are mutilated or killed; they are forced to kill others. All this has no regard for the UN Convention. We have a long way to go before we can say that the Convention is being observed and children are enjoying their specified rights.

The second reason is that even among well-intentioned child care professionals there are differences of view. When do adults know best? Does observing children’s rights mean simply doing what they ask? Should children only be consulted, or given any decision-making powers? If children should be able to make decisions, at what age?

Well before FICE was set up, Janusz Korczak and others set up children’s communities where they gave children the opportunity to be responsible. Several of the communities set up to care for children in the aftermath of the Second World War adopted self-government and there were fierce arguments between those who supported children being able to make their own decisions, such as the communist Juliens in France and the Catholic Don Antonio Rivolta, and the secularists who preferred a more paternalistic approach.

(As an example of the extraordinary qualities of some of child care workers in the past, the Juliens shepherded a group of up to 200 children through the last two years of the Second World War, mostly on the run from the Germans, and, when it was all over, they set up the Children’s Republic at Moulin-Vieux in the Is

Know More

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:31:51 +0000

We have received this article from Young Addaction Liverpool.

Addaction is the UK’s largest drug and alcohol support service helping adults and families manage their alcohol and drug misuse, and it has tripled in size since it was set up in 1967.

Young Addaction Liverpool is one of the leading services in the city, specialising in support for young people and they have recently launched a pilot service for 18-25 year olds.

Young Addaction Liverpool has been running a drug awareness campaign to help Liverpool’s young people

Launch of a New Childhood Study Group

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:29:47 +0000

A recent proposal to establish a British Sociological Association (BSA) Childhood Study Group has been successful and the Group was officially launched at the BSA Conference in Cardiff on 16 April, 2009. It is intended that the Group will promote the sociological study of children, childhood, and children’s issues. It is anticipated that a range of contexts will be explored but with a clear focus on children, childhood, and the experience of children from a number of perspectives.

The substantive areas of childhood to be covered include:

Sociology of childhood

Contemporary issues in childhood

Historical perspectives on childhood

Policy issues related specifically to children

Children, risk and society

Researching children

The aims of the Childhood Study Group are to:

Exchange and develop ideas

Encourage collaboration and lend support

Encourage research and publication around the sociology of childhood

Promote the sociological understanding of children

To develop a programme of events

To develop links with other sociological and related childhood organisations

The Sociology of Childhood as a specific area of academic study emerged with the publication of a number of early works in this field during the 1980s. Amongst others, these include:

Jenks, C., The Sociology of Childhood (1982)

James and Prout, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood (1990)

Corsaro, W., The Sociology of Childhood (1997)

Wyness, M., Contesting Childhood (1999)

There has been an increase in Childhood Studies within Higher Education institutions over the past 5 - 10 years, with a strong demand for knowledge and information in this area from academics, lecturers, researchers, and postgraduate students. In 2007 there were a total of 26 Higher Education providers offering degree programmes in Early Childhood Studies. Many of these programmes have a Sociology of Childhood module whilst others address issues more broadly across the programme of study. There has also been a growth in the number of Masters programmes with a focus on Childhood. It is hoped that this Study Group will provide for the exchange of information, professional collaboration, and the development of research in this area.

Added to this there has been the professionalisation of the early years workforce, with the Government seeking to increase qualifications (e.g. through the Children’s Workforce Development Council) in this area of employment. Moreover, there is now a growing number of graduates in Early Childhood Studies moving into professional areas. The introduction of the Early Years Professional Status (EYPS) will also enhance the level of knowledge and skills of professionals in the field. This should lead to a greater awareness of the role of knowledge transfer and research amongst practitioners. This has the potential to offer fruitful collaboration between academics and practitioners with greater opportunities for applied research.

The growth in the development of Higher Education programmes, together with increasing professionalisation and the Government’s increased focus on children (e.g. targets in reducing child poverty), has resulted in a greater number of lecturers and academics teaching and researching in this field.

The Childhood Study Group details can be accessed via a link from the BSA website www.britsoc.co.uk.

The first Seminar Event will take place on 6 July 2009 hosted by University College Birmingham within their Annual Conference, to be held in central Birmingham. The Childhood Study Group sessions include papers around the broad themes of Health, Education, Community, and Family.

It is anticipated that the Group will hold regular meetings, seminars, and workshops as well as providing a forum for discussion and a web page. We encourage collaborative working, the presentation of short papers, work in progress, or current research updates.

Membership is free to BSA members but is open to all. To add your name to the Childhood Study Group mailing list please contact Chris Lancucki at c.lancucki@ucb.ac.uk

Programme Manager BA ECS,

School of Childhood and Education,

University College Birmingham,

Summer Row,

Birmingham B3 1JB.

Siblings Together

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:25:05 +0000

www.siblingstogether.co.uk

Siblings Together is an exciting and innovative programme, created specifically for young people in care, kinship and adoption. Sibling Together holiday camps safely reunite siblings whose lives are affected by care and adoption. Through the use of holiday activity camps and year-round events they bring together siblings aged 8 -18 who live in separate homes, providing a week-long holiday camp experience, organised and facilitated by highly experienced trained staff teams and CRB checked volunteers from backgrounds in the arts and health, art therapy and social work courses across the UK.Our camps recognise the fundamental need to encourage and support highly positive and memorable contact experiences within a neutral, accepting, healthy and creative environment, a place where young people can begin to build upon, value and maintain essential lifelong relationships with their brothers and sisters.

When children are unable to live together, it’s vital that they have opportunities to strengthen essential bonds with one another. We offer an opportunity for siblings to share positive experiences together, to nurture and rebuild important relationships, sometimes after having grown apart for various reasons, perhaps beyond their control. They may make friends with others in similar circumstances, experiencing an exciting holiday together and taking part in activities and creative group work.

Professional Opinions

Siblings Together have received many messages of support. Professor Sonia Jackson said, ”Losing touch with your brothers and sisters is one of the worst things that can happen as a result of coming into care. For most of us our relationship with siblings is the longest in our lives and a source of comfort and support in times of trouble. Siblings Together is a wonderfully imaginative scheme which puts separated young people back in contact with each other in the context of highly enjoyable activities”.

Dr Roger Morgan, Children’s Rights Director, said, “The unnecessary separation of brothers and sisters in care is a major problem for many children and young people, and many of them have raised this issue with me and my colleagues. In the light of what children have said, I welcome all initiatives, such as camps, that offer siblings opportunities to make and renew contact and develop their relationships with each other”.

Janet Rich, National Care Association, Care Leavers Foundation, said, “Separation from parents is a necessary evil to protect children who come into care from harm. Separation from siblings usually happens casually, thoughtlessly, through drift and lack of priority rather than by plan or intention. Siblings are an intrinsic part of our growing selves and the benefits to children in care of being supported to maintain healthy, normal sibling relationships (as opposed to

News Views

Webmag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:23:55 +0000

Honoured

It is really good news for child care that Paul Ennals, the Chief Executive of the National Children’s Bureau, has been knighted. In the past there have been plenty of Chief Constables and a few Chief Education Officers who have been honoured in this way, but not too many from the child care field. Sir Paul joins Sir Roger Singleton, most of whose career was in child care or its management or monitoring, and Sir Al Aynsley-Green, Children’s Commissioner. Sir Paul has made an outstanding contribution at the NCB, having a massive influence on government policy as well as presiding over an era of continued expansion at the Bureau. The knighthood is well deserved personally, but it is also good for the NCB and for children’s services generally. People often listen more to someone with a handle. As Sir Paul said, although he was joining the establishment, that was not going to stop him speaking out.

The NCB scored a second major hit with Philippa Russell topping up her CBE by being made a Dame. Well deserved, and good news for disabled children and everyone with whom she associates. It was good also to see Paul Martin, the Chief Social Services Officer in Northern Ireland until recently, get the CBE, after many years of excellent leadership in his field.

Nice too, to see a bevy of foster carers - Malcolm and Patricia Davies, John and Stephanie Forbes, and Sheila Franks - and a childminder, Christine Dale, have their work recognised with the MBE. When working at home with children, childminders and foster carers can be isolated; their work rarely hits the headlines unless something goes wrong, and so it is really nice that they can enjoy some of the well-deserved limelight for a change.

Ending Child Poverty

The top children’s charities are right to have come together to campaign on child poverty. If this matter is addressed, a lot of other problems will melt away. If it is not dealt with, other services will often only offer sticking plasters.

Hilary Fisher, the Director of End Child Poverty, welcomed the Child Poverty Bill as an important step forward in making tackling child poverty a priority for all Governments, noting that “Ending child poverty is not a luxury, but a necessity”, and that it would be “particularly important to be clear how Government will be held to account in the legislation”.

As Sir Paul Ennals noted at the National Children’s Bureau annual reception, ensuring that children remain a high priority during the recession is a key problem which has to be addressed head-on, or services will be lost. According to the saying, “The weakest go to the wall”, which is why those responsible for protecting children will have to battle all the harder. But if we are talking tough economics, it is vital that we invest in the coming generations so that they will have the skills and knowledge and the right attitudes and values to keep the country profitable.

A Golden Opportunity

In his article on training for residential child care staff this month Charles Sharpe says that now is a good time to try to get the training system right. We could not agree more. But as Charles notes, there have been missed opportunities in the past. Back in 1997 the Residential Forum produced a report called A Golden Opportunity which tried to address the question why training has never been established at a proper level and in sufficient volume in this country.

Fundamentally, the powers that be do not seem to have appreciated the complexity of residential child care and the impact that good quality care can have on children, and it is possible that this is because as a nation we do not appreciate the importance of good parenting sufficiently. After all, if we think that children will just sort of grow up without adults needing to do too much, we won’t value the professionals who stand in for unsatisfactory parents either.

Yet if residential child care staff are enabled to do their jobs properly, they can transform the lives of the children and young people whom they work with, affecting the lives of their families, partners, friends, employers, colleagues, potential victims (if they otherwise turn to crime) and the government, as they will save them bucketloads of money which would have to be spent on places in prisons and mental hospitals for the children who lives remain a mess when they are adults.

Memories of Richard Balbernie

One of the Key Texts this month is David Wills’s account of Richard Balbernie’s transformation of the former Cotswold Approved School into the Cotswold Community. As Robert Shaw explains, Balbernie’s work was revolutionary and he never ducked the difficult issues he faced in leading the revolution.

We recall Richard addressing the Association of Heads and Matrons of Approved Schools at Swannick Conference Centre (about 1972). He was the first speaker on the first morning of the conference. Richard spoke extremely fast; what he said was hard to grasp, but it was patently obvious that it was upsetting his audience, which included a high percentage of traditionalists.

He also spoke at great length, using up his speech time, then the question time. The audience clearly wanted to raise questions and was becoming restive. When Richard started to impinge on pre-lunch drinking time, rebellion was in the air. Eventually the chair for the morning called a halt to proceedings so that the delegates could get to lunch. By this time, the Heads and Matrons were seething, and they talked of nothing else for the rest of the conference. As for Richard, he didn’t bother with lunch, and pushed off.

NCB

We have already mentioned the honours bestowed on Sir Paul Ennals and Dame Philippa Russell. When the NCB held its annual summer reception a couple of weeks ago, the place was also full of Government Ministers. Ed Balls spoke eloquently, saying all the right things, well and without notes.

He pointed out that he had now been Secretary of State longer than most, so that he was now an old hand rather than a newcomer. He said that Paul Ennals had given him six targets when he took up the post, and he ticked these off one by one, to indicate that he had both listened and acted. He had also been listening to Young NCB. After the last summer reception they had asked to meet him, he had done so, and he had followed through on the issues raised. In his input Sir Paul Ennals made a number of points about the dangers and risks lying ahead during the recession, and laid out an action plan to address them. The NCB remains the most influential independent organisation concerned with children, and it continues to set the pace.

Not from the Case Files

Every now and again the question arises where a client is ordinarily resident in order to determine which local authority is responsible for providing services. We thought that this quotation from a Judge (drawn from Clarke, Hall & Morrison) might help MPs and Peers sort out their little problem.

An individual resides where he eats, drinks and sleeps, or where his family or his servants eat, drink and sleep.

On second thoughts, we’ve seen MPs eating, drinking and sleeping in the House of Commons, at conferences etc. Perhaps it needs tightening up a bit.

‘Your Feeding Questions Answered’ by Annabel Karmel

Valerie Jackson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:19:17 +0000

This is a book for parents and possibly for professionals working as nannies.

Each page is filled with questions and answers to alleviate anxieties and promote relaxed parenthood and healthy children. It provides brief information about the development of children and what I liked is the interesting facts that are scattered throughout.

The pages are full of brightly coloured photographs of happy babies or toddlers, interspersed with wonderful pictures of home-made food. This is a fun book. There are lots of easy recipes and they are written in a reassuring manner. From a parent perspective, if a question is written in a book, perhaps you are not the only one to have those specific worries, so that in itself often alleviates some angst.

The book covers all aspects of childhood and parenthood from birth through to three years. It provides common sense responses and realistic information linked to the raising of children to be healthy, well nourished and happy.

It is a book for first time parents - and those whose imagination has dried up.

It is not a book to carry around but to use as a discussion point when friends come to visit.

I like it. It does what is says and that is all anyone can ask. Dorling Kindersley is renowned for high quality presentations and this lives up to all expectations. Children would love to look at the pictures. The recipes are easy and fun.

Karmel, Annabel Your Feeding Questions Answered (2009)

Dorling Kindersley

ISBN: 978-1-4053-3536-2

‘Communicating Through Play: Techniques for Assessing and Preparing Children for Adoption’ by Bernie Stringer

Valerie Jackson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:15:01 +0000

This is a book about the assessing and preparation of children who are deemed suitable for the process of adoption.

It is a brightly coloured flexible book with numerous photographs of children and adults in a variety of situations. It is a re-print and update of the original published in 1992. It identifies the importance of the Every Child Matters document for UK families and identifies how children’s rights and the training of social workers and therapists have changed over the ensuing years. The author acknowledges that there have been some very serious errors in adoption and fostering and in a way I suspect this book wishes to reclaim the good practice and disregard the bad.

The chapters are clearly set out, with each one summarised so that the reader is aware of what is in store. It is set out in clear print and the illustrations do not interfere with the reading of the text. The information is realistic and draws frequently on the most recent research and theories.

There is no need to read this book from cover to cover. I actually found it to be very interesting and informative. Responsibility was placed firmly on the shoulders of the adopters or foster carers. The emphasis was on partnership and cooperation where the child is the key player. Theoretical approaches linked to therapeutic techniques remained low-key and appropriate, suggesting the importance of reflecting either what the child has said or what the child has indicated through their behaviour. It emphasises the importance of openness and honesty even where adoptive parents may not always like a potential outcome.

I like this book. It is useful to have on the shelf where a family is contemplating walking into the world of fostered or adopted children.

Stringer, Bernie Communicating through Play: Techniques for assessing and preparing children for adoption

BAAF Publications

ISBN 978 1 90566465 83

In This Issue: June 2009

Editor — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:00:30 +0000

No theme, and a really mixed group of articles this month. Charles Pragnell argues forcibly for children’s rights, as against parents’, when it comes to access. Keith White applauds Facebook with a moving story. Elaine has written the third episode about Aleesha, bringing us up to date in her development, education and care. Anton Tob

Values

Editor — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:59:04 +0000

In the last two months, four important professions have suffered serious knocks. The world’s bankers have suffered a serious blow to their reputation for failing to foresee the current financial crisis and for continuing to selfishly look after their own interests in helping themselves to huge salaries and bonuses when they should be offering a better service to their customers. British politicians have had a torrid fortnight facing revelations about the ridiculous expenses claims which some of them have made to boost their income. The image of the Roman Catholic Church is badly dented, both for the catalogue of abuse suffered by children at the hands of clergy and others (most recently in Ireland) and for its defensive responses to criticism. And, of course, in relation to Baby Peter, social workers have come in for further serious criticism for failing to protect a vulnerable little child.

If we cannot rely on the integrity of the banks, the Government, the Church and the helping professions, we are in a sorry mess. Is it happenstance that all these events come together like this, or is there a pattern to it? When Job suffered disaster after disaster, he said that the only thing he wanted was a potsherd to scrape his boils. It sounds ghastly, but Gordon Brown may have some feeling of empathy.

Each of these failures is, of course, complex, and it would be foolish to suggest that there is a single simple cause. They do, however, share one common feature. In each case, the professionals involved were working within a range of expectations, professional codes, belief systems, procedures, rules, guidance and law, and the failures represented the shortcomings not only of the individuals involved, but also of these systems. These were not instances of one

Aleesha: Part 3

Webmag — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:58:26 +0000

This is the third part of Aleesha’s story. It was obvious that Aleesha was unusual when she was born, but the full nature and extent of her disabilities only became apparent little by little. The first part of Aleesha’s story, told by her mother, appeared in the April Webmag, and covered her life from birth to two and a half years old. During the second part in May, Elaine learnt that Aleesha was autistic, and had to face the problems of finding the right type of education for her. If you would like to read the first part click here, and for the second part, click here.

Coping with Communication Problems

Aleesha had now transferred to Pathways, a special needs school, which catered for children with complex learning difficulties, particularly autism. We were experiencing lots of communication problems and this was leading to some extreme behaviour from Aleesha. I was hoping that Pathways would have some solutions.

I had spoken to Dr McFaul, Consultant Paediatrician, about Aleesha and he had referred us to see Professor Reed at Dewsbury as he thought that Aleesha might have needed medication such as Ritalin, commonly used with children with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). He also referred us to the community nurses who dealt with behaviour and complex needs to see if they had any further advice for strategies in the home.

The other children took a lot of this in their stride and I tried to spend quality time with them too, as it was obvious that most of our time was taken up with hospitals and professionals of one sort or another for Aleesha. When the appointment to see Professor Reed came through, I thought we would have something to help Aleesha calm down, but once the consultation had taken place and I had time to reflect, I decided that medication was not the answer for us.

I know for some people it is the light at the end of the tunnel and does wonders for their children. I just did not think it would help Aleesha with the struggle with her communication. I just couldn’t see it helping to progress her, as often these drugs slow responses down. I needed Aleesha to communicate, not slow down. So it was back to strategies and patience.

Respite

Aleesha’s care worker had suggested overnight respite. I was all for it, but was not happy for Aleesha to go to a family setting. I know that there are wonderful caring families, but I felt that if Aleesha’s needs got too demanding for a family to cope with, we would face yet another change with her. I wanted a long-term setting that would offer Aleesha a place where she recognised the setting and not just the people. This would help to minimise any long term disruption such as new staff or children. If a family couldn’t cope, she would then have a new setting with new people and routines to get used to, and I felt we needed to avoid this.

So we went to the Panel. As Aleesha was only six, once I had explained my reasons, they agreed with me. We went on a waiting list and after a few months we got a place at Wasdale, a care home for children with complex needs. Aleesha was awarded three overnight stays a month This was just what we needed, as I am told sleep deprivation is a form of torture. I now had planned time with the others, and a chance to recharge my batteries.

Support

We now received a visit from Julie Wilkinson, a Community Nurse. She was brilliant. It wasn’t that she told me anything I wasn’t already trying; it was that she reassured me that what I was doing was right. It just takes time and unwavering commitment to help guide Aleesha in the right direction. Julie has been with us eighteen months and has only just taken a back seat from helping with advice on sleeping and toileting, bringing the school, the respite care home and ourselves all to work on the same strategies. This is vital: it helps to compound and reinforce communication and correct behaviour.

School

The school worked extremely hard with Aleesha. I had explained that often Aleesha did not respond to small changes. I could easily take her out of routine, so we as a family could go out and have a meal, for instance, with little effect. Aleesha was just noisy and impatient, like lots of children at her mental age of around two years. However, once she realised that this was now her new routine, that’s when she could get difficult, but they had dealt with this every day.

So they were not fazed once Aleesha started nipping, biting and generally being a holy terror. The picture exchange communications system was used at every class, meal or outing. The teachers also sign; in fact they use every form of communication until one sticks, and nearly all the children progress to one that works best for them.

Aleesha’s first year went by, and I did not think that much had changed until we had her review for her statement of educational needs. All children in special needs schools will have one, and they are updated yearly to ensure that sufficient funding and the correct procedures are in place for each individual.

Progress …

This is when I realised just how much progress she had made. Large chunks of the statement were changed to reflect Aleesha’s growing progress. It was a far cry from main stream children of the same age, but to us it was real. We could look and really believe that we had made the right choice for Aleesha. It was such a relief.

Once started, the progress for Aleesha over the next school year was fantastic. Her toileting had improved and there was only the occasional accident. Her speech was the one area that had progressed above all expectations in such a short period of time. Aleesha now had meaningful words used appropriately, and this helped with her behaviour, as it lessened some of the frustrations. She could say

Family Law: Dire Consequences for Children

Charles Pragnell — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:57:32 +0000

The family law legislation which is currently in force in Australia, the UK, the USA and Canada is proving to be having disastrous consequences for the children of those countries and are often leading to serious breaches and violations of their rights under international conventions.

The legislation is largely framed around the rights of parents and in particular to their rights to a `meaningful relationship’ with their children after separation and divorce and to `equal and shared parenting’. Such terms and the general approach have meant that children are treated merely as possessions and commodities and for their time to be split as courts may, in their wisdom, choose. The rights of children under UN Conventions are given only token regard in the law and in court practices, especially their right to be protected and provided with a safe and secure environment in which to grow and develop and to have their wishes and feelings taken into consideration when decisions are made affecting their lives.

It seems to be of no matter that a parent may not have previously enjoyed or even sought a `meaningful relationship’ with the child prior to separation, and may even have disliked, shunned, or been indifferent to the child and his/her needs. Neither does it matter if the parent has spent very little time with the child prior to the separation but has pursued their own recreational and leisure activities and taken no interest in the child. The approach taken by courts is to ignore or disregard such conduct by a parent and simply apply the rule that the parent has the absolute and inalienable right to a see the child and to have care of the child.

An even worse scenario occurs when a parent has used violence toward the other partner - violence which has either direct or indirect consequences for the child, in that the child will at the least have suffered emotional harm from seeing or experiencing the conflict and its effects, and will have often experienced physical violence and abuse when the violence was being perpetrated, and occasionally may have suffered sexual abuse.

Although the legislation does make some reference that such child abuse should be taken into account in family law proceedings, the courts tend to see the

Reforming Youth Welfare in Serbia

Anton Tob — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:56:09 +0000

Regarding youth welfare in Serbia, a lot has changed within the last few years. A procedure of de-institutionalisation has been implemented, and as a result seventy per cent of the provision for children and young people has already been closed or converted into facilities for disabled people.FICE-Serbia has already been active as an NGO (non-governmental organisation) for many years. Under Zeljka Burgund’s dedicated guidance, FICE is supporting both the professional education of employees and the strengthening of contacts between youth welfare networks.

Training and Support

In cooperation with FICE-Netherlands, the project

In Praise of Facebook

Dr Keith J. White — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:55:03 +0000

Every now and again you find you are thinking the unthinkable, and in this case, writing the unthinkable. If someone had told me that I would head a column with the title above I probably would have laughed them out of court. After all, I have chosen not to possess a mobile (cell) phone, prefer a fountain pen when writing, do not have or aspire to having a Tom-Tom in my car, and have no intention of joining the crowds who connect by Facebook and associated variations on this electronic-communication theme. So, assuming it is not a mistake, or foisted upon me by the Editor in an attempt to retain some

Nationwide Celebration of Residential Education in the U.S.

Webmag — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:54:44 +0000

As the economy worsens, family challenges become more pronounced. Reports indicate that one in 50 American children are homeless. Child abuse cases are rising. Many families have lost a once strong grasp of a stable, supportive, educative environment to call home. Residential education programs - boarding schools and children’s homes for economically and socially disadvantaged youth - across the country are responding to these challenges.

May 6, 2009 is the first National Residential Education Day in the United States. Across the country, approximately 40 residential education programs will be raising awareness of their services as a crucial option for at-risk children. Programs from Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida to Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and beyond are hosting open house events, bringing student and alumni testimonials to state Capitol Hills, instituting letter-writing campaigns to state legislators, holding month-long inspirational speaker series for students, and making “A Day in the Life of…” films to spread awareness of this valuable education alternative.

Whether called a prep program, children’s home, boarding, or more recently residential charter school, residential education is an umbrella term for community-like settings where at-risk children live and learn together, outside of their homes, within stable, supportive environments. Long recognized as a desirable model for children from more affluent families, residential education is a viable and important option for thousands of children nationwide.

In the U.S. each year residential education programs serve over 10,000 children who are severely challenged by homelessness, abuse, neglect, and low-income, high-crime neighborhoods, and they have an impressive outcome: 80% of graduates go on to attend two- and four-year colleges.

“Children need, at a minimum, physical and emotional safety, and a quality education. They need to belong to a nurturing community, to understand their potential, and a supportive structure to grow in,” says Heidi Goldsmith, founder and executive director of Washington, DC-based CORE: the Coalition for Residential Education, the organization spearheading National Residential Education Day. “Ideally, that structure is a good family. But if that is not possible at this point in a child’s life, a well-run RE program education can provide for a child’s needs.”

With an average length of stay of two years and funded privately or through a public-private partnership, residential education is a growing trend that transforms the lives of children on the margins.

September 2006 federal foster care legislation added residential education as a valid placement option for children in the child welfare system, and as a viable alternative to traditional foster care homes, in addition to a place where other at-risk children live and learn, so that they can become productive citizens.

Alumnus Michael Jones says, “I would not be where I am today without the help and influence of the caring staff, teachers, and houseparents at Crossnore. What is so amazing is that for any other person, there are roadblocks to the things I have done and want to do. For me, these roadblocks just kind of disappeared because Crossnore gave me these opportunities.” Enrolling in Crossnore School in 2004 after his family faced financial crisis and his once stable home unraveled, Michael graduated last year and, after working for the Obama presidential campaign, is now a freshman at New York University.

For information about residential education, contact CORE: the Coalition for Residential Education, 301-656-6101 or www.residentialeducation.org.

Editor’s note : This article reached us before the National Residential Education Day, but just after the May edition of the webmag had been published; we hope the day went well. Maybe next year other countries would like to join in.

Introducing an MA Degree Course in Residential Care and Boarding Education at York St John University

Webmag — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:53:37 +0000

A Unique Course

Although the UK is well-known for the variety of its residential education and care provision and has a long tradition of boarding, the only degree awards available to practitioners, other than the MA at York St John, are at the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care and are focused upon Scotland. This situation has not always obtained and in the 1970s and 1980s there were flourishing schools of residential education training at the universities of Bristol and Newcastle. In the 1970s, there were also specialised PGCE courses at Durham and Newcastle Universities.

Given that there are some 145,000 children and young people in residence, half of them in boarding, and that there are nineteen recognised sectors of residential and boarding education and care, it is strange that only one university in England and Wales, York St John, is committed to the field. Having previously tried to establish a course at several older and a few universities, the reason for the lack of interest appears to be the absence of staff with experience or enthusiasm for the subject.

Other than the York St John MA course, the awards currently available comprise: for the entire field of residential education and care, National Vocational Qualifications up to the Managers in Residential Child Care Award and, specifically for boarding, two professional certificates at Roehampton University.

York St John University specialises in education and care training. The University offers an MA (Residential Education) or MA (Boarding) within its Educational Improvement Development and Change Masters’ Degree programme. This is the only MA degree of its kind in England and Wales.

The Programme

The programme comprises four modules: two core and two specialist modules. The core modules are:

(i) Introduction to Practitioner Enquiry and

(ii) Planning a Practitioner Research Project.

The specialist modules are:

(i) Holistic Approaches to Education and Wellbeing in Residential Environments and

(ii) Skills of the Social Pedagogue.

For the core modules, the Enquiry and Research normally take place within the student’s own place of work. The specialist modules can be focused towards a particular sector (eg boarding or custodial care) depending upon the settings of the students. The fifth element in the degree is a dissertation, again normally based in the student’s place of work.

The first specialist module provides an introduction to the full range of boarding and residential settings for young people. Using examples from all of these, the varying social, physical and external characteristics of the residential environment are analysed and the main issues are identified. Students will be able to consider different approaches to common issues and to examine the potential for the transfer of good practice among settings. For their research and practice, students will, therefore, be able to draw upon a wider range of approaches than those found within their own setting.

The second specialist module focuses upon the role of the social pedagogue, as expressed in Every Child Matters (2003) and observed in much of continental Europe, and covers principally education, health and social care, the main concerns in boarding and residential education and care. In the light of their consideration of the residential environment, students will identify and develop the skills of the social pedagogue required to address the issues which commonly arise in the different settings. As a result, for their research and practice, students will be able to incorporate a variety of approaches to the role of the social pedagogue.

The course is by distance learning with a requirement for four long weekends (two in each of the two years of the course) at the University. Between the visits to York, there is tutorial support, each student having a personal tutor.

The tutor in charge of the MA Residential Education Care / Boarding course is Professor Ewan Anderson. He has practical experience throughout the system, having run his own boarding house and worked at some stage for short periods in most of the other residential settings for young people. He has produced three books on the subject and holds a doctorate in residential/boarding education.

Interested? - the Practical Details

On completion of Year 1 {Core Module (i) and Specialist Module (i)}, the student can be awarded a Certificate. Completion of Year 2 {Core Module (ii) and Specialist Module (ii)}, the student can be awarded a Diploma. With the production of the dissertation there is the full award of the MA. The course is scheduled to be completed in about 2 years and the cost for the complete programme, for 2009/10,

CCHN - Child Care History Network

Webmag — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:52:06 +0000

The Child Care History Network was set up on Thursday 23 October 2008. Anyone who is concerned about the history of child care services for children and young people in the United Kingdom is welcome to become a member.

Why is the History of Child Care Important?

The history of child care is important - and in particular at the present time - for the following reasons:

An understanding of the history of child care services will help to inform the profession and those in positions of power and influence, so that they learn from the past.

Individuals who have used the services or relatives of service users may need to understand their experiences and the context within which the services were provided.

The quality of today’s services is founded on the work of our predecessors, and it should be celebrated.

There is a serious risk that records and other archives are being irretrievably lost.

At present there is no list of child care archives to which historians, researchers or students can refer.

There is no national archive to which people can send their papers and books, nor any list of established repositories prepared to archive materials.

The way that training has developed in recent years, there is a loss of awareness of earlier writings and research, and there is the risk that without the insights of the past, professionals’ understanding of children’s needs and how they may be met is the poorer.

What Sort of People Join CCHN?

Archivists, university lecturers, librarians, residential child care workers, social workers, consultants, early years specialists, psychotherapists, people who have been in care and many others.

What Activities are Envisaged for CCHN?

First it is hoped to identify all the archives of which we are aware. Second to encourage individuals and organisations with archives to ensure that their records are lodged safely, to identify repositories prepared to accept archival materials, and to publicise the need to preserve historical materials before they are damaged or lost. Promoting opportunities for members to meet to discuss issues e.g. seminars/conferences/special interest groups/ online discussions etc.

Membership fees are

‘Adult Status of Children with Contrasting Early Experience’ by Harold M. Skeels

Webmag — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:51:18 +0000

Harold M Skeels (1966) Adult status of children with contrasting early experience: a follow-up study Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 31(3):1-65

Harold Manville Skeels (1901-1970) was a psychologist who, following his appointment in 1932 as one of the first psychologists working in Iowa State institutions, became associated with research which undermined the dominant view of intelligence test results. His first paper in 1936 arose out of this work and this paper, one of his last, revisits perhaps his most significant research project in terms of confounding expectations.

Key Ideas

- IQ test results are significantly affected by a person’s current circumstances.

- Quality care is associated with positive one-to-one relationships.

- Women with learning disabilities can care satisfactorily for young children.

- Poor quality care costs five times more than good quality care.

Contents

Harold Skeels starts by saying that this study concerns 25 children, 20 of whom were illegitimate, who were admitted before the age of two to the nursery of an orphanage where there was little stimulation and then moved to cottages of 30-35 children where they largely remained inside until the age of six when they started school. From time to time some of the children who appeared less able would be transferred to institutions for mentally disabled children.

In 1932 he had been appointed as psychologist to the home and had transferred two

‘Some Theoretical Observations on Group Care’ by Martin Wolins

Webmag — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:50:39 +0000

Martin Wolins (1973) Some theoretical observations on group care in Pappenfort, Donnell M and Kilpatrick, Dee Morgan and Roberts, Robert W (Eds) Child caring: social policy and the institution Chicago: Aldine ISBN 0 202 36101 2

Martin Wolins (1920-1985) was born in Odessa and moved with his parents to Pinsk, Poland, from where he fled to the USA in 1938. He was not able to train as a vet as he had hoped and went into social work, joining the staff of the University of California, Berkeley in 1958. An orthodox Jew, he undertook extensive research into group care in Israel and on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the 1960s and 1970s before retiring in 1982 and settling in Israel where he died.

This brief article, however, is significant in setting out for the first time a cognitive developmental approach to group care which, while having a wider application than child care, nonetheless provides a new way of looking at children’s behaviour and which explains why, for example, different approaches appear to be more effective at different stages in a child’s development, as well as providing new ways of assessing, planning and estimating the likely success of particular interventions.

Since then the work of Carol Gilligan and her colleagues (Gilligan, 1993; Gilligan et al., 1988) has greatly extended the usefulness of cognitive developmental ideas by identifying the different issues in male and female moral and cognitive development but, as far as I am aware, there has been no attempt to build on these ideas in group care.

Key Ideas

- The purpose of group care is normally socialisation.

- The role of the family in relation to group care is viewed in different ways.

- The relationships people have within group care can fall into one of four broad categories: dependency, nomocracy, other orientation and exchange.

- Professionals have no professional role within group care.

- Group care can have a positive role in assisting people who are negotiating transitions.

- Goffman’s analysis of asylums is fatally flawed.

Contents

Martin Wolins starts by arguing that, though some are used for warehousing or restraint, the main goal of asylums is socialisation which includes morality, knowledge and skill.

He then reviews the current situation, noting

- Kathleen Jones’s comment that the literature of dysfunction “has tended to confuse the elements in criticism by treating the institutional situation as a whole” (1967, p. 14),

- the widely varying views about the family model in group care from Hermann Gmeiner (1960) who argues that Kinderd

News Views

Webmag — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:49:56 +0000

Repentance and Penance

The long-awaited report on the abuse of children in Irish schools and homes by Roman Catholic nuns, priest and lay staff has at last been published, and reports indicate that the commission did its work thoroughly, documenting the abuse in detail. If so, there is at least a platform of acknowledged fact on which to base the next steps. The abuse cannot be undone, but the victims know that they have been heard and taken seriously.While the abuse is terrible, the Roman Catholic Church’s response has been dismaying. Apologetic words are now being said, but the impression given is that the Church as a whole is still defensive, upset at being caught out, rather than truly penitent for the evil which their own people have caused to vulnerable children entrusted to their care.

The Church has the solution within its power. Its own processes acknowledge that humans are fallible, that they sin, that they need to confess, and that they can be absolved and be forgiven, to start again. It is not just a theological process; it is one of the ways in which humans behave. After doing terrible things we can change and renew our lives.

But if we are to change in this way, we need to accept that we have done wrong, we need to be truly sorry (not just annoyed at being caught) and we need to want to make amends to those whom we have wronged, in the sight of the whole community. This applies both to the individuals who abused the children and to those who have excused, condoned, covered up or defended the abusers’ conduct.

What is more, the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church as a whole is now seriously tarnished. The Church as a whole needs to reflect on its organisational failings, that have permitted the abuse of children entrusted to their care in one country after another.

It may be argued that this is not a fair reflection on the many first-rate child care workers who are Catholics. We would not want any of the tarnish to adhere to any of them individually, but they are members of a Church which needs to acknowledge its systemic failures and address them. Part of the Church’s teaching is that humans are liable to sin; this applies to the clergy as much as the laity, and maybe it is the unquestioned power of the clergy which has corrupted some of their number. If the Roman Catholic Church learns its lesson, it could be a stronger, more open community, more suited to the twenty-first century. But to achieve this, it has to repent and to do penance, to indicate that it is truly sorry, and that it wishes to change and start afresh.

This is not easy, but it is necessary. Any failure to do so, for example by continuing to act defensively, will blunt the moral sensibilities of the Church, when it should be among the leaders in speaking as the nation’s conscience, and it will fail to regain the respect of the community as a whole. The Roman Catholic Church has an important role to play in child welfare and education, and the wider community needs the Church to be credible.

Aleesha

This month we are printing the third and final part of Elaine’s journey in bringing up Aleesha - final in the sense that it brings us up to date. We have found it a moving story for two main reasons.

The first is that it is a story of an ordinary family where one of their number has an extraordinary range of disabilities. The parents were not professionals who chose to work with people with disabilities; it was not until Aleesha was born that the range of her problems began to unfold. They were not trained or qualified in care or education. But they have battled to understand her disabilities and to get the best for Aleesha, while trying to ensure that the other children did not lose out. The battle has been difficult, but they are still there, and still fighting. Elaine’s commitment is impressive. Every child needs that level of commitment from their parents, but in cases such as Aleesha’s the demand placed upon the parents, and indeed the whole family, is considerable.

The second message which struck us was that Aleesha’s story had a

May 2009: In This Issue

Editor — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:40:36 +0000

There is quite a variety this month. Following on from the April theme of Disability there is an article by Valerie Jackson looking at the nature of disability, a track from a CD and the second part of Elaine’s unfolding story of Aleesha, as she learnt about the extent of her disabilities and how to cope with them.

Then there is the second instalment of the mother’s story about adopting a child, overcoming a series of hurdles.

There is a thoughtful examination of the faith basis of Action for Children, a paper given by Clare Tickell at the SCA Annual Seminar.

Chris Durkin writes about the effects of the recession on young people. Keith White discusses the way a badminton club helps young people to make social contacts. Valerie Jackson has written an appreciation of the life of Elinor Goldschmied, a pioneer in play. CAU! are asking for young people to support their anti-assault campaign.

The Key Texts this month concern a book by Tom O’Neill, the brother of Dennis, whose death preceded the Children Act 1948, and Mr Lyward’s Answer, a classic of observer participation. There are also two Book Reviews - about growing vegetables and when a child goes missing respectively.

And finally, News Views has its usual half dozen bits and pieces.

Adoption - A Mother’s Story : Part 2

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:38:30 +0000

The first part of this account appeared in the March 2009 edition of the Webmag. Click here if you would like to read that first.

Waiting for News

The Panel took place in June 2007, very close to my adoption agency. I met my social worker at the offices (I took my Mum with me for support) and we all walked over in the rain to the building where the Panel was being held.

We entered the building and were left to sit and be nervous whilst my social worker entered the room where everyone who would make decisions about my ability to raise a child sat. She went in to see the members before I did as they needed to ask her questions about my abilities separately and to clear up any aspects of the Prospective Adopter’s Report on which they needed further clarification.

It felt like an eternity that she was in there, and all sorts of possible problems were running through my head. In actual fact she was probably only in the room about 10 to 15 minutes before she came out with the Chair of the Panel - who was very welcoming, friendly and tried to put me at ease before I entered the room.

The Panel itself was made up of a number of members from all aspects of life. There were adoptive parents, adults who had been adopted as children, a medical advisor, a manager of adoption agency and a few others. To be honest, I’m not very good in front of crowds and it felt rather uncomfortable to be the centre of everyone’s attention. I was asked a few questions, but as I was clearly uncomfortable it wasn’t prolonged. In fact, I can’t even remember the questions that I was asked. It’s all a bit of a blur. I was in and out within ten minutes. My social worker left the room with me and told me that I’d done very well and that she would call me later on in the day to let me know what the Panel’s decision was.

So that was it - there was nothing more I could do but wait for the decision. My future relied on the Panel saying

Faith in Social Care

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:36:28 +0000

This paper was delivered at the Social Care Association Annual Seminar in Cardiff on 11 March 2009, and is republished with SCA’s permission. Other papers from the Seminar, which focused on the theme of Faith in Social Care can be found on the SCA website: www.socialcareassociation.co.uk .

Thanks for invitation; it is great privilege to be asked to come and talk. Action for Children has a strong link with SCA, both in terms of individuals and also in terms of shared aspiration and vision. The timing to come was good - we also have a celebration this year. 140 years ago the Reverend Thomas Bowman Stephenson set up ministry in Lambeth, South East London, and so I have been researching our heritage and roots in preparation for this.

I am therefore going to spend a bit of time talking about the history and genesis of my organisation as context, before going on to say a bit about what faith in social care looks like to me in the early twenty first century and some of the challenges I think we must overcome if we are to stay relevant and true to our enduring values and mission.

John Wesley and Rev. Thomas Stephenson

So first, a short look backwards. As a Methodist, Stephenson was obviously greatly influenced by John Wesley’s thinking on rationality - “that good could be comprehended without revelation” - in other words that the emphasis was on works, not faith. Wesley believed that a Christian could be made “perfect in love” and that a believer’s motives would be guided by a deep desire to please God. This was captured in the idea of prevenient grace - personal salvation coming through faith rather than pre-destination. This was a real departure from earlier thinking and provided Methodists with a huge impetus to do and this was certainly true for Stephenson.

Stephenson was himself a son of the Manse from the North of England, raised with Wesley’s words ringing in his ears. He came to Lambeth from Newcastle in 1868 and was shocked by what he saw on arrival in London.

Stephenson was of his time - a Victorian in the late 19th century in an England where there were no public services provided for children other than the workhouse. Compulsory education for under-10-year-olds was two years away and free universal schooling was still twenty years away.

To quote him on his impression of the homeless children who confronted him, “Here were my poor brothers and sisters, sold to hunger and the devil. How could I be free of their blood if I did not try to save some of them? I began to feel that my time had come.”

The Children’s Home

In parallel, two Sunday School secretaries, Alfred Mager and Francis Horner, had been moved to do something about the plight of destitute homeless children in Southwark and approached Stephenson with an idea of developing a model lodging house for homeless children. Within a year of his arrival in London, Stephenson was sufficiently well known for Mager and Horner to consider that he would assist them with their not inconsiderable fundraising task

Within 3 months, George Oliver (who all his life signed himself G. Oliver Number 1) had moved in to 8 Church Street, Waterloo and the Children’s Home was born. From the beginning, the Children’s Home sought to be innovative and child-centred. Stephenson was very influenced when setting up the regime at Waterloo Road by Dr. Wichern at the Rauhe Haus, near Hamburg in Germany.

Wichern’s idea was to gather children in families, living in separate houses, with a common school and common workshop, as opposed to offering large, impersonal institutional care. This made sense to Stephenson as a reaction against the impersonality of the workhouse and the “home principle” was to be a pervasive influence in voluntary child provision for many years. Ironically, of course, it is still the case that, 140 years on, politicians regularly make the journey to Germany to learn about pedagogy and to understand why it is that outcomes for looked after children are so much more impressive there than here. (The issue of comparative resourcing between the two countries is curiously absent when they return with their insights but that’s another story.)

Aims and Objectives

Stephenson described his model in one of his fundraising pamphlets thus:

It checks, if it does not entirely prevent, the evils so frequently found in very large gatherings of children - evils against which special precautions are needed, when the previous habits and associations of the children have been so foul. It renders maintenance of discipline possible without crushing the spontaneity and vivacity of child-life. It secures an exactness of oversight and a dealing with individual temperaments according to their special peculiarities which, in other circumstances, would not be possible; and it reproduces, as nearly as may be, that home life which is God’s grand device for the education, in the best meaning of the word, of the human race.

He goes on to elaborate on the objectives of the home which were:

To shelter, feed, clothe, education, train to industrial habits and, by God’s blessing, lead to Christ, children who are in danger of falling into criminal habits. It is commenced in humble dependence on the blessings of Almighty God, and it is hoped that its daily engagements will be pervaded by a religious spirit. For it is the firm faith of its founders that good citizens can only be found in good Christians and that Christian philanthropy should aim at nothing less than the conversion of the soul from sin to God.

Evangelism and Links with Methodism

Unlike some of his more evangelical peers, as a Methodist Stephenson believed in “taking faith to the people wherever they are” and that no distinction could be made between faith and social responsibilities. Whilst there was still a missionary element to his work, and he firmly believed that it was not possible to separate Christianity from salvation, he was working at a time when the hitherto inexorable link between evangelicism and good works was beginning to loosen. And certainly, by the end of the First World War, voluntary agencies were far less inclined to talk in religious or evangelical terms about their work and increasingly the context was more secular and so it has remained until now.

The links between Methodism and Action for Children have remained very strong. Constitutionally Action for Children was a part of the Methodist Church until very recently, although the evangelical element went long ago. Nonetheless, the enduring values of the organisation have continued to reflect Stephenson’s belief that the organisation must go to where it is needed the most, and it must do and say what it needs to, in order to be in a position to offer support and comfort to a child who needs it.

At times this has caused tensions between the organisation and the Church - our position on sexuality and adoption and fostering, for instance, has troubled some of the more traditional Methodists and been debated on several occasions at their annual Conference.

At other times, however, our links with the Church have strengthened our resolve as an organisation, reminding us of those enduring values, encouraging us to work with German Jewish refugee children during the Second World War, as an example, when anti-German sentiment was eclipsing everything else.

Core Values

This centrality of values to social care creates, I believe, the linkage to faith its broadest sense. Action for Children’s core and enduring values, revisited periodically and never changed in terms of substance, are, as already stated, to reach out to the most vulnerable children and young people and to be there for them

Further, the recent re-examination and subsequent restatement of our values and mission statement have resulted in us realising that in order to make sense of the increasingly complex value bases, cultural identities and religious perspectives in the wider communities in which we work, it is essential that we find a route map through that - a compass point if you like - that will assist us in steering us through some of the ethical dilemmas that we face.

Our (obvious I know) solution to these came through a realisation that if we explicitly, and repeatedly, put the child at the centre of what we do and how we think, that gives us at least a framework to guide us. Putting the child first and reaching out to the children who need it the most are principals underpinned by the faith that we have in children and the belief that we have in their right to be loved and nurtured - Barnardo’s current strap line is, of course, Believe in Children which expresses the same sentiment and core values, no coincidence given our common history.

Challenges

So what are the challenges that face us in keeping this at the front of our minds in 2009?

We work with some of the most disadvantaged children and young people across the UK. In some communities religion or faith is a key identifier of self for members of those communities. For us, who want to work with the children who need us the most, it is imperative that we find ways of reaching those children and this must be done sensitively.

This means we must identify ways to reach out to those communities, and this includes finding ways of encouraging members of those communities to work with and for our organisation. To do this successfully, of course, means that we must have a narrative ourselves for how different perspectives and religious beliefs can co-exist and learn from each other

Until very recently, Action for Children employed a Director of Pastoral Care who was always an ordained Methodist Minister. The history of this post went right back to the days when many of our staff were not social work qualified and, indeed, we were leading the way ourselves in providing social work training to young women working in our residential children’s homes.

More recently, the need for a specific individual with responsibility for pastoral care has been overtaken by formal mechanisms for supervising and supporting staff. As a result, the role became more one that acted as key liaison point with the Methodist Church, ensuring that the relationship remained healthy and dialogue ongoing. Two years ago, we decided that we should extend this further into other faiths, in recognition of the multi-cultural environment within which we now operate. Thus, we now have a Faith Communities Advisor whose responsibility it is to develop our thinking on how we extend our work and practice into different faith communities.

Part of the thinking on this came from conversations and work with people from faiths other than our founding one of Methodism, who said that they wanted to work alongside us, and indeed in some instances, felt more comfortable doing this with an organisation with these roots, rather than one without.

Interestingly also, in these times of increasing economic hardship, we are finding that it is members of local churches of different denominations who are coming forwards with credit unions, premises and other resources which they have to offer and where they feel it is their duty to make these available to communities in need. This is particularly the case with some of our children’s centres, offering precious community resource in some of the poorest communities.

Other Faiths

What we have yet to do is develop an effective dialogue into faiths beyond Christianity although the intention is there and there is a willingness that we know of within some of the communities where we work where there are a high percentage of Muslim families.

The third pillar of Islam, Zakat - purity and property purification - which is the idea that Muslims pay a proportion of their goods or wealth for the welfare of their community is not only compatible with what I have just described, but seems to me to go much further than its Judaeo-Christian equivalents. In the Christian context, as pointed out by Hartley Dean and Zafar Khan in Muslim Perspectives on Welfare, the parting with wealth is a private and pious but essentially charitable - and discretionary - act.

In contrast, atonement is not the purpose of the Zakat in Islam which has a far broader and more altruistic purpose altogether, considering as it does that it is social justice itself that is served by a redistribution of wealth among the ummah or community. In Islam, the hoarding of wealth is believed to lead to economic malaise and Zakat not only purifies the wealth of the individual, but also keeps the social, economic and political body or structure of the ummah from deterioration.

Dean and Khan explain this by using the metaphor that Zakat taps the parts of the body where the blood is congested and transfers it to those parts which are weak or anaemic. I would suggest that it is redistribution.

In the Christian tradition of giving, beneficiaries are supplicants, with no rights to assistance. In the Islamic world, however, this is not the case. The needy are considered to be as worthy in their own right and have the right to claim from wealthier sections of society.

Opportunities

What might we be able to achieve, then, if we could take these faith-driven approaches to redistribution and learn from the best of each of them, or even think of how the whole could be made greater than the sum of the parts, particularly when moving into recession when the pressures and challenges facing children will be particularly great?

This might be fanciful, but I believe it is worth exploring and, at the very least, there is clearly much for us to learn about how this personal relationship with faith in Islam translates itself into community responsibility in a way that is much less stigmatising than the approach we are most familiar with, which has its roots in Victorian philanthropy, underpinned by an innate sense of “mission” and salvation

Further, I also believe that if we are to keep meeting the needs of the most vulnerable children at the centre of our work, we must play our part in understanding how we can disentangle and address the complex factors of race, ethnicity, identity, class and gender better.

Faith and Conflicting Beliefs

All this plays out against a backdrop, however, of an organisation that is now, here in 2009, an essentially secular one, albeit with a strong historical link with Methodism. The articulation of our guiding principles and values as already set out, being the centrality of the child, works well for us as a glue, going some way to uniting each of us with our individual belief systems with the core mission of the organisation’s goals.

This doesn’t mean that faith, or indeed the absence of faith for many, does not come up and is not an issue that needs to be tackled. As an organisation there are occasions when different belief systems and how the difference applies to children, become an issue.

Social work values in this country and culture rightly place great emphasis on anti-discriminatory stances and this can become a real issue when the personal lives or orientation may be unacceptable to people of particular religious points of view. Many religions struggle with homosexuality as an obvious example. Recently we have seen how the Christian churches’ teachings are ambiguous and sometimes tortured in seeking to tolerate but not condone. Likewise, Islam is not tolerant of homosexuality in principle.

At Action for Children, we come across too many instances where young people have been bullied, assaulted or even thrown out of home because of their sexuality and we do everything that we can to support these young people in who they are and in the choices that they are making about their lives. This can create dilemmas for those who feel conflicted between their personal beliefs and what they have been taught, and our emphasis on not judging and supporting.

There are many other issues which may offend and cause difficulties within the context of belief systems. Abortion, euthanasia and, as previously mentioned, some kinds of adoption, are all considered very contentious and all are, of course, intensely personal.

These are not new dilemmas in social care: every generation has them. They manifest themselves currently through the complexity of the multi-faith and multi-cultural societies that we live in.

Many of the child protection cases which have ended tragically over recent years have included within them some elements of differing belief systems, creating at best a nervousness on the part of social workers around the legitimacy of their interventions. This has to be understood and improved upon if we are to keep children safe and help them to thrive.

And fundamental to this is finding a way to put to one side notions of superiority, whether it be that our own belief system is the better one or that because we believe in something, we are inherently better or, indeed, because we believe that our conviction that there is no God sets us apart.

I say putting to one side here because herein surely lies one of the most challenging elements of this debate.

Christianity, as pointed out by Terry Philpot in his chapter on Values in Social Work: A Christian Perspective, with its fundamental belief in the existence of original sin, asserts a flawedness in man, an inability to reach his true potential. He goes on to remind us that Christianity also teaches that unless man works with God in the world, then his efforts will be foredoomed to failure, however well-intended.

Islam for its part has a perspective that all people are born Muslims, but that social and cultural influences can divert the development of people from becoming proper Muslims. Therefore, it is not possible to convert to Islam, rather people revert, symbolising a return to the correct and original spiritual path.

And the Torah makes similar claims for Jews stating, “For you are a holy people to YHWH your God, and God has chosen you to be his treasured people from all the nations that are on the face of the earth.”

I don’t pretend to know how we reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable forces. They are not new and indeed they underpin a huge amount of what has defined world history.

The Need for a Personal Narrative

We do need a personal narrative, however, to assist us in the navigation I talked about earlier. If we are to be true to mission and values; if we are to find ways of putting social care into practice and, further, providing the environment and circumstances where a vulnerable child or young person can know love, safety and security, then we must understand how to reconcile this personal narrative with these wider contexts. We must know ourselves and understand where our beliefs and faith will be challenged and be honest when this brings limitations to our intellectual processes and ability to make objective decisions.

Social care has strong and enduring links to religion and faith. The Victorians showed us this in their missionary work, both here and abroad. There are many examples in other religions of the same thing, where there is belief that people are essentially good and redeemable and that we have a duty to reach out to people in finding and nurturing this.

But social work or social care, unlike the so-called professions, does not have a recognisable and strongly asserted identity. In a society where faith is not always held in esteem, maybe social work needs a new way of making its values relevant or, at least, a way of re-expressing what we do.

I began by talking about John Wesley and his conviction that personal salvation comes through faith rather than pre-destination and that good can be comprehended without revelation. Wesley taught that acting through conviction is what counts and this is what seems to characterise most the great social reformers throughout history. Acting on and doing something about injustice and poverty that they are witnessing.

Action for Children celebrates 140 years of this in 2009. And individually, all those of us who work in social care are concerned with this, and grapple with steering what is a difficult path with integrity on a daily basis so that we can demonstrate our overriding faith in the people we serve.

For me this is faith, howsoever defined, into practice.

Clare Tickell is the Chief Executive of Action for Children, until recently known as NCH.

Aleesha: Part 2

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:32:06 +0000

This is the second part of Aleesha’s story. It was obvious that Aleesha was unusual when she was born, but the full nature and extent of her disabilities only became apparent little by little. The first part of Aleesha’s story, told by her mother, appeared in last month’s Webmag, and covered her life from birth to two and a half years old. If you would like to read the first part, click here.

Worries

Aleesha was now two years and six months old. We still needed to know what was causing the problems, so we went to see some specialists to try and decide what the next course of action would be. She had an MRI scan (magnetic resonance imaging) and skin tests, but they did nothing to let us know what was wrong. The geneticist explained that diagnostic techniques were not yet well advanced and sometimes conditions could not be conclusively diagnosed. This was not what we wanted to hear; we just wanted to know what was wrong.

I think we thought that, if we knew, it would make things better and give us closure. You often find it’s the not knowing that is hardest to deal with, - or at least you think it is. As time goes on, you realise it isn’t. It does not matter what the condition is; it’s accepting your life has changed that really counts. Then, regardless, you can deal with the seemingly never-ending problems as they come up.

Nursery

Aleesha was now three and was due to start nursery. We already knew that she would attend a specialist unit for children with visual problems. It was not a local school, so we needed to find out how Aleesha would get there and back, as my other children were not old enough to go to school by themselves. It was just one more problem that needed solving. All of the day-to-day needs of my family were finely balanced, and it could take something as simple as Aleesha attending a different school to upset it .

These were small worries, though, as Aleesha’s lack of understanding and speech made me nervous. I had no idea how she would cope and how the other children would be. All parents worry when their child is about to start school, but we had so many more things to combat.

The teachers were lovely and tried their best to alleviate our concerns. They told us that Aleesha would catch up quickly with her speech and development. I tried to believe them; after all, they dealt with children with difficulties such as isolation and developmental problems every day. This was something that they helped children to do - to become independent outgoing individuals, so I prayed that this would be the answer, and that Aleesha would blossom, and that my fears that Aleesha had other disabilities were wrong.

Attending several meetings with the school and local authorities sorted the issue of Aleesha getting home from nursery, as we decided that, due to her erratic sleep pattern, it would be easier to have her go in the afternoon, then transport would bring her home.

A Statement of Educational Needs was also put in place, not because of her learning disabilities. That would follow as the school realised Aleesha’s full needs; this was for her safety, and to help her with lessons such as reading. She needed all her work re-done to a visual size that would allow Aleesha to see. It was mentally exhausting. You do not realise just how much work and organising there is to be done for any child with special needs entering school, and the more complex the condition, the more professionals who have to be involved. They each have their own bit of knowledge and somehow the teachers have to make all these into a working package for the individual. This package then becomes the Individual Educational Plan, and Aleesha had one before she even got to her first day at nursery school.

GOSH

By the time Aleesha started nursery all the specialists who were involved had their own views about Aleesha’s problems. Some said it was a syndrome; others like me thought that she was autistic. We had exhausted all avenues, so Dr McFaul decided to send Aleesha to Great Ormond Street Hospital in the hopes that they would have a better idea.

We met the leading consultant in Britain on albinism. She did some tests to confirm her original diagnosis of albinism, as there are other conditions such as Angelman Syndrome that could present similar symptoms, but Aleesha had got the correct diagnosis, so there was no explanation for the rest of the problems that she had. We were referred to the Wolfson Centre.

At Nursery School

In the meantime her school were experiencing difficulties and it was obvious that Aleesha did not just need time to catch up. Aleesha had had regular speech therapy, and during the past year this had made little impact on her ability to talk. Communication was still mainly through gestures.

Aleesha also had a one-to-one full-time support to help her with every aspect of her day. This would continue into full-time schooling, and we hoped she would still have the same helper, as she had a really good connection with her. Aleesha’s behaviour was also suffering, however, as she struggled to let us know what she wanted, and as for toilet training, this was a minefield! I did not know even how to begin, and again I felt at a loss as to how to make things better.

The Wolfson Centre

Around the time Aleesha transferred to full-time school we had another appointment and had to go back to Great Ormond Street at the Wolfson Centre for Gene Therapy of Childhood Illness. Clair Mushrow, Aleesha’s care worker, attended the appointment with us, as we were not sure what was going to happen or what our reaction would be, so having an independent person would help. Her emotions were not as involved as ours, so she could take in any information and talk it through with us later if we needed to. I highly recommend this, as the impact of your child’s condition can often hit you later when there is no-one to talk to.

At the Wolfson Centre we had two fantastic professionals, Dr Alison Salt and Dr Miriam Bindman. They asked what we thought about Aleesha’s condition, so I told them I thought she was autistic. They explained that they would use varying methods to see if Aleesha displayed enough signs to help them decide what was wrong. They would also use the Reynell-Zinkin scale; this was to help in giving a autism diagnosis.

At the end of the test they indeed gave us the news. I don’t think that we reacted how they expected - no tears, no anger or disbelief just calm acceptance. I think this was because, as we had lived with not knowing for four years, (long before the doctors gave it a second look), that to find out was just a relief. I didn’t think about what was coming in the future. I had been doing that for four years, trying to get Aleesha to the next mile-stone, and to try and have an area that was as normal in our home as any other, so this was just calm acceptance.

Full-time Schooling

The calm comes before the storm, some say, and, oh boy, it was some storm. Aleesha had transferred to full-time mainstream school, so had different teachers, and a new escort to take her and bring her home, so, as she struggled to understand and cope with all this, her moods and behaviour changed. By Christmas Aleesha had unravelled. We went through the worst and toughest period I have had to date with her. I had no idea what to do or how to help. Every one suffered as Aleesha kicked off. She became completely fixated on plastic bags and nappies. Her behaviour was extreme, going from laughing hysterically to lashing out, biting, nipping and kicking every one. She constantly went for Jessica, her sister, who bore the brunt of her moods. By the time we got through Christmas I was completely worn out and the school were suffering too.

Aleesha had gone five and there was a meeting for her Statement of Special Educational Needs, which happened yearly in June, brought forward to March as we all struggled to maintain Aleesha’s needs. She was having 32.5 hours of support a week, which was from the moment she stepped out of my house to the moment she came back. All the professionals had to write statements for the review. There were reports on occupational therapy, speech, vision, hearing and a host of others including autism resource.

They had been brought into this meeting as they were in contact to help with strategies to handle her behaviour, but so far they were having little impact at school. We had seen some calmer behaviour at home, though, as they had now also contacted us. During the meeting they were trying to decide on how to help Aleesha in a positive way, but I just knew it was time to see what other options were open.

A Change of Schools

As she could not cope with mainstream schooling it was decided Aleesha needed more specialised schooling - a blow, yes, but this had to be better than the current situation which had four teachers on rotation and Aleesha sitting at a table on her own, as she was not even close to any of the work the other children were doing. This gap would only become more and more evident as the school years went on. It was most definitely time to move her. It was sad to do so, as the children really accepted Aleesha and loved her to bits.

So there it was; the decision was made. Now it was back to meetings and school reviews to find the best special needs school for her in our area. We visited a few and decided that Pathways, an autistic resource school, would be the place. There were only four to six kids per class and at least three members of staff in each. This was a place that I felt would help Aleesha to achieve.

Thoughts on Disability

Valerie Jackson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:30:00 +0000

What is Disability?

When I consider words such as

Disability is My Ability

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:28:39 +0000

Here is the track “Disability is my Ability” by Harpreet Gill, from the album of the same name.

Click here to listen.

Converting a Problem into an Opportunity

Chris Durkin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:26:44 +0000

The news for the last year has been dominated by the slow down in the economy and the Government’s attempts to rectify the situation. The consequences for many people have been catastrophic; some people will sadly not work again.

Impact on Individuals

I thankfully have been very lucky and have only been unemployed for a short time when I was in my early twenties and when I was single. How I would cope today if I was made redundant I do not know. I can only imagine the anger and hurt I would feel. Being unemployed is not just an economic issue, it affects us emotionally and psychologically, inflicting scars that may never heal. A job gives us a wage, status, a structure to our lives and if we are lucky interesting work that gives us a sense of fulfilment. Work can, in part, define our lives by giving us economic security as well as psychological and emotional wellbeing.

The recession is not merely an economic downturn or a period of readjustment; it is a time when people’s lives are dramatically affected and even those lucky enough to remain in work feel vulnerable. Some people have argued that what appears to differentiate this current recession from previous ones is that it is affecting people from all sections of the community. Although the latter point may in part be correct, the effect on those already struggling will be greater, with those living in deprived communities hardest hit.

If we move away from a macro-level analysis and concentrate more specifically on the family, we can see that the immediate effects of the recession will be on adults of working age. However, this ignores the knock-on effects on young people. Children and young people will also suffer because of family income reduction, which may also lead to anxiety and other psychological problems, as well as potential isolation which could affect children and young people socially.

Give Education Priority

I write this article only a few days before the budget and like many I wonder what the Government is going to do and what taxes are likely to rise. A commentator recently argued that one of the most vulnerable groups in times of a recession is the young because this recession could potentially change their future. He uses evidence presented by David Blanchflower from the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee to argue that the Government should invest

Clubs and Associations

Dr Keith J. White — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:24:28 +0000

Last Friday we had a party at the Mill Grove Badminton Club. It was the final evening of the season, and the members of the club, both junior and senior, gathered to celebrate the completion of yet another season. The club was established in 1951 and has continued on Friday nights ever since. In 2002 it held a golden anniversary party to mark the completion of the first 50 years. And now we have reached 58 years.

As an extended family we are blessed with an indoor badminton court on the premises, and we realise that this is not a normal arrangement!

But on the other hand I may have tended to take it for granted. On reflection I wonder whether in all the writing I have done about Mill Grove in books, collections and articles I may have underplayed the importance of this club in the lives and development of the children and young people who live at Mill Grove. If so, this column represents a chance to put things right and make the record straight.

In many ways the club is not exceptional. True, two of the players went on to play at county standard, and three played in university teams (Cambridge, Imperial, Edinburgh and Oxford), but for the most part the standard of play is average. And with just one court, the club is small with between ten and sixteen attending on a normal evening. The players, male and female, come from the neighbourhood, and get to know about the club through school, friends or the local newsletter of the Maybank Community Association.

Social Significance

But over the years it has been a setting where many of those living at Mill Grove have enjoyed Friday nights. And why might that be of significance? This is what I have been pondering. For many of them it is the very first group that they have joined of their own freewill: it is in short their entry into civic society. Here they have met with others, played with and against them (we play almost exclusively doubles), chatted with them, umpired or been umpired, shared a cup of tea or juice and biscuit or piece of cake in a friendly setting. Please don’t underestimate the value of this social contact and experience.

Then it has been a place where they have developed their badminton skills (we have coaching and concentrate on improving each player’s standard), and from this, confidence grows. Confidence has to start somewhere, and for some children this is the setting and the sport where it happens. If I have a philosophy of education (and I think that one has begun to emerge!), one of its components would be the idea that every child has a gift that is to be discovered and nurtured. For some this may be to do with academic subjects, but for many more it may be related to sport, practical activities, personal qualities and social skills. Sport is one of the ways in which many children discover a gift, and through that acquire self-respect and the respect of others.

Then there is the experience of discovering how a club or association runs: schools, churches, shops and other places like hospitals, social services departments and the like seem to run by themselves. There are people who organise and run them: all the child or young person needs to do is to turn up: the rest is done by others to them or for them. Here it is in effect a mutual society. Members take it in turn to set up the equipment, to prepare the food and drink, to wash up and clear things away at the end.

A small committee is elected at the beginning of each season to oversee the running of the club with a chair, secretary, treasurer, and social secretary. And from time to time this group consults with the rest of the members about things like membership fees, or the arrangements for running the junior section. For some youngsters this is the first taste of how organisations work.

In time some are entrusted with helping with the junior club, umpiring and coaching, encouraging and smoothing the occasional troubled players or situations. The adherence to and upholding of agreed boundaries is vital to personal development and social well-being. I have been pleasantly surprised to see how quickly these skills are realised and internalised: how socially mature some of the youngsters become so speedily.

Opportunities Lost ?

So you can see that I am not trying to describe a remarkable club (of the charismatic nature of something like the Simon Bolivar Orchestra from Venezuela, for example). If anything, it is the sheer ordinariness of the club that is so special. But it is dawning on me that very few youngsters nowadays have the chance of being part of a club or association like this.

When I was young I was a member of a Sunday School, a Monday evening club called Ropeholders that was concerned to help children in other parts of the world, and also school football and cricket teams. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was learning a range of social skills from teamwork, to the ability to get along with others, and crucially, leadership and becoming responsible for the running of the group or club. I was being trained for civic society, for social life (outside of family and school).

Now I do not want to underestimate, let alone denigrate, the social connections made possible through schools, and the internet through facilities such as Facebook. They have their place in personal development and social connections, but they do not serve the same function as our badminton club in real life interaction, and the modeling of what it is to be an active member or part of an association of people. And if one is to be precise, the club represents the very opposite of the sort of individualism characterised by internet activity which facilitates electronic links, often (though not always) at the expense of real life contact and communication in a social setting.

Learning about Living Together

A primary challenge of human life is to find and develop ways of living together. The history of the world shows that human societies have often been very flawed in this dimension of human living. And I am not convinced that in the UK we are doing very well when it comes to the schooling of the young in social engagement and civic responsibility. Sadly, some young people whom I have talked with in groups and clubs have told me that they are involved because it looks good on their CV! That is individualism writ large.

In the final analysis social cohesion depends not on (selfish or narcissistic) individualism in the hope that everything might somehow work out for the common good (a variation on Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”), but on people being willing to accept responsibility for serving others. And that priceless social commodity needs nurturing and modeling.

Over Easter I was in Holland with some of the Mill Grove family. We were once again struck by the sheer number, quality and accessibility of sports facilities throughout the country. It was not just about sporting ability, or a counter to childhood obesity: this is a vital part of social life in the country. And the United Kingdom is a very poor relation when compared to this.

We were delighted to see one of our Mill Grove family who had settled there, now aged 34, not only playing football, but the social secretary of the local football club. In his case it was the Boys’ Brigade that had provided an early model, but it might equally well have been the badminton club.

Elinor Goldschmied : Pioneer of Treasure Baskets, Heuristic Play and the Key Person System

Valerie Jackson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:22:26 +0000

Elinor Goldschmied has died, aged 98. She was born in rural Gloucestershire and went on to study mental health at the London School of Economics. During the war, she worked with refugee and evacuated children, and after the war helped to transform the day nurseries and orphanages of Milan, Italy.

In the UK, her last full-time job was as principal education social worker for the Inner London Education Authority, but arguably her greatest contributions to early years practice came after her retirement when she continued to work as a consultant to childcare services in England, Scotland, Italy and Spain.

Sonia Jackson, professor of social care and education at the Institute of Education, London, co-wrote, with Goldschmied, the famous People Under Three: Young children in daycare (Routledge). She said, “I had the great privilege of working with Elinor Goldschmied over many years. Her great achievement was to make abstract concepts and scientific knowledge accessible to those who work with babies and young children in everyday settings. Above all, she saw infants and toddlers as individual people whose experiences and feelings are just as important as ours.”

Jennie Lindon, early years consultant and child psychologist, said, “Elinor Goldschmied made a huge contribution to thoughtful, child-focused practice. Her approach always placed babies and young children at the centre of any experience. The now familiar key person concept emerged from her focus on the importance of a genuine personal relationship with individual children and their parents.”

This short paragraph in Nursery World Magazine has brought about so many different memories for me. I had the privilege of meeting Elinor Goldschmied in the 1980s when I invited her into the College where I was working as a lecturer in Professional Child Care Practice. She was a very small woman with a huge personality. Within minutes, she had the most cynical of my students eating out of her hand. The twinkle in her eye and her non-judgemental and accepting manner were her trademark. I spoke with her for a long time, much longer than we both had anticipated, but she had so much enthusiasm and drive that I and countless others over the years wanted to remain near her so that we too could be recipients of her wise words and inspirational attitude.

Playing and Taking Risks

Everywhere I go, to visit nursery groups or speak to child care professionals, I find a way to bring her name and her approach into the talk. The advent of heuristic play* is such a logical thing to do, yet so many people fall short of the mark. How difficult can it be to fill a basket with everyday objects which have no synthetic materials in them or on them? Clearly for a large number of people, it is impossible. Elinor believed that children should be able to have access to any type of natural material even if its shape led adults to gasp out loud.

I remember watching with a group of students a video of her allowing a baby of six months to select a metallic egg whisk from the basket which he promptly stuck in his mouth. There was no danger. His mother and Elinor were vigilant. What they offered instead, was the time, safety and space to explore an object using the tools at his disposal. He was six months old. He explored mainly by using his mouth and tongue as a sensory detector. He had acquired the ability to grasp and bring objects to his mouth and therefore, his eyes and nose and ears. He discovered the unique taste of metal. He discovered the feel of cold, virtually unyielding substance formed in a particular shape to be used for a specific function.

He explored the properties of the whisk until he had had enough; then he put it down and picked up a heavy glass ball. Again there were gasps from the audience. It was evident that no one had considered that, provided adults kept a watchful eye on proceedings, there was no danger. Their understanding of children’s development at six months had been forgotten. They seemed to assume that the child would throw the ball and either kill himself or any other child who happened to be passing.

Nothing like this could have happened. No child at this age can throw - objects are released from their hands when something else catches their attention. The height from a sitting baby’s hands to a padded floor is very short so there was no danger even if he had wanted to do such a bizarre thing.

We live in a world where risk is considerably reduced to the extent that parents keep their children indoors and everyday adventures are not acceptable. If we all take on board what an exciting world we live in and how it is important for children to feel safe and capable within that world, everyone will have a real opportunity to achieve their potential whatever that may be.

Real Inclusion and Equality

Elinor understood the importance of accepting every child as a unique and gifted individual. She didn’t waste time trying to categorise or label children as having special needs, additional needs or anything else. They were all children and we were all the people tasked with the responsibility to encourage and raise good citizens.

She understood that learning to negotiate and compromise are positive skills to allow children to develop so that friendships grow and become strong in the nursery years so that the process of maturation and finally reaching adulthood becomes less arduous and isolating. If a child has one particular adult with whom they can develop a positive relationship during their time away from family, such as in the nursery, then their stay is less traumatic and their play and learned behaviours become more positive. From this, the idea of a key person has evolved and is currently promoted by the Early Years Foundation Stage in the United Kingdom.

I cannot finish this article without mention of Sonia Jackson, who has been another leading person in the work towards a greater understanding of small children and their needs. I used to read her husband Brian’s articles avidly and was very saddened by his untimely death during a fun run in the early 1980s. I recall reading an article by Sonia before Brian’s death, where her children had made it clear that Dad was who they laughed with and Mum was who dished out discipline and love. It was thought-provoking and challenging. She wrote with honesty and insight. I am sure she will miss Elinor very much, not least because they were friends as well as colleagues.

*Infants at Work - Goldschmied

Assaulting Children is Wrong

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:18:50 +0000

By Peter Newell, Co-ordinator, Children are Unbeatable! Alliance

A Message to Readers

Children are Unbeatable!, the alliance which campaigns for the UK to modernise the law on assault to afford children the same protection as adults, needs your help in circulating a call-out. We are particularly interested in contacting children and young people in care, and the adults who work with them.

The Baby P affair has initiated a fierce debate on child protection. It seems very likely that legislation on child protection will be introduced in the current session of Parliament. This will provide a logical opportunity for pursuing equal protection.

Given the new focus on child protection in the context of this issue, we are keen to ensure that the voices of children who have experience of the care system are heard in this debate. So we are writing to ask you to circulate this call for help among your contacts, especially any who may have contact with children in care.

A Message to Children and Young People in Care

Speak up about physical abuse of children!

Every child has the right to be protected from violence. But in the UK, the law doesn’t give children the basic protection from being hit and hurt that all adults have.

The Children are Unbeatable! Alliance (CAU) think that this is wrong. We want to change the law so that nobody will be allowed to hurt children, and we want YOU to work with us!

We are looking for children and young people with experience of the care system to speak up about physical abuse of children.

This would probably mean being quoted in CAU publicity materials or in newspapers. Of course, you would choose what you say, and whether or not we used your name. If you want, you can be completely anonymous.

This could be a very small job if you want - you could just talk to us on the phone or write down what you think. Or you could come and meet us to talk about it. It’s up to you. Either way, it would be great experience and you’d have the chance to make your voice heard and make a real difference to children in the future.

If you come to any meetings with us we will pay for all your travel and accommodation, and give you food.

To do this, you need to…

be under 18.

have experience of the child protection/care system. (For example, you could be living in care now, or have been in care in the past.)

want to change the law to make it illegal to hit children.

We will…

always treat you with respect.

listen to you and answer any questions you have.

always respect your decisions.

A Message to All Children and Young People

All children and young people, whether in care or not, are invited to sign up to the campaign at www.childrenareunbeatable.org.uk/children. They will receive a free campaign pack and occasional emails or letters telling them about fun opportunities for children to be involved in the campaign.

If you are interested or have any questions about this, just get in touch with Elinor Milne, Children’s Campaign Co-ordinator:

email: elinor@childrenareunbeatable.org.uk

phone/text: 07504 738 741

web: www.childrenareunbeatable.org.uk

News Views

Editor — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:16:36 +0000

A mixture of news items, events, comments and whimsies, including the recession, generations, social workers’ attitudes to residential child care, working methods, Catholic adoption societies, bouncers and voluntary work

The Outcome of the Recession

Forty-five years ago a Pakistani friend predicted that the United Kingdom was going to be the first developed country to relapse into being a third world country. He was looking at the steady collapse of manufacturing industries, the British attitude to work, the destructive protectionism of trades unions at that time, and so on.

He was wrong in his prediction, but the recession shows how vulnerable the economy is. Since my friend uttered his warning, the manufacturing industries have diminished still further, the pits have been shut, our reliance on the financial services of the City has increased, more people are in service industries, and there has been a massive change in technology.

In which direction should Britain go next? How should we train our workforce? What sort of education do our children need? We don’t usually stray into economics in the Webmag, but this is certainly an issue which will affect today’s children throughout the rest of their lives.

If the country is to be economically successful, children need to be as well educated as possible, as future developments will rely on creativity and ideas, as people will need to take initiatives and be self-starters. The days of mass workforces in mills, shipyards and factories are well over. We shall also need a workforce where people want to work, and work as efficiently as possible, not seeing it as a necessary chore in order to get a wage.

Chris Durkin this month has written about the impact of the recession on individuals, and suggested that education may offer the spark which gets individuals to see unemployment as a positive chance to move into a new field and to train for it. One of the things which intrigues us is how we replicate change for an odd individual or two until it becomes a mass movement. In future the workforce is likely to need training and retraining throughout their working lives.

How, then, do we change one person’s spark into a nationwide interest in education, leading to better jobs, positive attitudes to work? The recession might prompt something. If not, the UK might head gradually towards being a third world country and the friend’s prognostication may still come true. He may be sixty years out in his timing, but Nostradamus is still being quoted, and it’s 454 years since he first published Les Propheties.

Did You See….. (1)

….. BBC Breakfast television on 20 04 09, and Barry Shearman MP explaining the newly-published Select Committee report? They had invited an independent social worker to comment as well. She said she thought that all children’s homes should be closed. We think that she and any of her colleagues who think the same way are one of the reasons why residential care in this country is not as good as it should be. It is a complex picture, but one factor is that a proportion of field social workers over the last thirty years has consistently rubbished residential child care, and they have contributed to a partly-self-fulfilled prophecy.

When they are taught on their training courses that residential child care is no good, they understandably divert children who need residential care until serious damage has been done. When they are taught of the dangers of institutionalisation, they try to discharge children from homes where they are settled. When they are told how unprofessional residential child care staff are, it puts good people off working in the setting. It’s twenty years since the Wagner report was published, but it’s still true that for some children and young people, residential care is a positive choice, indeed the best choice.

Generations

The average age for a woman to have her first baby was said to be just under 24 in 1971, but by 2007 it was 27.5. In 2007 the average age of mothers at birth was 30.5. Clearly, despite all the concern about teenage pregnancies, the population as a whole is having children at a later age. We used to reckon that generations were about 25 years apart, or four per century. The way things are going we are heading for three per century.

There is, however, a lot of variation. We recall our surprise during our twenties when we first met a grandmother who was 32 years old. (And she didn’t even look that old.) We also recall a person younger than us whose grandfather was born in the reign of William IV. If you work it out, you will realise that the men in that family remained sprightly long after they had started to draw their pensions.

Does any of this matter? Obviously, if child-bearing is left too late, there may be various complications, but people are remaining fit longer than in the past, and a few years’ slippage may not matter at all. The figures may, however, be another indicator of a growing rift in society, in this case between the educated, included, wealthy, late-child-bearers and the under-educated, excluded, poor, teenage mothers.

Did You See….. (2)

….. the piece in the Guardian on 11 April 2009 comparing the approaches taken by Ray Lewis and Camila Batmanghelidjh towards the children and young people they worked with? Ray was advocating zero tolerance of misdoings, physical exercise, discipline and conformity. Camila was arguing for tolerance, love and warmth. Their views were so polarised that it was almost a caricature, except that both are serious, influential and well regarded.

We recall some research undertaken about thirty years ago, which showed that all social work methods were equally successful, and not a lot better than the spontaneous remission of the clients’ problems. However, the key finding was that social workers who really believed in their own working methods conveyed their confidence to their clients, who had higher than average levels of success.

So maybe Ray and Camila are both winners.

Forced to Conform?

The Catholic Children’s Society in Westminster and two other Catholic adoption agencies are appealing to a tribunal under charity law about the Government’s insistence that they arrange adoptions for gay couples as well as for the heterosexual couples whom they have served to date.

The legal arguments are no doubt very complex; we have a simple gut reaction. We think that government should be about enabling citizens to do what they want (as long as it does not harm others) rather than stopping them. If Catholic agencies only want to arrange adoptions for heterosexual couples, they should be allowed to do so. If people want to set up a specialist adoption agency for gay couples, they should be allowed to do so.

The outcome of the Government’s line of argument is that a number of Catholic agencies may pull out of the service, while others will have been forced to cut their links with the Catholic Church and, presumably, act against their religious inclinations. This sort of action smacks of the Thought Police, and the Government should be ashamed of itself.

Bouncers

It’s not 1 April nor is it the August silly season when editors are looking for stories. So we were surprised to see this one. The NUT conference managed to come up with the story that bouncers were being appointed to keep control in schools. The staffing agencies were said to be looking for former police, prison officers, security staff etc. and the complaint at conference was that they were not properly qualified. We would have thought that such people are much better trained as bouncers than teachers are. What we don’t understand is why they need bouncers in the first place. Why don’t the schools just appoint prefects? It’s much cheaper, and it gives young people a chance to learn about people management and leadership.

Voluntary Service

Apparently the Prime Minister wants every young person to do fifty hours of voluntary work in the community. This smacks to us of the army sergeant asking for three volunteers, “You, you and you, come here!” Except that in Gordon’s case, the beckoning finger is to everyone.

We like the idea of everyone contributing to the community, but hope that there will be some genuinely voluntary aspect in what young people choose to do. Otherwise their work may be grudging, of poor quality and resented, rather than a gift of their time and skills to fellow citizens, of which they can be proud.

From the Case Files

The fosterparents and the parents did not see eye to eye because of the trained relations between them.

All the serried ranks of aunts and uncles doing their parade ground manoeuvres?

‘A Place Called Hope’ by Tom O’Neill

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:14:54 +0000

Tom O’Neill (1981) A Place Called Hope: Caring for Children in Distress Oxford: Blackwell ISBN 0 631 12654 6

Though former residents as well as those who have run residential facilities have written about their experiences, Tom O’Neill is one of very few who have experienced the worst and the best of residential care and then gone on to make a career working in residential child care and to write about it. He also has a special place in the history of child care in England in that it was the death of his brother, Dennis, in foster care in 1945 that prompted a major inquiry (Care of Children Committee, 1946) and overhaul of children’s services in England and Wales.

Key Ideas

There is always hope.

Children need to be loved, not simply have their material needs met.

Children need to experience normal family life.

Schools can be responsive to children’s needs.

Information about children should be accurate.

Children should be given full information about their families.

Content

In the

‘Mr Lyward’s Answer’ by Michael Burn

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:14:25 +0000

Michael Burn (1956) Mr Lyward’s Answer London: Hamish Hamilton

Michael Burn, a journalist and former prisoner-of-war in Colditz Castle, was persuaded by a friend to write about the work of George Lyward (1894-1973) at Finchden Manor, for which Mr Burn became a temporary member of staff. So Mr Lyward’s Answer is really an example of participant-observation research. Perhaps because he was trying to puzzle out why certain things seemed to work with young people, it is built around extended conversations with the young people and their views of the work that was being done with and for them.

Key Ideas

Residential care should accommodate the needs of the young person, not the other way round.

Interpersonal interactions are significant for young people.

Young people do not need individual relationships to be helped.

Young people can accept ‘no’ and also apparent ‘unfairness’.

Even where parents are not actively involved in their children’s treatment, they should be actively informed of and allowed to comment on it.

Contents

In Chapter 1 Michael Burn describes his first meeting with Mr and Mrs Lyward at Finchden Manor, Tenterden, the school where there is no curriculum and no methods and agrees to become a member of staff in order to write a book about Mr Lyward’s work.

In Chapter 2 he notes that there are 40 boys aged 15 to 20, though Mr Lyward will occasionally take a 14 year old; half are private pupils and the rest local authority funded. There is a staff of six but no fixed hours.

Trying to come to terms with the school, he first thinks about the work in terms of ‘respite’ and describes several referrals before concluding that the only common factor is that their previous carers had tried to ‘usurp’ the child’s life in some way by making unreasonable demands on or seeking to possess the child.

He notes the impact of the child’s first contact with Mr Lyward and his willingness to make arrangements to accommodate boys’ needs; nothing is locked and there are lots of animals.

In Chapter 3 he describes what goes on during a day, illustrating this through conversations with the boys. Though he advertises his services as a teacher, no-one takes him up. In another attempt to understand what is going on, he reproduces several excerpts from Mr Lyward’s writing in journals such as Home and School, concluding that perhaps Mr Lyward is ‘weaning’ boys who have not yet grown up.

In Chapter 4 he describes how boys engage with the school by adopting something to do; they are protected from parental demands and usually end up by attaching themselves to one of the staff, whom he now describes.

Issues with boys are not taken up immediately and special relationships between staff and boys are discouraged, though staff express their concern for absconders, for example, by following them.

Within the apparent freedom, boys may be told ‘no’ and they are encouraged to accept the ‘unfairness’ of certain decisions about individual boys; in the end the emphasis is on boys making their own decisions, not ones they think others want them to make.

Back-sliding is expected and, though Mr Lyward had originally psychoanalysed boys, he no longer does; he makes no notes of boys’ behaviour.

In Chapter 5 he describes various interactions with boys along with their reactions to Finchden Manor and the staff and the reactions of some visitors to Finchden Manor before looking at various examples of failed placements.

Since Mr Lyward started work around 30 boys had remained less than six months, in half those cases because they were removed by their parents. Of the 220 who had stayed six months and over (the longest stay being six years), ten were too ill to be treated though this only became apparent over time, and seven were discharged because of their impact on others. Parents who had removed their children sometimes admitted they were wrong.

In Chapter 6 he provides a biography of George Lyward. Born a twin with an older sister, he had a difficult childhood but at 18 started to teach in a private school. After attending evening classes at King’s College, London he got a choral scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge and a second in history. After teaching at various schools, he got a post Glenalmond where he taught for several years before he had a breakdown.

To assist with his recovery, it was suggested he teach a couple of failing public school boys and went to live at Guildables with two boys; his success led to further referrals, both male and female, and in 1935 he moved to Finchden Manor on the Tenterden-Appledore Road. During the Second World War, the school was evacuated, first to Hereford and then to Shropshire, and when they returned the Manor was in ruins.

However, the 1944 Education Act opened the way for him to accept state-funded pupils.

“In trying to understand his approach, Michael Burn notes his comment that neither ‘obey’ nor ‘do as you like’ are helpful because they insist on something and he quotes from his review of Makarenko (1936):

“Nothing could be more convincing than the way Makarenko recalls his uncertainties about his own capacity.

‘Growing Vegetables is Fun’ by Emma Cooper

Valerie Jackson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:10:18 +0000

This is a book for adults and children to share. It is a practical guide towards first steps in gardening and planting your own food. It comes with free packets of seeds - beetroot, carrots, leeks and, I think, peppers. It’s difficult to remember because we already had some packets of our own seeds and combined them. Growing Vegetables is Fun is now in its second edition. The first edition of the book came out in 2008, so it is presumably intended to be a sort of springtime annual.

The book is a collection of helpful hints about planting and tending delicate seedlings; how to pot on or transplant and then plant out in the garden. There are health and safety warnings throughout, such as, “Do not store anything other than water in a plastic bottle in case other people drink it by mistake”. This is about the correct level of logic for a young child. There are prompts on the pages for when to sow and when to harvest and how long the growing stage is likely to be for different vegetables.

There are cartoon illustrations by Cory Xavier to clarify instructions as well as photographs of children doing garden work or planting seeds and tubers. There are recipes for the produce so that the children can begin to understand the growth-harvest-eat and store principles. There is a good section on garden pests, including next door’s cat and its poo! The section about weeds and weeding kept me well informed. In the middle, there are blank pages for garden notes and plans and pictures that a child might wish to draw.

The book is the sort that can grow with the child. I can imagine an older child reading it independently so that they can go on to become gardeners in their own right. The size of the book renders it unlikely to be used as a pocket reference: more a planning resource before setting foot in the garden or visiting a nursery garden.

The recommended age for children to share this book with adults is 3+. It doesn’t say how old the adult has to be. I liked this book and so did my three year old grandchild. We will continue to read through it as she gets older and, I hope, more interested in helping her Nana to feed the family.

Cooper, Emma (2009)

Growing Vegetables is Fun

Revised second edition

Dennis Publishing

ISBN 1-906372-66-7

‘Little Miracles’ by Giselle Green

Webmag — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:08:03 +0000

This book is a novel set in both Spain and England. It follows the story of a couple who have a young child who disappears whilst on holiday in Spain.

The book is told from both parents’ side of the story and describes their struggles to maintain

April 2009: In This Issue

Editor — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:14:40 +0000

Disability is this month’s focus. An article by Keith White valuing the special qualities of individuals with disability; a description of OAASIS, a helpful advice service for parents, by Susannah Kirkman; Aleesha’s story about the way her mother gradually learnt about her disabilities; a couple of Robert Shaw’s Key Texts on residential care for children with disabilities and the introduction of the concept of normalization; and the Editorial on Every Child Matters.

Chris Durkin warns about the dangers of managerialism. Valerie Jackson wants to wipe out the word naughty. David Lane urges residential child care workers to join up and take an interest in social pedagogy, restorative practice and other new ideas. Wanda Gibson reviews Annabel Karmel’s Family Cookbook. And there’s News Views with seven more mini-articles.

Different Gifts

Dr Keith J. White — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:13:03 +0000

Names, Not Labels

Mill Grove is a residential community that has been around for 109 years: since November 1899 to be precise. During that time well over 1000 children and young people have lived here. And that includes children of every description that I can think of. They have come from many different countries, cultures and religions. They have come as individuals or as part of a group of siblings. They have had very different attitudes to life, different abilities and different disabilities. So varied is the make-up of the community that occasionally when I have been asked to describe our specialism, I have responded, “non-specialism”.

The second girl who came to live with us (in 1900) was in calipers due to a physical condition known then as rickets. And since then there have been children who have been partially sighted, hard of hearing, with physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy, emotional difficulties, and those categorised by a number of different psychological labels ending in the word “syndrome”.

I grew up here and so it meant that throughout my childhood I lived among such a variety of other children. Looking back, I realise that it was taken for granted that we knew each other by name rather than by labels. In fact it may be this experience that has led me to have problems categorising people conventionally, and to become a sociologist. For example, I have always been skeptical of the idea of IQ measurement. It may or may not be empirically verifiable on paper, but in real life it did not help explain why some children reacted more swiftly or appropriately than others. And I find the focus on labeling individuals out of the context of relationships and systems fundamentally suspect.

Strengths, Not Disabilities

For over thirty years I have been responsible for the extended family of Mill Grove and I have come to see children primarily in terms of their gifts and strengths rather than their disabilities. So, for example, one who has cerebral palsy is clearly very good at listening, remembering and critiquing arguments, as well as very strong in his arms and shoulders. If you met him for the first time you would notice that he relies on a wheelchair for much of the time, but in the context of our family life that is hardly an issue. It is certainly not a defining feature of him as a person or friend.

It was probably Jean Vanier in his retelling of the story of how the L’Arche Communities began that reinforced the way I was thinking. You may recall that he began his work by setting up a home for two vulnerable adults. He did so with the very best of philanthropic intentions, but it was a failure. Looking back he came to see that a major problem was his own fundamental attitude: he saw himself as the person who was giving care and support to the other two. In this paradigm he was resourceful and they were needy. In time his whole way of seeing their relationships shifted, and he came to see one of the big problems as his own pride. That was his handicap or disability. He came to believe that there was little that came between these two vulnerable adults and God, but that in his own case the relationship was obstructed by his pride.

That story has always had a very powerful impact on me. Whenever I have personally assumed the role of care-giver, or others take on that role, I begin to question whether the reciprocity that is essential to human relationships is being allowed to develop, and whether “clients”, if that is what they are called, are being seen and related to primarily as inadequate human beings with particular labels and needs, or whether they are respected in the first place as human beings with particular gifts and strengths. It means that I am generally skeptical of services and service provision which take the place of creating the space and room in which potential can thrive and love can grow.

An example of this approach is the book, The Gift of Dyslexia. Instead of seeing dyslexia as a problem, and those on the spectrum solely as in some way inadequate or in need of special attention and help, it begins by looking at strengths. Just as a blind person may have special gifts of listening and reading situations through sound and scent, so those with dyslexia may have particular talents. This is certainly true of the two in the extended family of Mill Grove that I have known best. One found she could answer complex mathematical problems without needing to do any working out. This might have been seen as remarkable gift: in fact it meant that she was suspected of cheating and penalised for not writing out her calculations!

The other young person was a natural mechanic who was able to take apart and assemble everything from models to full-size machines without ever needing to refer to a manual. And he worked at a phenomenal rate. Schools were for all sorts of reasons quite irrelevant to the development of his precocious talent. He was regularly suspended from them.

Another young person to whom I have alluded in a previous column was at the other end of the scale: he could neither solve mathematical problems, nor ever attempt to take apart or put together anything. But he was willing to go each day with his mechanical friend to college when he realised that his friend lacked the confidence to go by himself. He never calculated how much time he devoted to helping others: in fact he never calculated time at all. As I write he is getting ready to meet the young man in the wheelchair at a London station, but there is no sense in which he sees himself as a carer or service provider.

You will see that in each case a “disability” was accompanied by a gift. Yet it was possible for some teachers or social workers to see primarily or only the “needs”, and to miss the abilities.

Interdependence, Not Independence

But you will notice that so far we have treated the four young people I have mentioned as individuals. And that is a prevailing ideology in our society. They are assessed, treated and encouraged as individuals. One of the tasks that schools and social services were supposed to undertake was to “prepare them for independence”. Clearly this misses one of the main dimensions of what it is to be human: relationships and community. Interdependence is self-evidently essential for individual and social well-being.

Disabilities and abilities are relative, and can be transformed if we think of relationships and teamwork. So put these four people together and you find immediately that they have complementary skills. The only question is whether they are able to combine effectively. And I am pleased to say that they did and do. And perhaps you begin to see why “non-specialism” is so important in the way we live. Were we to specialise in one condition or another we might find we lacked the range of needs and gifts that combine to make teams and community.

But there is another discovery that we have made when it comes to so-called disabilities: that the child in question is often one who brings the best out of others, and stirs deep emotions and engenders joy. We had a child living with us for some time: he could not speak and found relationships very difficult. Yet we came to love him, and when he left we missed him as much if not more than anyone else who lived as part of the family. Was it that he brought us together? Was it that we related to him at a deeper level than those who were able to communicate by speech? (I suppose you might make a comparison here with the way music connects with our hearts, and goes “too deep for tears”.)

Gifts, Not Disabilities

In writing like this there is always the risk of sentimentality and romanticism. It can seem like painting things with a rosy hue. But what I am trying to communicate is an approach to children that privileges identity, personhood and relationships over categories and labels; to focus on gifts rather than needs; on reciprocity rather than service provision; and community rather than individualism.

This is not to dispute that there are children with severe disabilities, but that in acknowledging this we should not lose sight of some of the characteristics of others that can seem very close to hubris and pride: “I thank you that I am not like others”!

We would be wiser to think of everyone having different gifts.

Demand Doubles for Special Needs Information and Advice.

Webmag — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:12:45 +0000

The past year has seen a huge increase in the number of queries handled by OAASIS, the free, impartial special needs information service run by Cambian, the UK’s largest provider of specialist residential education and care for young people with autism and Asperger Syndrome.

According to Andrea Wooldridge, the OAASIS coordinator, the number of enquiries has doubled and parents are often desperate for support and advice. Many, like Tina Hawley, whose 11 year-old son was at a mainstream secondary school, face a prolonged battle to get appropriate education for their children.

The number of appeals by parents to special needs tribunals has almost trebled over the last twelve years, with a quarter of all appeals involving children who are on the autistic spectrum.

“As time moved on, our son was spending more and more time in isolation during the school day and we found it increasingly difficult to encourage him into school,” ran Tina’s original letter to Andrea. “He has been displaying signs of childhood depression…I would truly love to know how dire things have to be before a child is considered

Aleesha

Webmag — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:10:14 +0000

After twenty-one intense minutes my daughter came into the world. It was six minutes past one in the morning and her arrival signified a life-changing event, for this was the start of life with a child with disabilities.

There was an uneasy feeling in the room as the midwife checked Aleesha over. I recall her asking a few questions that made me realise that all was not well. Did anyone in the family have very blonde hair? I could tell from this that the midwife thought there was a problem. My partner answered that there were several on his side of the family, so the midwife carried on with her checks and said no more, but I couldn’t shake off the nervous feeling that we would be told more.

Questions

I recall a young consultant coming to see me and Aleesha on the ward. The news about the white-haired newborn had spread fast and that morning I saw more doctors than a conference does, and sure enough this young nervous lady was trying to find a way to tell me that my newborn daughter had a problem.

Due to her very white hair I blurted out, “Is she an albino?” Clearly relieved, the doctor thought I knew about the condition, but I knew nothing. She said she couldn’t be sure, so next came the head consultant Dr MacFaul, a quietly spoken man but honest and direct. I came to really appreciate his support in the first couple of years after Aleesha’s birth.

Dr MacFaul didn’t have any answers, as albinism is quite rare but he told me that this was a genetic condition caused by a lack of pigment in the skin and eyes: white hair, pale skin, and pale blue eyes - not pink as some might think: this only happens in animals, although if Aleesha is caught in a certain light, her irises appear red. There are several variants to the condition but, if asked, this is the one most people would think of.

Advice

We were to be sent to an eye specialist to confirm diagnosis. Dr MacFaul left to make the referral. A nurse came over to finish her checks. As we were now allowed to go home, I didn’t know what to think, so I was telling the nurse what the consultant had said. Her reply was one of the hardest things I had to overcome as she scared me to death. Without knowing enough about albinism, she told me that if Aleesha had this condition I would have to keep her out of the sun, as it could give her serious burns and damage her eyes.

For the next six weeks, till I saw the eye consultant, I barely left the house without covering Aleesha with a two-hooded pram to protect her. I really didn’t know what I was doing and I felt that I had been abandoned to cope with this serious condition by myself. It’s hard to imagine that a throw-away remark could do so much damage to your confidence, but it did. I had other children, so I feel sure now that, as the doctors knew how this condition affected a person, they thought I would be fine for a few weeks. They were not to know that some stupid nurse with little understanding would be the one to give me information that was only half right.

I’m not entirely sure how I felt about Aleesha having albinism to begin with, as I didn’t really know anything about it. I just felt numb, cocooned in a shell, waiting for someone to open it up and tell me how, what and why.

Answers

This started with the eye consultant, Mr Simmons. He explained that part of the problem with albinism was that Aleesha’s eyesight would be affected, but that she would nonetheless have some vision. This was a blow. I had not expected it. He said that Aleesha would need lots of help with varying aids as she got older, to help her read and write and so on. She would never be able to drive, although in some states in America people with albinism can.

This was the start of countless appointments, for example to see skin specialists, to be given advice on how to protect her skin from the sun, as people with albinism are more prone to burning, which could cause skin cancer. There was also the geneticist to explain about recessive genes.

Over the next few months my time was taken up by appointments to see all the consultants, but each time I went Aleesha appeared to be subject to another condition. There were questions about her heart, for example. Then her progress was delayed by more than the expected level for albinism. Then she had problems with her hearing.

The Family

Aleesha’s first year was proving to be nothing but hospitals, doctors and consultants. I think my other children wondered where their easy-going happy mum had gone. I wondered too as I disappeared into a never-ending round of appointments .

By the time Aleesha was barely six months old I felt I had met every consultant and professional available on the National Health Service, but they all spoke facts and I was feeling hopeless at being a mother. I often was not sure what was helping, as nothing I did seemed to help Aleesha to progress.

By now all this was affecting Jessica, who attended every appointment, often missing nursery, as I did not have time to do both. When you have a child with a disability, however minor or major it may be, it can be easy to overlook your other young children’s needs, and for a little while this is what was happening for me.

Something Else?

Aleesha was now one year old, and I was sharing my concerns with the doctors who saw her regularly. I felt there was something else wrong. I voiced my concern that I believed she was autistic, but time and time again I was told it was due to albinism; she was just a slow developer. What did I know about autism? It felt like I was shouting out, but no one listened.

You know when you are sure of something, there is just a feeling deep inside that won’t go away. Well, that’s how I felt when the professionals told me that I was wrong and that Aleesha was fine. I just knew.

Dr MacFaul was listening, and by the time Aleesha was two, he too thought there were other problems. The first came with him telling me Aleesha had global delay; this just means that every area of development was now well behind what it should have been. She had no speech, no play skills and was still like a baby. At this point I confessed that since Aleesha had been born she had not slept more than two or three broken hours any day or night. I was exhausted.

Dr MacFaul decided that Aleesha could possibly have an unusual syndrome. She certainly had enough problems, so off we went on more test, more appointments and more consultants. I am not sure what glue held our family together, but as we limped through the first couple of years together, we realised how lucky we were being parents of a child with special needs, when we saw all types of other conditions much scarier than those we had had to face with Aleesha.

We hope to continue with Aleesha’s story next month.

Every Child Matters

Editor — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:09:50 +0000

The Government policy Every Child Matters is now so well-known that it has been shortened to ECM and become part of the furniture. But whoever thought up this title deserved a bonus. It’s as short as a soundbite, but - more importantly - it’s true, and it’s at the heart of parenting, schooling, paediatrics and child care.

Every Child Matters should be a mantra, to be repeated by the teacher at every lesson in school, by doctors at every consultation about children’s health in hospital and by social workers in every child protection case conference, so that its truth sinks in. Every child under consideration is different - in his/her potential, problems, family, hopes, fears, wishes, interests, friends, abilities, and on and on.

We must never think that the child in front of us is defined by his/her labels, which is one of the reasons why the tick-box culture is so wrong. The bureaucrat may think that the more boxes that are ticked, the more precise is the picture of the child, as if his/her character can be pixillated. But it is the subtleties and nuances that make the individual, and tick boxes take away the opportunity to reflect those subtleties and nuances in reports.

In the world of the rich and powerful children may be treated sometimes as weak, powerless and insignificant. This, of course, ignores that they will in turn become adults, bear responsibility, and perhaps be the ones on whom reliance has to be placed as the earlier generation gets older. But it also ignores the impact that children have as children on those around them.

This issue of the Webmag addresses disability. Keith White has shown what special qualities children with disabilities have and the genuine contribution they make to their families and communities. Elaine speaks of the impact Aleesha has had on her family, making light of the demands made by a disabled child and of the commitment this demands of parents - and of brothers and sisters. And in News Views we have noted the way that David Cameron reacted to the death of his disabled son, Ivan. Yet, for all the demands they place on their families, disabled children make an individual and positive impact, becoming characters in their own right, attracting love and devotion, and offering a sense of achievement when they master a new skill.

Yes, every child does matter, which is why the work of the past to improve services, such as the introduction of normalization, is so important. There were times in the past when children did not matter; there are places now where children do not matter; and there are individuals like Baby P who are overlooked and do not matter enough. Because we are human, standards may always slip backwards. We may become less sensitive. We may divert resources elsewhere. We may not want to acknowledge the problems in front of us. Making sure that Every Child Matters is not a once-and-for-all battle, but one which needs to be fought continuously.

When this Government’s achievements are listed by the historians, we hope that their emphasis on meeting children’s needs will stand out, and that people will still be acknowledging, years from now, that Every Child Matters.

Why Be a Social Worker?

Chris Durkin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:08:43 +0000

I was at a social work education conference recently to facilitate a workshop. Much talk was on the future of social work, in part due to the impending presentation of Lord Laming’s findings, but also because of the social work task force. As is usual with conferences I agree to participate months prior to the event. Initially, I think through some ideas and begin to read around the subject to ensure that I am up to date and relevant.

On the day in question, I used the two hours of the train journey to develop my ideas and put the presentation into a powerpoint format. Despite my well ordered and fruitful journey, when I arrived at the conference, panic set in. First I discovered that nobody seemed to have signed up to my workshop, and secondly but more importantly found out that the audience I thought I was addressing was not the same as the actual attendees. For some strange reason I thought the audience was going to be made up of practitioners and not social work educators.

Lunch proved to be my saviour, not the excellent cuisine but my dining companions. I cannot remember the detail of the actual conversation that took place; however, we looked at what motivates us and the importance of our values within practice. Within the space of an hour I had refocused the presentation and was able to address the delegates and tell them that my workshop looked at the importance of self in social work and the need for a reconnection with the community. There was a murmur of interest and I had survived the first encounter.

The murmur of interest turned into a workshop that was full of interesting participants. My main premise is that social work has lost its connection from its actual constituency, with staff so often located in offices that are a distance from their communities they serve. In addition I feel that social work has become so obsessed with structures and performance management that it is in danger of losing sight of its purpose.

Why Get into Social Work?

I started the workshop by asking participants to explain why they got into social work, an interesting question given that all the participants were either social work educators or trainers, and not one of us was still in practice. The answers to the question were all slightly different but had at their core a desire to make a difference.

The high turnover of social work staff that had been highlighted by one of the main conference speakers can in my view be traced, in part by social workers feeling undervalued, and also feeling that they have lost sight of the reasons why they went into social work. People go into social work to make a difference; concentrating on targets and performance management changes the whole organisational climate with managers concentrating in part on targets and outputs rather than the actual professional task.

A Managerialist Agenda

Although I do not believe there was ever a golden age of social work, I do feel that the managerialist agenda brought in during the last Conservative Government (and continued under New Labour) combined with a cutting back of the actual task of local authority social work, has resulted in a fire-fighting service that is concentrating on responding to crises. If you have a constant diet of negativity and problems wrapped in a hostile and critical environment it is perhaps not surprising that morale is low.

Although Laming’s comments in response to the baby P tragedy may be beneficial, in particular the setting up of the National Safeguarding Delivery Unit, the guarantee of supervision time and the emphasis on further training - not just for the social workers but council leaders and senior managers - once again demonstrate that the major focus is on structures .

Supervision in social work is vital; it can provide a managerial overview, an element of quality assurance and be involved in professional development. However, poor quality of supervision can be destructive and divisive and, as was shown in the Climbie enquiry, it can be potentially dangerous. How people are supervised and how they are supported by their peers is an important element in the culture of a successful organisation.

Isolation or Teamwork?

In many of the recent enquiries one of the problem areas has been social workers working with difficult and aggressive adults. Working with aggressive people is very difficult and requires skill, support and careful handling. In my view these cases must be handled by two social workers, with regular supervision combined with team support. Evidenced based team approaches that ensure practice is informed by research can in my view help rekindle interest in the task. Too often social work with these difficult cases is being conducted in isolation. This isolation can lead to blame, division and ultimately

What is a Naughty Child?

Valerie Jackson — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:07:18 +0000

I am prompted to write about that word again. That word is naughty.The response that makes most sense is that there is no such creature as a naughty child. What does the word mean? It usually means that the child is exhibiting behaviour that adults find frustrating, irritating, confusing, annoying or even bizarre.

Labelling and Power

Adults often feel they must be more powerful than children, so we do this by using language that no one, not even ourselves, understands. By use of this magic word naughty we can bewilder a child and leave them guessing about what it was that they did which caused us to behave in such a violent, hurtful or frightening manner.

Some adults demonstrate their displeasure by becoming more angry and child-like than the child they are supposed to be disciplining. “You make me very angry when you are naughty” is a statement which can bring chills to the heart of a young child. What information have they been given? How can they learn to improve? All they have been told is that now the adult is angry, and they wonder what will happen next.

It is these types of statements that abusers have been using for centuries to let their victims know that it really is all their own fault if something bad happens to them. They may refuse to speak to the child, or banish them to the naughty chair or spot to “think about things”. What things? If an inanimate object can also become naughty, what hope is there for an innocent, albeit irritating, child? All this does is inform the child that whatever they did, it wasn’t pleasing to the adult. How is that teaching the child anything positive about behaviour?

By the same token, those adults who accuse children of attention-seeking behaviour need to stop and think. All of us, child or adult, seek attention from time to time. If we speak, we want someone to listen; if we have done something well, we want someone to take note and offer recognition; if we cannot gain attention by any other means, we will behave in an inappropriate manner, knowing that at least a telling off or punishment is acknowledgement that we exist.

Boundaries and Bertie

A child needs boundaries and discipline that is consistent and age-appropriate. If something in a child’s behaviour is undesirable, it is essential that they are informed in a way they understand what it is that makes their actions unsafe or anti-social.

“You took the toy from Bertie”. “Bertie is crying”. “He is sad because the toy has been taken away”. These behavioural statements will have more impact on the child than the adult removing the child or grabbing the toy and giving it back to the hapless Bertie.

If the child is old enough, the question, “What do you think we can do for Bertie to stop him crying?” will help train them to find a solution which can cheer up poor Bertie. We want them to say that Bertie should be given the toy. The child may have a different, but equally fitting idea, such as “He needs a hug”. Or “Give him another toy”.

At this stage, what the child learns is that each action or behaviour has a consequence. If they wish for a positive consequence, they must do positive things. So, if a hug quietens Bertie, then we can thank the child for his or her suggestions.

The Older Child - and Gertie Too

I know that some people would want me to say that the child should have been told that they were unkind, but I am thinking with the logic of the child. To develop a conscience, you need to be emotionally mature enough. A young child may not yet be ready to think about others. We must offer opportunities for practising emotional understanding.

If a similar thing were to happen with an older child, we might then add, “Maybe if Bertie was given the toy back it might make him very happy. I would like to see that. I think you should try it so we can see if I am right”. Note that I have not suggested you ask the child what they think. They would be likely to say that they didn’t want to, and therefore the option for refusal is not offered.

We are allowing the child thinking time without forcing surrender. Child care should be more about guidance and leadership rather than bullying and punishment.

If the behaviour of the child is severe, then the adult should use behavioural statements and questions in a different way. “You pushed Gertie down onto the pavement”. “She is crying because she was hurt when she fell”. “I think you hurt Gertie by pushing her down”. “What can you do to make Gertie feel better?” “I don’t want you to push anyone over. It hurts them when they fall”.

This time we have added an adult opinion which the child can think about. If this incident were to happen again with the same child, we can remind them what we said and add a question, “When you pushed Gertie over she cried because it hurt her. You have now pushed Bertie and he is crying because he is hurt”. “What do you think should happen now?” If the child does not wish to make a decision, then we can take some of that responsibility away from them.

“I think that you should say sorry because you have hurt your friend. I said that I didn’t want you to push anyone because it hurts them. You have now pushed Bertie. Now you must sit beside me until I say you can go back to play because I need to see where you are and what you are doing”. If we have to resort to this, the child should only be expected to sit beside the adult for a few minutes, no longer than three or four, as their attention span is still very short and they will soon have forgotten why they are there.

It is important that the adult watches the child from that moment until they