In This Issue

Since it is such a large issue, you may find it helpful to be steered to your main interests.The issue is divided into a number of main groups of articles. In addition to items from the Editor, there are:

Some articles are campaigning in style, such as Charles Pragnell on adoption, Chris Payne on restraint, James Tweed on Government funding, Tricia Pritchard on Nursery Nurses, Ann Wheal on the needs of ex-care university students and Deepak Poddar on standard-setting in Scotland.

Some are personal accounts, such as Sir William Utting’s moving piece on a childhood stay in hospital, Susanna Dawson on the delights of childminding, Emily Middleton on a being a young Board member at the NCB, Linda Horn on her work experience placement with autistic children, and George Lane on life today and in the future.

There are policy documents, such as the Residential Forum report on residential care and the AIEJI report on the competences of social educators.

There are several well-argued articles on professional issues, such as Professor Ewan Anderson’s analysis of residential care standards, Keith White and Professor Roger Clough on residential child care, the historical analyses by Roger Bullock and Phil Carradice, articles on social pedagogy by Abby Ladbrooke, Ewan Anderson and Gorazd Mesko, Valerie Jackson on teaching reading, Professor Chris Payne and Professor Soeren Hegstrup on restraint and holding, several articles on children’s rights by David Kidney MP, David Jones, Dave Wiles, Gill Wilton and Bill Stevenson, Marc Mannes on developmental assets, Anton Tobé on Albania, Sarah Woodhouse on childhood, Vibeke Lasson on technology and children, Chris Durkin on the causes of crime, Suncica Milovanovic on Roma children, services for disabled children in Japan by Professor Hiromi Kotani, and Steen Lasson on family support.

There are descriptions of professional practice such as Dr Emmanuel Grupper on Youth Aliyah, Clair Davies on Appletree, Georgine Christine on PEPE and Phil Champion on Hesley.

There are pieces of creative writing, such as the anonymous poem and Gus Greene’s account of Bluebrick, book reviews and lighter items too. And don’t forget that News Views contains quite a number of short items that you might have missed.

And we haven’t mentioned the articles by Sally Cole, Richard Rollinson, Kathleen Lane, Margaret Simms and Terry Hoon, all with their own messages and viewpoints.

It is a truly international issue, and articles have been received from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands (about Albania), Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland (about England), the USA, as well as the United Kingdom.

We have real variety in this issue. Our contributors vary in age from ten years old to well after pensionability. Some are national figures and others are not yet well-known. They certainly reflect varying viewpoints. The contributions vary in length. Some are of a high academic standard; others are testing out unproven ideas.

The key message is that the Webmag medium can be used to share all sorts of thinking and it can reach a very wide readership.

We hope that every reader can find something they find useful. It has been a privilege to receive such a variety of interesting and well-crafted contributions, and if readers enjoy the issue as much as we have done in editing them, authors can be reassured that the time spent preparing the articles has been well worthwhile.

We also hope that the wide variety of articles will encourage other people to write about their experiences. Whoever you are, if you are working with children, you should have a story to tell, and if you are worried about your English, the spellcheck and the Editor can often help you put that right.

David C. Lane

Editor