In Residence

Copy for TTCJ    May 2023    Vol IV 08 2023   Healthy Boundaries between School and Home In residential communities, particular care needs to be taken about establishing and maintaining appropriate social and emotional boundaries.  And partly for this reason one of the five themes in the book, The Growth of Love, is called Boundaries.  The … Read more

Dr Keith J. White            Copy for TTCJ In Res Vol IV 07 2023 A Reason for Getting out of Bed in the Morning When I was on a visit to Middlesbrough as the president of the Social Care Association, we drove through an estate at about mid-day one summer.  It was on the way from … Read more

Introduction Within the following paper I will explore the effect that nurturing environments can have on traumatised children’s academic learning. I have included extracts from my own reflective journal to offer an insight into my own day-to-day experience of working alongside traumatised children. The focus of the paper will be on nurturing environments. The word … Read more

The question arose during a phone call that I had with someone who had lived at Mill Grove from an early age until adulthood.  It was his childhood home, and he was coming to see us again, with his partner and four-year old son.  On their one previous visit as a family the little boy … Read more

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!   Joyeux Noel! Feliz Navidad! 聖誕快樂    As a journal with an international reach, we’d like to acknowledge the different festivities that take place around this time of year for all faiths and nationalities. Whether you’re celebrating Bodhi Day, Kwanzaa, Hogmany or Hanukkah and many, many more, we wish … Read more

Thanks, not least to the writings of Donald Winnicott about transitional objects, there has been a growing sensitivity over recent decades to the belongings of those moving from home into foster and residential care or education.  These may include favourite toys, presents, clothes, pictures, books, and blankets, of course, which for many are reminders of … Read more

The theme of my action research is the teaching and learning during a National Lockdown when schools were responsible for organising and delivering a minimum of 3 hours a day of remote learning to children in KS1 and 4 hours in KS2 (Department of Education, 2022). UNESCO (2021) reported that more than 1.37 billion children … Read more

As processes associated with globalisation and the revolution in communications develop apace, employers and those in the jobs market, as well as people involved in sport, are increasingly alert to the value of transferable skills.  Changes in social life as well as industry mean that a once in a life training or qualification are unlikely … Read more

I came back to my office which doubles as a classroom and guest chalet (we are nothing if not versatile) and on my chair and sofa and along the desk and on the floor were snakes – lots of snakes in different colours. Some had metamorphosed into snails with shells and some had become slugs.  … Read more

On 30 June 2022 President Higgins signed into law the Republic of Ireland’s Birth Information and Tracing Act. This saw a revamped Contact Preference Register (CPR), the instrument through which adoptees and their birth relatives can seek information about one another, opened to people wishing to register their details, with requests for information from the … Read more

Welcome to the October edition of the TCJ. This is my last editorial as I am leaving The Mulberry Bush Organisation, but Debs Doggett, the Senior Archivist at MB3 will be continuing with editing and publishing the TCJ, the next edition will be with you on the 1st of December, ready for Christmas!   Our first … Read more

We are the TC Elders, a group of experienced individuals from a variety of professional backgrounds, who have all worked in Therapeutic Communities (TC) and share a strong belief in the value of the Therapeutic Community experience. We want to provide an online community meeting space for those affected, in whatever way, by the situation in Ukraine, … Read more