Residential Child Care

By the year 2015 it is calculated that there may well be another 10 million orphaned children in Sub-Saharan Africa to add to the 14 million current orphans due to HIV/AIDS. A report by four NGOs and supported by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (The Promise of a Future, July 2005) calls the situation “an orphan crisis … Read more

I just love it when the veil of confusion is lifted from my eyes and everything becomes clear. Over the past year I have become concerned and even frustrated at times, as the residential care service seemed to be slipping back to the bad old days of the 1980s, when it was beset by bad … Read more

It was not long after a two-week trip to Germany, Switzerland and Holland that I was talking with the mother of one of the young people who came with us.  She was, so she told me, surprised to the point of shock by the extraordinary development of what she called “confidence” in her daughter following … Read more

Leanne kept disappearing from the children’s home on Saturday afternoons. If you want to read the first part, click here. On my cold and lonely walk back to the Assessment Centre I tried to review the possibilities about Leanne’s Saturday adventures. She was fourteen years old, petite, blonde haired and very pretty. She was also … Read more

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a social work student on a period of assessed practice learning is in need of a good practice teacher”. Although this is a reference to the words of the great Jane Austen, there is nevertheless a truth in the need to help the student make Sense as they … Read more

Childcare is a tired term, and there is an argument for using pedagogical or educational thinking to give children their space in society. A fascinating article appeared in the January edition of the National Institute Economic Review[1]. This is not a journal that I normally read, but the title of the piece Farewell to Childcare … Read more

"It sometimes seems that social workers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t."  This was our response to Charles Pragnell’s last article. We have come across people who complain that the social services have not intervened early enough or with sufficient decisiveness, as unhappily evidenced in the Victoria Climbie case. But we … Read more

To Beat or Not to Beat? That is the Question. @        That’s not the question at all. I don’t know anyone who would want to beat their children now. The question is about smacking. #          But what’s the difference? Whether you beat or smack, you are still assaulting the child. @        Beating is using a … Read more

It was Saturday lunchtime at the Assessment Centre. The staff on duty were busy sorting out what was happening that afternoon. Some of the children were already at home. Some were going to be picked up by their families. Others would be dropped off by the minibus. The rest were then going on to a … Read more

Charles Pragnell When the history is told, in some future years, of the last quarter of the twentieth century and the early years of the new millennium in Britain and the United  States of America, there will be told a story of events which will rank alongside those of brave deeds of wars in eastern … Read more

By Malcolm Macmillan Growing Pains The following is an account of events in my life that have led me from a sense of apparent academic failure to be a Lecturer in Higher Education. Growing up in the Western Isles of Scotland is always going to be different from the life-style of children growing up on the … Read more

Month by month for nearly five years I have shared with you in these columns about the daily life of the residential community where I live, and described some of the experiences and memories of children and young people who live here now or used to live here some time ago. The intention has been … Read more