Kids Lost in Care : residential child care on the rack agai

The Panorama programme Kids Lost in Care broadcast on June 24th, 2013 once again put residential child care under the spotlight and concluded that too many children's homes and the local authorities who place children in them, fail a significant number of children and young people to the extent that the young people are at high risk of serious harm. The programme also raised the important question which we seem to be reluctant to address. "Who should provide residential child care ? large private conglomerates, small private family-run companies, the voluntary sector, local authorities or the state ?" Your comments are welcomed.

Towards the Nurturing City : a conference

Sandra Strathie has written to us about a conference - Towards the Nurturing City which is to be held on November 14th, 2013 at the City Chambers, Glasgow. It is a Video Interaction/Practitioners conference and is supported by the Glasgow City Council, the Glasgow Psychological Service, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, The Association for Video Interaction Guidance UK and the Glen Strathie Partnership.

This is Glasgow City Council's first VIG Practitioners Conference and it will be of interest to those who are involved in relationship-based interventions, strengthening attachment and using Video Interaction to develop reflective parenting and reflective practitioners. The day will have a strong emphasis on theory in practice through the work of VIG practitioners. The conference will bring to Glasgow leading authorities in the areas of attachment and trauma and it will facilitate, through a series of workshops, how VIG, in day to day working can support positive relationships through strengths-based practice.

The keynote speakers are :

• Hilary Kennedy is an Educational Psychologist and a leading developer of Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) in the UK.
• 
Dr Felicity de Zulueta is an Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Traumatic Studies, Kings College, London.
• Dr Deborah James is Reader in Child and Family Communication, University of Northumbria. Dr James is a practitioner and supervisor in VIG. She has published findings of her work in the context of organisational change, student learning and family intervention.
• 
Dr Maria V Doria is a Chartered Psychologist who works both in clinical practice and in research in the areas of interpersonal relationships, family psychotherapy and children’s mental health, including Video Interaction Guidance (VIG).

The cost of the conference is £95 but for those booking before August 16th there is an 'early bird' daily rate of £75.

For booking details email Fiona Williams of the Glasgow Psychological Service.

This news item first appeared on the home page of the goodenoughcaring website on June 21st, 2013

New course in social pedagogy

Gabriel Eichsteller brings to the attention of those who are keen to pursue an interest in social pedagogy further, a 5-day summer course on Social Pedagogy which the Institute of Education at the University of London is running from 31st July to 6th August.  Lecturers for the course include Prof. Pat Petrie, Prof. Peter Moss, Dr. Claire Cameron, Robyn Kemp and Gabriel, so it should be a fascinating learning experience.

The content and structure of the course can be found  here

The course can be accredited at MA level. Further details can be found here

This news item first appeared on the home page of the goodenoughcaring website on June 12th, 2013.

The new issue of the goodenoughcaring Journal will be published online on Saturday, June 15th 2013

As luck would have it Issue 13 of the goodenoughcaring Journal goes online on Saturday June 15th, 2013. We are fortunate in the array of outstanding articles which have been submitted to us for you to read. We hope they will be of interest to you. In this issue : 

• Julieann Arthur, Alex Horne, Alastair Jamieson, Murray Mckinnon and Jeremy Millar have given us an early glimpse of their textual and photographic research piece Candles and Care which takes a snapshot of resources available to care leavers in Denmark ;
• John Burton in a memoir of his relationship with a young woman from her adolescence to her adulthood shows why social care is Not Just a Job ;
• Darren Coyne portrays in Care Leavers and the Criminal Justice System : a sorry state of affairs the hostile territory encountered by an inordinate number of care leavers who enter our justice system ;
• Jane Dalgleish writes about work in progress towards Providing a nurturing environment for young people in a residential setting ;
• Moira Devlin recollects her time teaching girls and young women in a Community Home with Education in Beyond the mainstream, what difference have we made? ;
• Roger Lewis navigates us through the vicissitudes of the extraordinary and the ordinary life of a London boy in The influence of Chance and Luck in Childhood ;
• George Orwell, in his essay Such, Such Were The Joys contemplates his fortune or lack of it in a childhood spent in a different kind of residential care and education ;
• Joan Pritchard re-examines the strategies she and her colleagues developed and used to help the children in their care - assessed as having social, emotional behavioural difficulties - to achieve their full potential inHelping children experiencing SEBD to understand and manage their own feelings : the experiences of a headteacher of a day school for such children ;
• Charles Sharpe reviews Residential child care in practice Making a difference by Mark Smith, Leon Fulcher and Peter Doran ;
• John Stein gives a personal analysis of how the experience of childhood nowadays is so different from when he was a boy in Then and Now ;
• Werner van der Westhuizen considers the significance of Context in the provision of therapeutic care.

In the next few days, news of further articles may appear on the goodenoughcaring website home page where this information was first published on June 8th, 2013