In Residence

This article was originally published in CYPNow by Rhiannon Thomas on June 23rd 2020. Published with permission. The pandemic lockdown presented significant challenges for providers of children’s homes. Here, Rhiannon Thomas, therapeutic manager at St Christopher’s Fellowship (http://www.stchris.org.uk/), outlines how its specialist therapeutic service helped staff working in the settings to maintain support for children … Read more

Children’s charity St Christopher’s Fellowship ( www.stchris.org.uk) celebrate the amazing foster families who transform the lives of children every single day. Sharon is just one of these foster carers – here she tells her story of fostering three sisters. “Hello, I’m Sharon I have been asked to talk about my experience of therapeutic parenting as … Read more

Necessity, as we all know, is said to be the mother of invention. And this has been confirmed by the technological and social innovations spawned during wars. This line of thoughts leads on logically to the question of whether this is true in, say, times of plague. I am not sure what creative ideas came … Read more

RESTORE – a lens through which to look at what children in care, and those supporting them, may need in this time of crisis How has the experience of lockdown affected children and young people in care, unable to make or receive visits from family or friends? How have those adults who support them been? … Read more

Over many years I have tuned in regularly to certain BBC radio programmes such as Desert Island Discs, The Life Scientific, and Private Passions, each of which uses a framework in which an invited guest is encouraged to share something of their life story. Among other ways in which I engage with them is to … Read more

About the author: Dr Jane Herd is a clinical social worker with over 30 years’ experience. Jane has a Doctorate from the Tavistock and Portman in respect of the mental health and inner working models of hard to reach populations. She runs a social enterprise called Orb8 that provides training and service development in respect of … Read more

A warm welcome to our June newsletter. Living through the unprecedented experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on all aspects of our society. Like NHS staff, residential care workers and foster carers as ‘essential workers’, have had to maintain a duty of care for some of our societies most vulnerable and emotionally damaged children … Read more

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what has been termed “lock-down” in the UK, concepts such as “social distancing” and “self-isolation” have become common parlance.  Over time this has led professionals, academics and clerics to reflect on related words such as alone, loneliness, solitude, solitary, and confinement.  We know that different languages have … Read more

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