In the 100 issues since January 2000, the Webmag has published about 1500 articles, and covered thousands of subjects. We would not be where we are now without an enormous amount of support from a wide range of people, and on behalf of the Children Webmag Board, I would like to say thankyou to:

• our contributors, including the sixty or so who have submitted articles to this special 100th edition, and who spent their time without the inducement of fees, producing a fascinating library of articles on all sorts of subjects concerning children and young people;

• our supporters and financial backers for their faith in us and their foresight in seeing the scope of the medium - the University of Northampton, the Social Education Trust, Caring for Children, the Institute of Child Care and Social Education, the Hesley Foundation, the Scottish Institute of Residential Child Care, the Charterhouse Group

• our readers around the world, whether they work with children and young people, manage, support or train child care workers, or are parents, grandparents or others with an interest in child care;

• the children and young people whose care, education, upbringing and wellbeing are the point of Children Webmag;

• and, last but not least, the Web Operations Team (WOT) which puts the Webmag together : our technical staff - Bill Stevenson for the Webmag’s early years and now Jeremy Curtis; our sales staff - the late Tim Woodward; our editorial staff - Alison Marlowe (in 2004) and David Lane, whose vision and energy, experience and international connections, and professional insights have carried the Webmag so far.

We believe the Webmag has not yet fulfilled its remarkable potential as an accessible, free, independent place for people to share ideas. There are lots more people who work with children and young people around the world whom we want to reach. There’s the never-ending battle to improve standards of child care. There is massive scope to expand technologically. If you can help us realise some of this potential, please let us know.

And perhaps you could check us out in August 2016, to see what Issue 200 looks like and what impact we have had on the child care scene by then.

Dear David

I hope you will allow me some space to congratulate you on reaching the 100^th edition of your Webmag. It is some years since I retired from work in social care and children’s services and since then it has been difficult to keep up with the events and issues of the day. Children Webmag has helped to fill a big gap. I have followed the Webmag since it started and I have always enjoyed its informative and stimulating content and style. Your own energy and commitment as Editor deserves particular praise. When I first met you over 30 years ago I saw those same qualities and they are undiminished! Warmest thanks and congratulations.

Adrianne Jones CBE

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 Tobe 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

The Importance of Children and Young People

This principle is something which every politician would sign up to; after all, one of the images of the campaigning politician is the kissing of babies to show that they are sensitive family-friendly human beings. When it comes to hard-nosed decisions, though, considerations of the needs of children and young people seem at times to melt away.

However, we have readily acknowledged that this UK Government has invested more in children and young people than any other in history, and we applaud this. It has also introduced more fundamental changes of system than any Government since 1971, and its departmental re-organisations with a Minister for Children, and the Department responsible for education being named Department for Children, Schools and Families indicates a more strategic approach than ever before.

In society as a whole there is still a long way to go before a balanced view of children is achieved, with the current sentimentalisation of little children and the demonisation of teenagers. At least, children now have a champion in Sir Al Aynsley Green, and he does not appear to be letting his weak remit as Commissioner get in the way of speaking out.

Emphasising the importance of children and young people is a campaign which will probably still be running when we reach Issue 200, and if it is necessary, we shall still be arguing the cause.

A Single Profession and Social Pedagogy

It has been our view that child care has been seriously weakened in this country because of the splintered nature of the profession. Workers see themselves as specialists first (such as nannies, residential workers or youth workers) and members of the wider profession second - unlike other professions, where people specialise within the overall profession with which they identify.

Social pedagogy now offers the opportunity to draw all child care workers together under one banner, to develop a common identity and to speak with a louder voice on behalf of the profession, the services and children and young people.

We have waved this flag since the start, and are delighted to see the current growth of interest in social pedagogy. We shall continue to support this cause.

Momentum

You may have forgotten the Momentum campaign, which we backed strongly. The outcome was the establishment of the National Centre for Excellence in Child Care, which is now in full swing and having a real impact under Jonathan Stanley’s lead, as the report on social pedagogy elsewhere in this issue indicates.

It was Adrian Ward who suggested the title Momentum for the campaign, in the hope that the name would encourage forward movement. Unhappily the campaign faltered, but then picked up again; the case was made; the Government accepted the case; the NCB was picked as the host for NCERCC - all good decisions, and the battle is now over.

Residential Care

The need for the establishment of NCERCC was in part because of the undervaluing of residential child care over recent decades. The creation of NCERCC is only one stage in the battle to have it given its proper status as a placement of choice, as a setting which can have a really positive impact on the lives of children, and one where the right values and skills are necessary.

The Webmag has published regular columns and a host of one-off articles in support of this cause, and will continue to do so.

The Workforce

We argued for the registration of child care workers. Now that the GSCC and its counterparts in other countries are under way, this should be a dead issue, but we are appalled that the GSCC is dragging its feet, and we may need to revive the cause.

International Links

Throughout the last eight years we have carried regular items about child care services in other countries, articles by authors from other countries and reports of international conferences and congresses (especially FICE). Fundamentally we believe that Britain is too insular, and that it has a lot to learn from other countries, as have individual professionals.

It should be noted, though, that the readership is international, and we have tried in part to address ourselves to worldwide childcare issues, and to offering people outside Britain a window on British childcare. All the way round, it is dialogue that we wish to encourage.

History

The Webmag has been very aware of our heritage in child care, and we believe that there is widespread failure in this country to learn from the past and appreciate the achievements of our predecessors. (How many great British child care workers can you name?)

We have therefore carried a number of articles to celebrate the lives and thinking of the great child care workers, and we have supported the establishment of the Child Care History Network.

Smacking

This is a campaign that should have been over years ago, and it is to the shame of politicians that there still has to be a pressure group, Children are Unbeatable, to keep on saying in various ways that smacking should be made unacceptable.

What would politicians who support smacking think if they were smacked by people much larger than them because the larger people did not like what they were doing? They would be arguing for protection and for the prosecution of the smackers. Yet they are quite happy to agree to big people hitting little people in the case of children. It really is time this matter was resolved, and that the professionals’ views were adopted.

Good Practice

Finally, not so much a policy as an approach, we have tried to be positive, to encourage good practice, and to share information about model projects and approaches. We have whinged or warned at times, and some of our contributors have made sharp criticisms in their contributions, but overall we have tried to be positive.

Children and young people need a positive workforce, committed and enthusiastic, if they are to be helped to enjoy their lives as children, to develop and mature to responsible adulthood, and to overcome the problems that many of them suffer. It is our view that an excessive emphasis on competencies in NVQ training has been at the expense of re-inforcing the values that motivate the workforce.

In our very first Editorial in January 2000 we emphasised the use of the Webmag as a Forum for ideas. We saw child care as a field where workers needed to be creative, imaginative and communicative, sharing their ideas. We still do. If we can help child care workers to be positive and to share ideas, it will be worth publishing the Webmag.

The Children’s Charter

We cannot let our 100th pass without celebrating a much more important anniversary. (There was an Act in 1889 known as the Children’s Charter, which took action to address child cruelty, but let that pass.) The Children and Young Persons Act 1908 was given the title because it gave powers to local authorities to intervene in the interests of children, and it was in a sense, the first of the modern Acts which culminated with the 1989 Act.

Under the Children’s Charter, foster parents had to be registered for the first time, Juvenile Courts were set up, local authorities were given powers to divert children from the workhouses, children could not be employed in dangerous trades, and they could not be hanged until they were sixteen years old.

The Act was passed under a Liberal Government, and it had a major impact. We hope to carry a full article about it in a future issue.

Size Matters

Roger Clough raises the question of the size of residential children’s establishments in his contribution this month. If you want to follow up this issue, look in our archives at our January 2003 issue, as there was a York Group conference on this theme which we reported on in detail.

We can confirm Roger’s experience that, whatever the size, the staff running homes (almost) always seem to feel that they could do a better job if they had fewer children in their home. We have come across it in establishments of varying sizes ranging from a secure unit with five challenging young people up to a large complex in another country with over 300 children.

Our (untested) theory is that people enter the work because they wish to be of help to children and young people, but that when they come to share their pain (as described by Jim Anglin), they understandably try to find ways of mitigating it. Among them, there is the wish to discharge troublesome children, going off sick, requesting more staff or better training, institutionalising the care to suppress problems and reducing the size of the workload. Some of these responses may be unconscious or gradual, while others are explicit. Some are damaging while others are not. If our theory is right, though, they all demonstrate the inherent stress in the work.

Stress

Talking of the inherent stress, work was undertaken some years ago by York University to look at stressors - the things which put people under pressure, and they devised a rating scheme which gave scores to various activities such as divorce, moving house and even Christmas. Some firms applied it, for example by grounding airline pilots who had an especially high points score, since they were seen as being at risk of poor judgement.

We encouraged York University (unsuccessfully) to develop a system for assessing secondary stress, i.e. the stress experienced by people assisting those under primary stress - the shared pain described by Jim Anglin. This was the subject of a study by the National Institute for Social Work in relation to the team of Liverpool social workers who were established to follow up the needs of families following the Hillsborough disaster. It found that these workers also suffered stress by association and identification, which in turn affected their health and personal lives.

Professionally we have devised many ways of protecting ourselves when we share pain - training, supervision and care planning to make the children’s needs explicit, for example. In the end, though, the pain will not simply go away, and unless workers render themselves unfeeling, they will share it. The sharing is what they are there for; their professionalism comes through the ways in which they share it and help the children to resolve their difficulties, which can lead to a resolution of the pain, joy and job satisfaction.

We think this warrants closer study. Is any reader aware of work being done in this field?

Did You See? …..

….. The Girls who were Found Alive, a programme on Channel 4 on 28 February 2009 about two girls who were best friends when they were abducted as 10-year-olds in 1998? It was every parent’s worst nightmare of the predatory paedophile in action. Despite the girls’ truly awful ordeal and the agonies which their families went through, it was a good news story (and well told). The Police happened to go to the house where their abductor was holding Lisa and Charlene, following up another allegation against him, and he admitted to the Police that the girls were there. They were re-united with their families, to their great joy.

Interestingly, both the girls hated going through counselling afterwards. One stopped after six months, but the other’s father insisted that she continued despite her protestations for another year. This should be worth following up. Was it bad counselling? Was it unpleasant medicine which the girls really needed to take, trawling over their ordeal and reliving it in order to come to terms with their experiences? Should counselling have awaited their request to talk things over? Or would that have been too late to undo the damage? Counselling seems to be doled out in great dollops whenever anything upsetting happens these days: what is its long-term impact, especially if people don’t want it?

For several years, the girls fell out and even hated each other, but since leaving school, they have become best friends again and the closeness of their bond was the last and perhaps best bit of the good news. They felt that they had gained from surviving their ordeal, which is a very welcome contrast with all those who state that such experiences have destroyed their lives.

A Bag of Balls

In the days when the assessment of children was still a feature of the residential child care system, John Gittins, then Principal of Aycliffe School, required all the staff to devise “testing situations”. This resulted in a range of interesting ideas, some of which would have breached Health and Safety Regulations, if they had existed at that time.

Alec Wells was a wily teacher, approaching the end of his career, and he produced a number of testing situations connected with football. He would turn up with his bag of balls (kept separate from the rest of the games equipment for testing purposes) and inflict one of his tests on the unsuspecting boys who had been anticipating a game of soccer.

In one testing situation he started by announcing that the boys were going to play football but with no rules other than scoring in the goal. After a few minutes he blew his whistle and stated that he had just introduced a new rule, which a boy had unwittingly infringed. It was usually a sensible and acceptable rule, no kicking the ball above head height perhaps. A couple of minutes later, the whistle went again, and another new rule. And so on.

As the game progressed, Alec introduced more and more new rules, usually more idiosyncratic and progressively more pointless, and at shorter intervals too, till the boys were thoroughly bemused and hardly dared play for fear of committing the next foul. It certainly was a testing situation, bringing on fear, apathy, rage, confusion and a range of other responses, all of which Alec could write up in his observation records.

Class Sizes

The suggestion has been put forward that in some circumstances it would make sense to double up classes, and have one teacher lead the lesson while the other went round giving individual assistance. This idea has brought howls of rage from the NUT and snorts of disapproval from parents. Think of the problems of controlling a group that size, they said.

For our part, we are appalled at the pedestrian nature of the discussion. It is time to go back to basics and ask what the point of schooling is, and then to take account of the twenty-first century in planning where we go next.

Do we actually need schools if so much factual teaching can be done by distance learning? Why shouldn’t children learn in much smaller groups, closer to home, cutting out all the need to travel to school? If they do need to come together, what is wrong with having the best exponents provide the lead, with other assistants fulfilling other roles? At rock concerts, thousands of young people listen to groups on stage, who only succeed if they hold attention and communicate. Why not the same for teaching?

There are dozens of fundamental questions and thousands of possible answers. If education is about opening minds, isn’t it about time we shared a bit of lateral thought about schooling?

Spoiling Children

We hear that there has been some research which shows that children who are spoilt by parents are more difficult to control at school. One of the good things about much research is that it confirms one’s intuitive belief in the obvious. It is not nice to find that you have based your life on myths, and so it is comforting to be told that one’s assumptions have scientific backing.

In this case, we can speak boldly because our views are as yet unsullied by having read the research. We think that the concept of spoiling children needs to be unpacked. We suspect that a child who is consistently given everything by loving parents will be less damaged by being spoilt in this way than a child who is told that s/he cannot have something but is then given it because the parents can’t stand the whining and tantrums.

In other words, while boundaries are clearly important, we think that parental consistency matters even more. Some parents will be softer on their children and some will be harder; what matters is that children are secure in knowing where they stand. We’ve quoted John Gittins above in this column; one of his dictums was that “You should always keep your promise to a child, even if you threaten to murder him”. While we would not advocate murder, he had a point.

No Right Answer?

Apparently Mary Bousted, the General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, recently told their Annual Conference that SATs caused poor mental health, but that the new approach, which allows teachers to put children forward for exams when they are ready, might demoralise lower-achieving pupils. Did she want high-achievers held back to keep low-achievers content? It seems to us that her line of argument was designed to ensure that nobody can win.

Our view is that mankind is a competitive, aggressive, striving, curious animal, which is why we’ve become dominant. Striving causes stress; it’s one of our inherent problems, with which we have to cope. But to try to avoid stress is pointless. Does Mary Bousted want us all to become comfort-seeking product-consuming couch potatoes? No doubt we have misunderstood her and taken her out of context.

The Journal of Children’s Services

Pavilion have emailed to say that the next issue of their Journal is out in April. Launched in 2006, it is designed to encourage the development of outcome-focused services to better safeguard and promote the well-being of vulnerable children and their families. It improves the understanding of the way in which child development and applied social research can contribute to the evidence base and increase the integration of children’s services.

This Journal, published quarterly, includes themed issues and topics, peer reviewed articles, practice-based pieces and commentaries and interviews on policy developments. Pavilion say that it is essential reading for all those responsible for planning, delivering and evaluating integrated children’s services in a variety of settings both in the UK and internationally.

Volume 2, Issue 4 includes the following articles:

• Learning disabilities and educational needs of juvenile offenders
• The costs and benefits of effective resettlement of young offenders
• Nordic child welfare services: variations in norms, attitudes and practice
• Towards better outcomes for children: alternative perspectives on international development
• The evolution of children’s services in Ireland, and prospects for the future: a personal perspective

Subscription rates start from £295 for institutions and £55 for individuals. For more information, email info@pavpub.com.

Easter

We understand that with Easter Sunday being 23 March this year it is the earliest this year since about 1913, and it won’t be so early again till 2060. In consequence, parents are complaining about the spread of holidays, as different schools pick different dates for their holidays and half-terms, and it jiggers up parents’ child care plans and costs them a lot in lost earnings.

We have made the point before, but it is apposite to make it again. School terms are based on the old religious terms adopted by the medieval universities. It is time to rethink fundamentally. Why have terms at all, when we don’t for adult work, for which children are being prepared? If we are to have terms, why three? Why make them the length that they are? Is there any rationale for the long summer holiday, when children may get used to not being at school, often get into trouble and cause some parents headaches? What pattern of schooling helps children’s education most? What pattern would be best to make the job doable for teachers? What pattern would suit parents best?

Our view is that the Christian denominations would do everyone a favour if they put their heads together and fixed Easter in the same way that Christmas is fixed. We can think of no theological reason for following the cycle of the moon in deciding on the date of Easter Day. Presumably, if one takes these dates literally, the length of Jesus’s life differs year by year with the change of dates. In the same way that the Sabbath was made for mankind and not vice versa, the dates for the celebration of these festivals should be serving the needs of humankind.

Why not agree that the last weeks of April, August and December are all holiday weeks, and that Christians celebrate Christmas during the December week and Easter during the April week? Is there a theological argument to the contrary, or just custom and practice? And while we are about it, can we do away with summertime clock-changing please?

From the Case Files

He had a pear of glasses to ware at home…..

….. And a social worker who couldn’t spell.

So although the magazine itself is celebrating its 100th monthly edition, I still have two more columns to go before I reach a century. And I am still here, continually stirred, surprised and challenged by the lives of individual children and young people, and also by the dynamics of our life together.

Learning from others

One of the youngsters who was here when I wrote my first column is now a young man and he still lives at Mill Grove. On reflection, I don’t think I have said much about him over the years, but I do want to now.

To set the context for what I want to say, it is necessary to begin with an observation that has been working its way into the cluster of what might be called my “interim conclusions” in life. It is this: real gifts of character and personality in any human being are never apparent in a full or coherent way to the person concerned.

Let me put that another way, because it is an important assertion. We all know that we can list some of our qualities, skills, experience, qualifications and knowledge. We are aware of them in the course of our life and work. But what about the qualities of character that are so much part of us, and the way we function that we cannot see them? My conclusion is that though others see them, they remain largely hidden to us.

If a person learns about them, then it will tend to be through others. And this is one of the reasons why relationships and life together are so important: it is through others that we come to know ourselves. (I think this idea can be linked with Jung’s “shadow”, but do not want to explore this here.) It is a reciprocal process in which there is scope for mutual understanding, insight and encouragement. As carers we can perhaps help others to understand qualities and gifts of which they are ignorant. Perhaps this is one of the unheralded but vital elements of residential child care: to affirm the gifts in a child or young person lacking in self-knowledge and self-esteem. At the same time there will be aspects of ourselves that they reveal to us.

Difficulties and qualities

With this in mind, let’s get back to the person of whom I want to speak. His earliest years are still shrouded in considerable and surprising mystery, but let’s sum them up by saying that they were troubled and very unpleasant. He came to us as a last resort when everything else seemed to have been tried and had failed. When he arrived he was withdrawn and anxious. In fact he was so emotionally hurt that I think it was only after something like three years living with us that he first ventured to say anything to me at all except in response to a question or prompting. As we got to know him it was apparent that for whatever reasons (I am still not sure, and doubt if I ever will be), he had difficulties in learning and processing information whether cognitive or emotional.

He struggled in mainstream education to the point where a special secondary school was seriously considered. He got to the end of formal schooling, and went to college to do some basic courses. Eventually he got a job in a retail clothing firm where he is responsible for the stock of one of its departments. He has held that job for over four years. He has the same tasks as when he started. He does not take the initiative, but is reliable and dependable.

Obviously I could say a lot more about him given that he has been part of our family for fifteen years or so, but you have got the gist of his story. He is competent at cricket, badminton, snooker, football, swimming and hill-walking, but overall he tends to be seen as someone “with special needs”.

A natural gift

But what I haven’t told you so far is one of his quite remarkable personal gifts. It is glaringly obvious to all those of us who know him. He is a natural when it comes to being with, caring for and playing with young children. And I do not just mean those who are adorable and content. He has a gift of empathising with, understanding and providing safe space for all young children, boys and girls. He knows instinctively exactly how much space and room to give them, how much support and encouragement. And naturally they quickly sense this and are drawn to, and happy in, his company.

On one occasion I was trying to help a family with a very disturbed young boy, who seemed not to know or understand the most basic of boundaries. He was largely, if not completely, out of control at home, school and “in the community”. One day I was bringing him to Mill Grove so that he could spend a few hours playing in our garden and tree-house, when he attempted to jump out of the window of the moving car. You can guess that fortunately I had someone with me: yes, my friend with the natural gift of being with and understanding young children.

It was he that coaxed the boy back into the car, and helped him to feel safe. So much so, in fact, that when we made it home, the boy was fully engaged in listening to a story being read to him! Ever since this occasion I have told my friend how much I admire his gift. But he has never understood what I mean by this. I have encouraged him to consider a job (career is actually what I have in mind) which majors on being with young children. But he does not see it this way. He continues in retail clothing and the only other option he has considered is painting and decorating.

And so we continue to have living among us someone whose great gift is with young children, but who cannot see what all the fuss is about. Meanwhile since March 2000 Ruth and I have become grandparents, and our two grandchildren love to come to spend time at Mill Grove. And one of the people in whose company they are completely relaxed is…yes, you’ve got it, my friend!

Learning about oneself

And what, you may ask, has my friend taught me about myself and my possible gifts? I am not sure, but this I do know: it seems that I may have ability when it comes to organising words and thoughts, teaching, and creating networks and organisations. But my friend has taught me that I do not have the natural gift of being, of letting go of work and plans and planning and organising.

I have tried to compensate for this, of course, but I know that I do not have the gift as he does. For he can get to the end of a day, or even a week, without having accomplished anything tangible or visible by way of planning, activity or concrete results, and yet he is content. He does not feel he has to prove anything, and I suppose if you are really comfortable in the presence and company of young ones, it helps not to have your own agenda, but to enjoy simply being in their company. If you wanted a succinct way of putting his gift into words it might be that he is good at being, rather than doing: a human being, rather than a human worker or doer.

Let’s not become sentimental and idolise a single gift. It’s not the whole story. I hope that some of his unrealised potential will still find its expression in his life. But what a gift! And how wonderful that, because he doesn’t recognise it as a gift, he is still as natural and unaffected as ever!

With this in mind it was a pleasure to be able to administer an event organised by the Residential Forum which brought together representatives from the voluntary, private and statutory sectors and included government officials practitioners, managers, owners, providers, policy and academics from throughout the United Kingdom over a 24-hour period to discuss the theme Modernising Residential Care for Children and Young People. Unfortunately our best efforts to involve service users proved unsuccessful.

We set ourselves the task of setting a vision for children’s residential care in the United Kingdom in the 21st century and sought to identify the key elements of a framework to embody and deliver the vision.

We know that about 9,000 children looked after by local authorities are in residential placements on any one day and that up to 40% of young people positively choose residential care in preference to other alternatives.

The vision

It will surprise no one that our vision did not contain any radically new ideas but brought together good philosophies that as a whole could provide a service that we could all to be proud of.

The vision, as we saw it, was that:

• the service should be child-centred, geared to putting children’s interests first and helping them to overcome their difficulties;
• residential child care should promote and extend children’s human and civil rights and help them grow, develop and realise their potential;
• children should be enabled and encouraged to participate in the range of decisions affecting them, including the way their units are run and priorities for the use of resources;
• residential care should be a service children and young people receive as a positive choice, providing a valued, stable, nurturing and therapeutic form of care;
• instead of concentrating solely on the position of children in the public care, the focus should be on policy and practice implications concerning the scale and diversity of the whole residential sector;
• residential care should be seen as an integral part of the whole spectrum of services for children and families, offering specialised and expert provision, and closely linked to fostering, adoption, family support and services for children in need and children at risk;
• child protection strategies should seek to ensure that abuse of all kinds is prevented, and where it arises, it is subject to early identification and action;
• high quality staff should be enabled to develop skills and promote innovation.

Implementing the vision

How, then, do you bring the vision about in order to modernise children’s residential services?

• Quality residential care needs to be adequately resourced, both financially in terms of staffing levels, and in the provision of expert support from other services, particularly child and adolescent mental health services.
• Regulation of residential care and its workforce should be rigorous but flexible, to encourage innovation and creativity, and to enable the service to be wrapped around the child, not making the child’s needs subordinate to the service.
• Investment should be made in research and development programmes to build the knowledge base for good practice in residential child care.
• Investment is required in the development of a skilled, knowledgeable, sensitive and creative workforce able to express and encourage high aspirations for all children in terms of their potential.
• There is a pressing need to develop a cadre of leaders in residential child care, able to communicate the vision to their staff, young people, councillors and trustees, and the public.

The Residential Forum will examine the issue of leadership at a future workshop, for, if we do not find away of letting skilled people communicate this vision, the chances of modernising residential care for children and young people will be limited.

Similarly the chances of modernising will be hugely restricted if we do not reintroduce justified risk into care policies and practice. I believe this applies to all forms of care for children whether in their own home or away from it.

Life skills cannot be developed without sensitive and creative work that brings out the potential in young people.

The fear factor and blame culture that our care workers and teachers feel is clearly inhibiting good quality practice. Providers and regulators are often reluctant to support risk for fear of opprobrium.

An integrated system

We, at long last, seem to be moving towards a system of ‘whole package’ care which will not be compartmentalised into fragments. The package must take fully into account the move into adulthood for it is surely in this area that the system has encouraged failure. We have an absolute responsibility to ensure that the transfer of life stages for a young person is not left to be taken in isolation.

Modernising residential care for children and young people will not be easy without the will of all those involved but so much could be undertaken with some positive attitudinal change and I hope that the Residential Forum will be able to do its bit to support those responsible for developing the framework for the twenty-first century.

Richard Clough OBE is Secretary of the Residential Forum and former Chief Executive of the Social Care Association.

One test of quality is whether in different circumstances we might use the service ourselves. How many residential establishments for children would you have trusted with your children, if there were reasons why, at some stage in your family life, you were not able to cope? Over the forty-plus years of my work life there have been a small number of places that fit this category for me because I thought that they would seek to understand and care with compassion and skill. Yet I know people who would never contemplate residential living for their children, including many who have worked in the sector.

Why is it that, in spite of concerted efforts over 50 years – and longer, in the UK residential care is rarely seen as a positive choice? I shall pursue this theme and reflect on the past, present and future in residential child care.

In the middle of writing this has come news of the murders of children in a Jersey care home, and of abuse, with seemingly little recognition or action, going back half a century. Too little is yet known to comment on what happened or the reasons why there was a conspiracy of silence. But there must be anger that children could have been subjected to such horrors in places that were meant to be looking after them. We must never forget that residential centres have been places where children have been harmed.

Advocates and antagonists

Residential care seems to put people into camps. What are the reasons why some are antagonists and some advocates? Is one of the variables people’s earlier experiences of situations that have similarities with residential life? Some who advocate residence themselves have lived in a boarding school, and presumably see benefits from that experience. Others value the potential of shared living, whether as a life style or as a means of healing. Indeed, the child care pioneers of the nineteenth century (Thomas Stephenson, Mary Carpenter, Thomas Barnardo, Edward and Robert Rudolf) all wanted to develop humane institutions to look after disadvantaged children. (I am using the word ‘institution’ in a neutral sense to describe an organisation for the promotion of a specific objective, together with the building where the organisation functions.)

Many of those who lived in the homes have testified to what they gained from living there, though there have been others who have argued that the needs of the children were secondary to those of society, whether for an ordered community or to provide labour. At this stage all I want is to note that in the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth residential homes were the accepted means of caring for children who could not or should not live at home.

Today, by way of contrast, the accepted first response to such children would be to look for a substitute family. Those of us who would see ourselves as advocates of residential care must examine the position of those who are vehement opponents.

Depersonalisation

The first aspect cited against residential care is that it is regimental and depersonalising. (I am setting out positions, not agreeing with the points that others would make).

For me a core attribute of the best residential practice is that staff strove to understand children and, indeed, liked them. That has not always been the case. Some have lacked skills to understand, hold and treat disturbed children. Often conditions in residential homes were harsh and, rightly, there has been revolt. The reasoning seems to have been that the large numbers of children who needed help could only be coped with through large establishments, although in many places there were early moves to break the numbers down into cottage homes.

Institutionalisation

‘Institutional neurosis’ was the term used by Russell Barton in writing about mental illness to describe what happened when the processes of the institution led to a condition where people developed learned responses or habits that became a greater problem than the original condition.

Goffman , in work that has had immense impact, developed these ideas through reviewing accounts of life in very large residential establishments, often with several hundred people. His theorising was acute and made sense of what many had experienced as residents or staff. At the core of what he proposed was that the drive within an institution to complete tasks led to mechanisms for the values of the institution to dominate those of individuals: residents were to be stripped of their identity, in the process being washed and discarding their clothes for those of the institution. Alongside this were two other key aspects: the drive to get tasks completed led to depersonalisation, with residents being lined up to await their baths, for example; further, residents (and indeed staff) had little privacy – everyone knew each other’s business.

Goffman was one of my formative influences. I am in sympathy with those who developed theorisation of the impact of the regime on the lives of those who lived there. Nevertheless, there has been a naïve and uncritical adoption of his work. Many have taken him to state that there is an inevitable process whereby residential centres ‘institutionalise’ those who live and work there.

The reality is different: there is a tendency in any system where people live together for the needs and interests of the individual to be subsumed in the determination to complete tasks or maintain control. Goffman’s work is much better understood as recognising an institutional tendency , a tendency that can be countered by holding to the primary task for which the place exists.

Family is best

The awareness of the potential dangers of residential centres has been linked to a pervasive view that family is always best and that, if the birth family is no longer an option, then the nearest to that (fostering) is the preferred option. Yet there has been little research that informs us of what foster carers do (their values, ways and styles of working, how they spend their time). However, we know a lot about the factors that lead people to work, and continue to work, as foster carers.

Cost

Residential placements are expensive, a fact that has been compounded by the decrease in size of homes and the increase in numbers of staff available at night time.

Theorising

Alongside the dominant view that residential care should be avoided there are those who have argued that residential living should be seen as a positive resource for those for whom it is appropriate. I shall not attempt to cover the debate and the literature which can be found elsewhere. The key point to note here is that in spite of efforts to rehabilitate residential care as a treatment of choice when appropriate, it seems rarely to be viewed in this way. The pattern remains that of repeatedly trying other options.

Yet since the 1960s there has been a sound theorising of residential practice and we know a lot about what is effective. There is a much longer history of accounts of residential establishments that transformed the lives of those who lived there. This is an important heritage that is in danger of being lost: to pluck out a few names, Homer Lane, A.S. Neill, David Wills, Barbara Dockar-Drysdale and George Lyward all wrote of living and working with groups of children.

An important contribution from Lyward was that at times staff would not be certain of what to do: they had to struggle and work with children to try to find ways to help and heal, and the striving when uncertain was a key factor in successful outcomes.

Reflections

Given this potted history, whither residential work? Why do I remain convinced of its achievements and potential, and feel concern for what may be lost? What follows is a teasing at the questions rather than scientific analysis.

Boarding schools

I was at a Methodist boarding school on a scholarship from the age of 10. My father was a Methodist minister who had to move frequently and my parents did not want my schooling disrupted. Perhaps also they were looking to get what they saw as the best schooling. I have mixed feelings about this time – enjoying sports and academic work, in some ways I was tailor-made for the life and in many ways I thrived. Happy memories. Yet I think that I knew then, and certainly have known since, that I had to survive in a self-sufficient way at too young an age. And as a parent I knew that I did not want my children growing up away from their local community and believed strongly in state education.

First jobs

My first jobs were as teacher and housemaster in senior approved schools for up to 80 boys at a time when I looked younger than many of the residents. Why the career choice? Probably the Methodist tradition had led to an enduring concern for social justice and for rehabilitation: the intrinsic worth of all. As a student I had a short visit to a borstal which was where I intended to work but found the conditions too harsh and was not willing to work in a system where prison governors were placed by the Home Office and might have to supervise events such as hangings to which I was vehemently opposed. So I opted for approved school work.

The schools at which I worked had many of the attributes that were captured in a lovely study by the Dartington Social Research team, After Grace – teeth. Some of the daily living processes, such as checking the boys on lists to make sure that they showered or had toothpaste on their brushes were not conducive to self-development! And yet, I remain convinced that we were able to do some good work, including some exciting group work. So in my personal and work life I have experienced the pros and cons of residence.

Residential work: holding, nurturing and treating

For me there is abundant evidence of the potential inherent in residential centres to hold, nurture and treat. And I have no doubt that there are situations where good residential care has a greater chance of helping children than other approaches. Anglin writes of the core task of residential work as being ‘responding to pain and pain-based behaviour’ in the children. Similarly Cameron and Maginn contend that early experiences, in particular parental rejection, lie at the heart of the problems faced by the young people who move into residential care. When children’s behaviour is unpredictable to themselves and others, some residential centres have a good record in understanding, holding and helping.

There are aspects of residential work that I consider intrinsic to this and I think are in danger of being lost. This may be no more than nostalgia for times past but I think relates to the core of the activity of residential work.

The first aspect is working with the group of children in informal and formal settings. There have been many dimensions to the way that expert practitioners have valued the resident group: formally to develop self-government and to enhance a sense of responsibility for self and others, informally to talk, share, play and look after others.

These stand in stark contrast to the negative view of groups of many of today’s residential workers. There seems an increasingly common perspective that sees the group as dangerous, with the best work being undertaken in one-to-one meetings between child and worker. My contention is not that there is no place for one-to-one work but that it is a tragedy to ignore the potential of the child group. A child who is bullied or who seems to be at the mercy of the whim of others can be helped not only by work with the child and modification of the situations that the child faces but also by ensuring that the resident group is confronted with their actions.

Linked to this is the importance of informal activity. Forty years ago the statement was accepted that the best work often was done in informal settings over the washing up, sitting on the stairs or playing the inevitable snooker and darts. Today the emphasis seems to be on formal events: the counselling meeting with residential staff or the liaison with leaving care and school staff. These are necessary, but the essence of whether residential work achieves what is possible for the children lies in the construction of the arrangements for living, and these may be neglected.

Small is beautiful – or is it?

Another of today’s certainties is that the smaller the home, the better the work that can be achieved. I am not going to pursue the research evidence here as the debate can be followed elsewhere but I am convinced that the ever-smaller argument is a dangerous myth. I have met staff of four-person children’s homes who claim that they would be able to do some really good work if only they could get down to three children.

The drive to reduce size would appear to follow the over-simple interpretation of Goffman that large institutions create their own problems. There is little research evidence to back a claim that smaller is better. There are two reasons to question today’s certainty. The first is that there are problems created in very small homes. The disturbed behaviour of one child has a far greater impact on a small home, and the child may have the place responding to his or her actions. It may be more difficult to staff the home adequately to allow the children scope for what they want to do. The costs of running a very small home are greater and a vacancy is harder to carry and remain viable.

One-person children’s homes have been developed, seemingly in response to the difficulties in placing some children. Little is known about the life-style and the effects on children.

Training for residential work

As I reflect on earlier training for residential child care staff, I am aware of the danger of looking back through rose-coloured spectacles. At different times there have been a one-year certificate in residential child care, an advanced course for senior residential child care workers held at Bristol and Newcastle , a Certificate in Social Services and the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work, the latter two having options in residential work at some colleges, NVQs and SVQs.

There has been a constant search for the best training, in particular to determine the professional base of residential child care. There had been a hope that seeing residential work as a branch of social work would result in higher status. The reality has been that the work that did not demand direct care, the indirect work of the field social worker, has remained the higher status and, mostly, higher paid activity.

Comparatively few generically qualified social workers went into residential work, in part because of the prevalent attitude that children would be better off if they did not have to move to a residential home. The attitudes of field social workers to residential care today have been developed on training courses: few regard residential homes as specialist treatment centres.

More recently there has been the development of individual courses, as the Masters programme at Reading or the Caldecott College courses, and an interest in social pedagogy.

Tomorrow’s residential child care

All of which leads me to wonder, as I stated earlier, whither residential child care? In this concluding section I set out an agenda, rather than add to the frequent demands (that are as frequently ignored) that residential child care be seen as a positive resource.

Training

We should start with training. There must be a nationally validated training course for residential child care staff. There is a tension here between the urgency arising from the current dearth of training and the importance of being clearer as to professional identity. Are residential child care workers to be allied with direct care workers including adult care, with child care workers in other fields, such as nurseries and youth work or with social work?

What are the core theories that staff need? Recently I have heard too little discussion of what it is that staff should know in order to understand children and to develop skills. I do not plead for a return to former training patterns but I stress that an NVQ type of approach is inadequate for staff to learn what they need to perform as skilled child care experts. Social pedagogy, with its emphasis on opening doors for children to learn, offers some hope that there will be a theoretical approach to understanding children and their needs.

In all of this ferment I hope that the heritage of British residential child care will not be lost. Of course we must not stick in the past, but nor should we lose the knowledge and skills of the pioneers. On many occasions I have contrasted the skill of a good GP who recognises a problem and calls for early, expert consultation with that of a poor field social worker who tries every remedy before looking to the expertise of residential child care.

Another analogy would be to look at the development of medical practice, where knowledge is built up over time, with today’s understanding of diabetes built on what people have already discovered. Residential child care has a much less certain knowledge base: those working in homes and those outside homes seem more willing to ignore the past and re-work practice and knowledge. Today’s search for theories for practice should not ignore the accumulated wisdom: it should build on it. We know a lot about what makes for effective residential child care and some, though not as much, of how to achieve the desired outcomes. The bigger question is whether anyone wants to know and use that knowledge.

Groups

My second plea is that residential workers should not lose sight of the potential of working with the group of children: residential child care is impoverished if practised as individual work between child and staff member which happens in a place where several children live on the same site.

Numbers

Finally, it is not correct that problems diminish and practice improves as homes get smaller and smaller. We need further work on the size of homes, and a comparison with the techniques and style of work in specialist schools such as the Mulberry Bush and a children’s home.

Today’s residential child care

This article has not attempted a celebration of all that is best in residential child care. Rather I have tried to account for attitudes towards residential living from those outside and those within homes. There would be much to celebrate, and looking at problems means that the excellent aspects may be forgotten. But there is much to celebrate also from the past, and today’s residential child care should not devalue its heritage.

Barton R (1959) Institutional neurosis, Bristol: John Wright.

Goffman E. (1961) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, New York: Doubleday.

Clough R. (2000) The Practice of Residential Work, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Bullock R., Little M., and Millham S. (1993) Residential Care for Children: A review of the research, London: HMSO.

Clough R., Bullock R. and Ward A. (2006) What Works in Residential Child Care: A review of research evidence and the practical considerations, London: National Children’s Bureau.

Wagner Development Group (1993) Positive Answers, London: HMSO.

Wagner G. (chair) (1988) A Positive Choice, London: HMSO.

Millham S., Bullock R. and Cherrett P. (1975a) After-Grace - Teeth, London: Chaucer.

Clough R. (2005) Residential care in Axford, N., Berry, V., Little, M. and Morpeth, L. (eds) Forty Years of Research, Policy and Practice in Children’s Services: a festschrift for Roger Bullock, Chichester: Wiley.

Anglin, J. (2002) Pain, Normality and the Struggle for Congruence: Reinterpreting residential care for children and youth, Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.

Cameron R. J. and Maginn C. (2007) The Authentic Warmth Dimension of Professional Childcare, British Journal of Social Work 38—6.

Clough R. and Brown A. (1989) Groups and Groupings: life and work in day and residential centres, London: Routledge.

Cairns B. and Cairns K. (1989) The family as a living group in Brown A. and Clough R. (1989) above.

Clough R., Bullock R. and Ward A. (2006) What Works in Residential Child Care: A review of research evidence and the practical considerations, London: National Children’s Bureau.

Commission for Social Care Inspection (2007) One-person children’s homes – a positive choice or a last resort?, London: CSCI.

I was a lecturer on the Bristol course which had been established by Chris Beedell.

Service Standards were published for: children’s homes, residential special schools, boarding schools, FE colleges (accommodation for students under 18 years of age) and care homes for younger adults. Standards were also produced for Youth Justice Services (Youth Justice Board, 2004) and for Child and Adolescent Psychiatric In-Patient Services (CAMHS, 2001). These two sets each contain standards which focused upon the residential aspects of care and are comparable with other Service Standards. In addition, the Charterhouse Group published, as an adjunct to those for children’s homes, Standards of Therapeutic Community Child Care, Health and Education.

These Service Standards all have the same basic purpose, to safeguard the welfare of young people living away from home in groups. However, even allowing for the specialised requirements of each type of setting, the Standards still vary very widely in number and coverage. Since at least some of the Standards are to be rewritten, this seems to be an appropriate time to consider the possibility of producing a generic set of Service Standards to cover the fundamental needs of all young people who live in residence.

With a focus upon the first five sets of Standards listed, together with those for therapeutic communities, all of which are concerned with the residential environment, an attempt will be made in this paper to produce an inventory of Standards which could be considered generic. Potentially interesting inclusions from the Youth Justice Services and Psychiatric Care Standards will then be indicated.

Different provision : different standards

The National Minimum Standards for Residential Special Schools, Boarding Schools and FE Colleges all have the same basic instruction and all have been designated Inspection Regulations. The Standards for Children’s Homes are considered to be both Regulations and Standards and the Children’s Homes Regulations are included in the volume. The Standards for Care Homes include in their introduction far more explanation about the Standards and the aims of the exercise.

However, for all five sets the format is essentially the same. There is a statement covering the basic Standard which is followed by a number of contributory or sub-standards. For a satisfactory outcome to any inspection, all need to be achieved. The outcome is also listed although this is variously described as: “outcome to be achieved” or “indication of intended outcome”. In the initial discussions, the sub-standards were intended to be criteria and that remains their purpose. This does appear to impose an unnecessary constraint in that, should the Standard be achieved by a criterion not listed, the Standard itself would not have been officially achieved.

This issue is addressed in the preamble for Care Homes in which it is stated that regulators will look for the following evidence from:

• discussion;
• observation; and
• written documents, policies, procedures etc.

In fact, these sources, together with interviews and possibly questionnaires, cover the range of evidence available to inspectors or regulators. Given that all such approaches can be used, is it really necessary to have a list of sub-standards or criteria?

From their approach and layout, these five sets of Standards fall into three categories:

• Residential Special Schools and Children’s Homes;
• Boarding Schools and FE Colleges; and
• Care Homes.

It is interesting to note that while Residential Special Schools and Children’s Homes have much in common, in that the residents are predominantly looked after children, Residential Special Schools are also considered Boarding Schools. As such, they are listed with mainstream Boarding Schools in the tables provided in the Utting Report (1997). The Standards for Care Homes were derived from those for Adult Placements.

Considering that these Standards are all covering young people of a similar age group living away from home in groups, the total number of Standards for each setting varies surprisingly, as shown in the Table. Standards for Residential Special Schools and Boarding Schools offer very much the same coverage but the approach is completely different. Furthermore, in the former each Standard is of approximately equal importance or weight, whereas in the latter this is not the case.

The structuring of the standards

Not only are the totals of Standards different, but the structure of the Standards, as indicated by the sub-divisions used to list them shows significant variation. For Residential Special Schools, there are nine sections:

• Statement of the school’s purpose;
• Children’s rights;
• Child protection;
• Care and control;
• Quality of care;
• Planning for care;
• Premises;
• Staffing; and
• Organisation and management.

In the case of Children’s Homes, the subject matter is comparable but the order is quite different:

• Planning for care;
• Quality of care;
• Complaints and protection;
• Care and control;
• Environment;
• Staffing;
• Management and administration; and
• Specific settings.

Standards for Boarding Schools and FE Colleges have the same sections:

• Welfare policies and procedures;
• Organisation and management;
• Welfare support;
• Staffing; and
• Premises.

The Standards for Residential Special Schools and Children’s Homes are more obviously child-focused and the order of sections listed for the latter Standards is the most appropriate. Planning for care and quality of care should surely be the foremost considerations. In the case of Boarding Schools, apart from the Statement of Purpose, the first four Standards in order cover bullying, child protection, behaviour, discipline, punishments and restraint, rewards and restraint and responding to complaints. For any generic inventory, this would seem to be something of a negative start. Therefore, as a framework, it is proposed to adopt the sub-sections as set out for Children’s Homes Standards.

Despite these obvious differences, there are at another level, many links between these sets of Standards, as shown in the Figure. This shows that in effect there are two basic hubs: Boarding Schools and Children’s Homes. If the residents in a Boarding School are all over sixteen years of age, then the inspection is by FE College Standards. If residents are accommodated for over 295 days per year, then Children’s Homes Standards apply. If the boarders are predominantly with special educational needs or in public care, Residential Special School Standards should be used. Similarly, FE Colleges overlap care homes in that if there are more than 10% of the young people under personal or nursing care, the FE College is designated a care home for inspection purposes. Children’s Homes are linked to Residential Special Schools by the length of accommodation and to custodial care by Secure Units. Therapeutic Communities are a specialised form of Children’s Home.

Differences in specific standards

Although the Standards for Boarding Schools and FE Colleges have a similar derivation, there are several significant differences. Those for FE Colleges provide guidance on both arrival and leaving. They are also far more detailed on health education, supervision and accommodation. Of all the Standards, they alone give prominence to staff and students with disabilities.

The populations of Boarding Schools and Residential Special Schools overlap and work by the DfES on vulnerable young people illustrates this point. Although there are far fewer Standards, those for the Residential Special Schools cover several key areas which are either missing from or barely mentioned in the Boarding School Standards. There is an accent on children’s rights and views. The Standard on bullying includes an emphasis on risk assessment. There is a Standard on missing children, for which there is no equivalent in Boarding School Standards. There is an emphasis on the support for individual children and the planning of their progress. There is also more detail on discipline, control and leaving. Residential Special School Standards are also distinguished by having the one Standard in any of the five sets related to the education obtained within the living and learning environment of the residence.

Standard 12.1

Care staff and the school’s residential provision and activities actively contribute to individual children’s educational progress and care staff actively support children’s education, …

This Standard illustrates the core of residential living and summarises what are two of the defining characteristics of the Therapeutic Community concept:

• A shared commitment to the goal of learning from the experience of living and / or working together (a living learning situation); and
• A living learning culture where interdependence emerges through take-up of responsibilities rather than through the demand for rights.

Children’s Homes Standards differ from Boarding Schools Standards in a similar way, the major issue being the accent upon all aspects of care. This point can be illustrated by referring to the specific Standard which covers relationships between staff and young people. For the Boarding Schools and FE Colleges this is the only Standard which can be considered pastoral. For Boarding Schools, the outcome states:

There are sound relationships between staff and boarders.

The Standard is summarised as follows:

Standard 36.1

There are sound staff/boarder relationships.

Standard 36.2

The general view of boarders is that staff look after them well and fairly, and that communication between staff and boarders is positive.

For FE Colleges, the outcome is much the same but the Standard is amplified significantly.

Standard 32.1

There are sound staff/student relationships including an understanding of respective roles, rights and responsibilities.

For Children’s Homes and Residential Special Schools, the outcome states: children enjoy sound relationships with staff based on honesty and mutual respect.

The Standard itself reads:

Standard 21.1

Relationships between staff and children are based on mutual respect and understanding and clear professional and personal boundaries which are effective for both the individuals and the group.

Compared with those for Residential Special Schools and Children’s Homes, the Standards for Boarding Schools and FE Colleges are clearly deficient in their lack of focus upon pastoral care and the learning which results from living away from home in groups.

Care Homes for younger adults introduce other dimensions which could, with benefit, be incorporated in generic Standards. These cover the matching of the young person’s needs and placement in a particular home following, if necessary, trial visits. There is an accent on decision making by the young people and upon risk taking as part of personal development. There is also a stress upon relationships and community links. Two Standards can serve as illustrations:

Standard 9.1

Staff enable service users to take responsible risks, ensuring they have good information on which to base decisions…

Standard 11.1

Staff enable service users to have opportunities to maintain and develop social, emotional, communication and independent living skills.

Proposal for a generic inventory

In producing a suggested inventory of generic Standards, the Children’s Home Standards are taken as the basis. Other Standards introduced are identified in parenthesis: (BS) Boarding Schools, (SS) Residential Special Schools, (YA) Care Homes for Younger Adults, (TC) Therapeutic Communities.

• 1. Planning for CareStatement of purposePersonal development plans and reviewsContact: guardians (BS)Induction and leavingSupport to individual children: internal and external (BS)

     Choice of setting: introductory visits (YA)

     Preparations for independent living

  2. Quality of CareConsultation : ethos of environment (TC): open, warm & nurturing environment (TC)Privacy and confidentialityProvision and preparation of mealsPersonal appearance, clothing, requisites, and pocket money

     Good health and well-being

     Treatment and administration of medicines

     Education: residential contribution (SS)

     : living and learning towards interdependence (TC)

     Leisure activities

     Access to information and external facilities (BS)

  3. Complaints and ProtectionComplaints and representationChild protection procedures and trainingCountering bullyingDiscrimination and equal opportunities (BS)Absence of child without authorising

     Notifications

  4. Care and ControlRelationship with childrenBehaviour managementRisk taking (YA)
  5. EnvironmentLocation, design and size of settingAccommodation: for sick children (BS): changing rooms (BS)Bathrooms, washing facilities: laundry (BS)Health, safety and security
  6. StaffingVetting of staff and visitorsStaff supportAdequacy of staffing
  7. Management and AdministrationMonitoring the welfare of the children (BS)Monitoring the operation of the programmeOrganisation of the setting (BS)Managing the setting

This inventory includes all the aspects covered by the National Minimum Standards for the different types of setting considered. Both the order of the sections and the emphasis focus upon the care and welfare of the young people, set out in a positive fashion.

Other considerations

However, it is worth quoting from the Standards produced by the Quality Network for In-Patient CAMHS because they introduce certain key ideas:

1. EnvironmentPatients consultedEquipment and procedures for emergencies
2. StaffingStaff work effectively as a team
3. Access, admission and dischargeUnits are parent-friendly
4. Care & treatmentAll patients are assessed for their health and social care needsWherever possible the treatment provided is evidence-based
5. Information, consent and confidentialityEach patient has a key worker

These Standards provide the only mention of staff working effectively as a team and also the fact that the home or unit should be parent friendly. However, the most interesting Standard is that concerning evidence-based treatment. In none of the other Standards is this aspect of care considered. Within the National Standards for Youth Justice Services, Standard 10 deals with secure accommodation and is concerned with residential settings and therefore comparable with the other Standards discussed. Key points of interest are listed:

Standard 10: Secure Accommodation

10.3 Staff deployed should … include appropriate representation from minority ethnic groups.

10.8 Staff should be encouraged to report to managers concerns about the conduct of colleagues and managers where appropriate.

10.9 Staff and managers have an obligation to behave in an open and honest (“pro-social”) way as a model for young people.

10.18 Each young person must be aware of the conduct expected …

10.28 On reception, all young people must be given the opportunity to telephone someone who may be concerned about their welfare.

10.36 Secure establishments must all have well stocked libraries for use by young people …

10.47 Offending behaviour work should constitute part of the individual training plan.

10.54 Each establishment must have written procedures for searching and other security activities …

These are the only Standards which mention the ethnic make-up of staff and whistle-blowing. They are also important as including the fundamental point that staff must act as role models. In any setting this would be considered one of the benefits of residential education and care. It is particularly interesting that secure establishments are the only ones in which a well-stocked library is considered crucial.

Professor Anderson was on the Steering Committees which produced the Standards for Boarding Schools, Children’s Homes and National Standards for Youth Justice Services and also the Standards for Managers in Residential Child Care.

In most of the industrialized countries, the use of residential education and care as a rehabilitation vehicle for children and youth at risk is constantly decreasing (Knorth &Van de Ploeg, 1994). There are many reasons for this phenomenon; however, the main ones are related to the negative stigma attached today to any kind of institutional placement. This is nowadays considered in most European countries as a last resort solution that is being applied only when all other interventions have failed.

In addition to that, the ever-increasing cost of treating a child in a residential care therapeutic program is encouraging policy-makers to look for less expensive solutions, even though their effectiveness is often doubtful (Grupper, 2002).

These remarks are needed in order to understand the very original and particular phenomenon related to residential education and care system in Israel. Its particularity lies in the fact that between 9 – 14% (depending on the year) of adolescents and their families from various cultural and social origins are opting for this kind of program for their children’s high school education.

Different periods in Youth Aliyah history

Youth Aliyah was established 75 years ago as a rescue operation for Jewish adolescents, taking them out of Nazi Germany and placing them in educational residential programs in Israel, first in kibbutzim and later on in youth villages too.

This network of residential education and care provision grew up and developed over the years now includes 283 institutions where almost 40,000 adolescents are receiving in them their high school academic needs, cultural enrichment, psycho-social counseling and, last but not least, all their primary needs, with it being an extra-familial care program.

The characteristics of the youth population taking advantage of this unique educational and rehabilitation network have changed many times during these 75 years. The main factors influencing it are the changing needs of Israeli society. During first years of the state of Israel, these were orphans and children who survived the holocaust in Europe. Later they were mainly new immigrants from various countries. Since 1971 it has become a very original mixture composed of young immigrants integrated together with Israeli-born adolescents who are in need of extra-familial care due to family problems or living in a difficult and unhealthy social environment.

Nine periods can be identified in this long history of Youth Aliyah:

First period 1933-1940 First groups of Jewish young people leaving Germany to be integrated in kibbutz groups in Israel.

Second period 1940-1950 Integration of orphans and youth that survived the Holocaust and arrived in Israel without family.

Third period 1950-1960 Youth Aliyah as an educational tool helping the newly born state to integrate the mass immigration from all over the world.

Fourth period 1960-1971 Integration of youth coming before their parents from North Africa. This period is also characterized by an ongoing effort to establish and strengthen the unique professional ideology and educational methods of Youth Aliyah.

Fifth period 1971-1981 The Israeli project starts, when following the Government’s request, 4,600 Israeli-born adolescents, mainly from culturally underprivileged background, are integrated into the Youth Aliyah educational network. At the same time, new immigrants continue to come from Romania, Iran, Turkey and elsewhere and all these young people learn to live together in the youth villages as an integrated youth society.

Sixth period 1981-1989 The Ethiopian era in Youth Aliyah starts. In 1983 there is Operation Moses, and thousands of children and youth from the Ethiopian Jewish community arrive to Israel, mostly without their parents, and new programs are developed for them before they can be fully integrated in the Youth Aliyah villages. At the same time, new short-term projects are developed for Jewish youth from different countries like France, England, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia and elsewhere, to strengthen their Jewish identity by spending a semester or more in a Youth Aliyah village in Israel.

Seventh period 1989-1996 The second large scale operation, Solomon, takes place in May 1991. During the summer of 1991 Youth Aliyah integrates 2,500 Ethiopian youth arriving in Israel in this rescue operation. In 1990 the mass immigration to Israel of Jews from the former Soviet Union starts and many of their adolescents are integrated in Youth Aliyah educative network. The Nailed project starts with the aim to bring from the CIS young people before their parents. At the same time, the war in Yugoslavia takes place and Youth Aliyah operates a special rescue operation giving a safe shelter for Jewish young people from the fighting areas. Many of them stay in Israel; some go back home when the war is over.

Eighth period 1996-2003 Youth Aliyah is transferred from the Jewish Agency to be integrated as part of the Ministry of Education. The big challenge is to keep the unique spirit and flexibility of an informal organization, such as Youth Aliyah, inside a bureaucratic governmental agency. This transition is realized successfully and the network of Youth Aliyah is expanding in this period and strengthens its professional structure. Children integrated in this period in the network include Israeli-born, Ethiopian youth and newcomers from the former Soviet Union.

Ninth period 2003 onwards Youth Aliyah has become the central agency in the Ministry of Education that supervises and takes responsibility for all Residential Education and Care programs, the challenge being to introduce Youth Aliyah educational philosophy and methods to the larger network of almost 300 residential programs.

The Israeli Youth Aliyah model for residential education and care

The prototype of the leading Israeli residential education model, forged and developed in the Youth Aliyah educational movement, is the youth village. It was created as part of the resettling of the land and gathering Jewish people from all over the world after the Shoah, to create an Israeli society. The kibbutz movement, which represented a new way of voluntarily chosen of community life, was in many respects the model for the creation of youth villages, based on shared living of youth and adults in a small and integrated educative communities (Eden, 1952; Kashti & Arieli, 1976). This kind of educational model has been widely applied in Israel until today for integrating immigrant youth, to rehabilitate underprivileged and uprooted young people, as a powerful social instrument for creating an integrated and solid society.

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The basic principles of this model are:

• The school is an integral part of the residential program. Young people are exposed to normative intellectual challenges, with a large network of support programs, both on the intellectual and emotional level.
• The child is being looked after in a holistic way - the ecological model. Every part of the day, and any kind of activity, and every staff member, are part of the overall program designed to achieve the educational goals.
• In the youth village the child experiences a real ‘moratorium’, which gives legitimacy for trial and error learning processes.
• The composition of youth society in the village is multi-cultural and heterogeneous. Young people are from various backgrounds, and all of them are in need of extra-familial education and care for various reasons. The ability of the staff is to transform this cultural diversity to be an asset instead of a burden.
• The gap between personal goals and community objectives has to be bridged. The concept of ‘self accomplishment’ is often considered nowadays to be in contradiction with activities that are geared towards achieving the goals of the community at large. Life in Youth Aliyah demonstrate the great potential, in terms of empowerment and psychological growth, of leadership activities where young persons are contributing to the community in large and at the same time are developing their personality and gaining most valuable social skills.
• Youth are responsible for the self-governance of daily life activities.The empowerment of youth is gained also through their active enrolment in leadership activities, through which they are experiencing bearing responsibility and also the rewarding feeling of having successfully accomplished many kinds of activity: at school, in social activities, in daily duties, in helping or supporting a young friend, in sports, in the farm etc.
• The special quality of dialogue between young people and their educators is that it is based on mutual respect and not on hierarchy.

Youth Aliyah’s international reputation – part of FICE-International

Youth Aliyah joined the International Federation of Educative Communities (FICE) in 1952, four years after FICE had been established in 1948. It was accepted as the Israeli National Section to represent Israeli residential educators in the international forum. In 1958 Youth Aliyah hosted the World Congress of FICE for the first time. Since then, there was another FICE World Congress in 1983 held in Neurim youth village. In 1991 a FICE international professional seminar on the training of social pedagogues took place in Israel and was later documented in a FICE book published in 1983. In October 2007, the Board meeting of this important organization took place in Israel, including visits to different types of Youth Aliyah villages, both for Jewish and Arab children.

FICE embraces highly qualified and motivated residential educators and administrators from more then 30 countries around the world. None of them provide such a large and diversified network, so that adolescents in need of specialized care have a wide range of options from which to choose the one that most closely fits his/her specific needs and expectations.

This is also the ‘golden chain’ between the past, present and future - the possibilities offered by this unique network of extra-familial care programs to rehabilitate and empower every young person who encounters difficulties in his/her adolescent days.

Recently, a survey was done by Prof. Rami Benbenishty from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The focus of the survey was to follow up graduates of Youth Aliyah villages 3-5 years after having finished their education. Almost all of them recall their experience in Youth Aliyah village as a very rewarding and empowering one. They are mostly satisfied with their lives, looking forward to their future as adults well integrated into Israeli society.

We know from our colleagues in FICE that in Europe, extra-familial care is a much stigmatized educational solution. Therefore, our European colleagues are full of admiration for this unique model of residential education and care programs. They are particularly astonished and envy us for being able to gain the full and on-going support of the Ministry of Education which covers most of the high expenses of this educational network.

The reasons for the high demand for residential education in Israel

The Youth Aliyah model is a residential education and care program emphasizing its multi-cultural feature. Nowadays, 85% of children who are in extra-familial care in Israel are placed in these kinds of residential programs. The Youth Aliyah model is neither a rehabilitation center nor a boarding school. It is trying to serve both populations together in a heterogeneous integrated setting, and to create a stimulating environment that can empower every young person to achieve his/her specific expectations and needs.

In this kind of residential institution there is a capacity to bridge the gap and find proper educational and rehabilitation solutions for a large variety of young people:

• new immigrants who are in the midst of their cross-cultural transition
  process,
• children and youth who are in need because of family and social problems,
• young persons who need a second chance after having failed at the
  community based schooling system,
• some who need rehabilitation following emotional and behavioral crises,
• those who are looking for a very specific oriented kind of education which fits the group care concepts of the youth Aliyah model.

In order to keep a high quality of education and care, our department in the Ministry of Education is closely supervising all 283 residential settings, including:

• religious and non-religious youth villages,
• high school Yeshiva for boys and high school Ulpana for girls,
• nautical schools,
• agricultural schools,
• vocational schools and also
• programs for Arab youth and for Druze children.

The origins of this phenomenon

The reasons for this unique social feature of Israeli society are many. Let us take the main ones and elaborate about them:

Cultural factors

In the Jewish cultural tradition it is well accepted that as part of the adolescent process of young boys, it is good for them to go away from home to study in a Yeshiva (residential rabbinic educational center). Therefore, a large middle-class population among religious people have positive attitudes towards sending their children to residential schools when they reach the age of 12. This has an anti-stigma effect on the overall residential education and care network.

Nation-building process of Israeli society

Like many other societies in a revolutionary phase, or in a nation-building process, group care is often applied as a powerful instrument to socialize young people and prepare them for challenging social duties (Bronfenbrenner, 1970). This is still the case in Israeli society today. Although social challenges are often changing, they still have strong appeal for young people who want to feel actively engaged in the building of the society’s future.

Historical circumstances of Jewish people in the 20th century

Another factor that contributed to the extensive use of a wide variety of residential models in Israel is connected to the tragic and extreme situations Jewish people were exposed to during the twentieth century. Many children lost their families during the two World Wars, and were in need of holistic care that could be supplied in residential homes. One example can highlight this kind of program. A home was created in 1945 in Salvino, a small village in the north of Italy, where Jewish children who had been kept under cover and saved in monasteries all over Europe were gathered and later transferred to group care programs of Youth Aliyah in Israel (Meged, 1984).

Facts and figures about residential care in Israel

As stated before, the number of children and young people in residential education and care institutions in Israel is higher than in any other country. The exact statistics vary from one period to the other; however, the general features described below have not changing significantly since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Looking at the age-group 3-18, 4% of the overall children’s population is placed in some kind of residential placement. If we look over the last 20 years at the age group of 12-18, which is the age of Youth Aliyah children, the figures are 9-14%, depending on the specific year.

In a survey done by Gottesmann (1994) in 22 different countries which are members of the international association FICE (Federation International de Communautes Educatives), it was found that no other country, even those which have a long tradition of residential care, had such relatively high percentages. Just to name a few, in the UK it was less than 2% (Kahan, 1994), in Hungary less than 1% (Domvsky, 1991), and in Finland 0.5 %( Kemppainen, 1991).

It is largely accepted that residential care is not a desirable solution in early years; therefore the age group of 12-18 is the one where most of placements in residential care are provided in the Youth Aliyah network. In the eighties it was starting with 14% of the age group. In the nineties it went down to 11% and the last statistics (Children in Israel, 2007), are 9%. Although the trend is downwards, it is still a significantly high proportion of the overall age group of Israeli youth.

New trends in the Youth Aliyah residential education and care network

Residential institutions are bound to modify themselves according to social changes occurring in the environment in which they operate. This is true everywhere and also in the Youth Aliyah model in Israel.

The main changes occurring nowadays in this educational network are focused in three areas:

• Higher priority given to academic achievements

Major efforts are being made in order to guarantee youth in care optimal opportunities to achieve success in their high school studies, as a key element in opening future perspectives for them as adults.

• Involving parents in the children’s lives while being in care

Contrary to the past, it is nowadays common knowledge (Buhler-Niederberger, 1999) that parents, even the most vulnerable among them, should be treated as full partners in their children’s education and care. This is not always easy to realize in residential institutions which used to operating as closed systems. However, today, due to the importance attached to the family, it is a major effort for residential staff to realize this policy in everyday life.

• New and better collaboration with the community Most residential youth villages were established in rural and isolated areas, and the nearby community did not play any role in their functioning. Nowadays, geography has changed in the sense that the distances are smaller and the concept of building community services has become a major component in educational and social services.

Instead of looking at community-based programs and residential ones as opposed to each other, the new approach looks for ways to conceive of them both as complementary. New partnerships between residential institutions and communities are being developed constantly, including the creation of new models, such as half-way homes and extended day programs that take care of the child without having to separate him/her completely from the family and the original environment in the community.

• Extra services to graduates without any family support

The main objective in the Youth Aliyah education network is to empower young people and prepare them for being autonomous and successful independent persons. However, a certain percentage (usually less then 10%) are completely lacking in any kind of family support.

Some of these young people are in need of an extended moratorium. They need some extra services, even after having finished high school studies. Some of them are in need of accommodation for an additional period of time; others need follow up and a place for spending their vacations during military service. Others need counseling and emotional support. Still others need to feel they are not alone in the world and the home supplied for them in the youth village continues to be their home whenever they need it.

These are examples of new programs emerging in some of Youth Aliyah villages during recent years. They are now being adopted as a matter of general policy to be applied through the entire network.

Concluding remarks

The Youth Aliyah residential education and care network in Israel was and still is a very important social instrument for successfully coping with educational and social challenges. This kind of program has proved to be highly instrumental in the successful social integration of immigrant youth (Eisikovits and Beck, 1991; Grupper, 1994). It has also proved to be an important asset in reintegrating disconnected youth who are at risk.

The community life where shared living between young people and their educators takes place creates vast opportunities to develop sense of belonging, first in the small peer-group and later in the youth community. Hopefully it will lead to the development of an adult personality, who feels him/herself to belong in, and be positively connected to, his/her family, the local community and society at large.

Let us hope that also in the future this powerful social instrument, that has been so efficiently applied until now, will be allotted sufficient resources in order to empower new generations of young people who are in need of this kind of educational programs. The implication is that residential programs should not be seen as the last resort, but on the contrary, the preferred option for those who need residential care and wish to use it.

Dr. Emmanuel Grupper is Director of the Residential Education & Care division at the Youth Aliyah Department in the Ministry of Education and Senior Lecturer at the Beit Berl Academic College. He is the President of the Israeli National Section of FICE, the international association for extra-familial care, and was elected as Vice-President of the International Association of Social Educators (AIEJI).