John Diamond

The London Borough of Redbridge has joined a select group of local authorities in the UK that is working in partnership with UNICEF with a shared commitment to make their communities “Child-Friendly”. This is something for which voluntary children’s organisations in this borough have been campaigning for fifteen years or more.  Whatever the outcomes it … Read more

Jade MacRury is a content writer and correspondent for the Immigration Advice Service, an organisation of immigration lawyers. The COVID-19 pandemic is causing unprecedented levels of disruption and suffering across the board. The death toll continues to rise, businesses are closing and our public services are struggling due to the twin pressures of increased demand … Read more

When you are working at a deep and intense level with a child who has experienced unreliable and disrupted early care, or with a child who has at a later stage experienced devastating loss, rejection, emotional injury and hurt, you are likely to be attacked by that child. This attack, which is likely to be … Read more

Overview The Mulberry Bush Third Space or MB3 is a picturesque and peaceful rural site in the heart of the Cotswolds just 12 miles from Cheltenham. We provide indoor and outdoor space for conferences, training courses, workshops, seminars, study and research and for use by schools, clubs and groups. The meadow can cater for a … Read more

Recently my wife and I made a trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, and in the process erased childhood memories of an unattractive place that I had always associated with dark, dingy staircases and large, inscrutable Chinese urns.  This encounter with the place in later life effected such a transformation that … Read more

It’s obviously a challenge, if not downright foolhardy, to write about silence.  But in this case, I believe there is no alternative.  Some weeks ago, person who had lived at Mill Grove as a child came back after a gap of over twenty years.  He is now a trained psychotherapist and prison chaplain.  It was … Read more

Author’s note on the current pandemic It may seem odd to publish an article advocating helpful touch, during a pandemic when the advice is to maintain 2-meter social distance. However, we were researching this material more than a year ago, as the neuroscience confirmed Lemn Sissay’s insights, we decided to update our advice and training … Read more

A paper given at the 2012 conference of the Rosa Dei Venti Therapeutic Community Organisation, Italy. Adolescent groups and everyday life[1] Abstract Adolescence is a period of change.  An existential change that is a change in the sense of who one is, a change in one’s identity.  It may be a catastrophic crisis in identity, … Read more

During the 1970s a colleague of mine in the Edinburgh Social Work Department applied for a job as a specialist social worker with children in care.  These were the heady days when the likes of psychotherapy, Maxwell-Jones, Dingleton Hospital and R.D Laing were forces to be reckoned with north of the boarder, and so, believe … Read more

I won’t locate this factual narrative in time or place in order to preserve anonymity… The young boy in question is growing up in a troubled family. The family has chronic problems with debt; with obesity; and with poor housing.  The father has been off sick long-term with a form of anxiety/depression that means he … Read more

Renuka Jeyarajah-Dent is Director of Operations at the Coram Centre, London. The guiding principle for all children in care should be to help them achieve ‘permanence’. This is more than a placement; it is everything the child needs to repair from separation and loss and become resilient. I have worked as an educational psychologist in … Read more