No. 17 of the goodenoughcaring Journal – The Mulberry Bush Issue – goes online on July 1st, 2015.

On July 1st , 2015,   Issue 17 of the goodenoughcaring Journal will be published online. The core theme of our next issue is the work of the Mulberry Bush Organisation.

Founded as the Mulberry Bush School in 1948 by the child psychotherapist, Barbara Dockar-Drysdale, with support of the paediatrician and psychoanalyst, D.W. Winnicott, the Mulberry Bush has, throughout its history, offered therapeutic care, support and education to children. In recent decades the Mulberry Bush has diversified its services and provides therapeutic care and support to smaller groups and it has also developed as a centre for professional training in therapeutic care and education. The essays and articles about the Mulberry Bush will be written by people working there and by people who are or have been associated with it.

Other articles about childhood and child care matters will appear in this issue, as well as reviews of recent publications.

Further details about this Issue 17 will appear on this page during the coming weeks.

This item first appeared on the www.goodenoughcaring.com home page on March 31st, 2015

Research request about ‘negative mothering’

Michelle Linger, the Director of St Michael’s Child and Youth Centre, in Plumstead, Cape Town, South Africa, has sent us the following request. 

I was just enquiring if anybody has done any extensive research on the impact of either the complete lack of mothering on young girls or “negative mothering” on young girls. I am the director of a facility for young girls aged 13yrs to 18yrs and before this appointment spent many years in the field of child and youth care and have noticed the impact that mothers have on their daughters.This said I am concerned that we are perhaps not doing enough with regards to this issue to safeguard young girls who grow up in care and are therefore never really mothered correctly and I have come to the conclusion that you cannot mother yourself or anybody else that you might bring into this world if you haven’t been mothered yourself.

Michelle can be contacted at director@stmikesct.org.za

This news item was first published on the goodenoughcaring.com home page on January 6th, 2015.

More about the Issue 16 of the goodenoughcaring Journal now published online

John Stein launches Issue 16  of the goodenoughcaring Journal with his editorial about the significance of relationships for children as they grow up. Supporting John in the ensuing articles, Lorea Boneke, writes about children and young people in care whose important relationships and placements break down.  John Burton provides a cornucopia of rich notes from his work as a consultant to children's homes, Cynthia Cross helps us explore the rewards of acceptance in a recollection of her relationship with a young man who was in residential care,   Evelyn Daniel talks about the failures of relationships at all levels in the care system and considers how this might be put right,  John Diamond presents, in the shadow of recent events in Palestine, the text of a talk he gave in Jerusalem in 2008 about the therapeutic work of the Mulberry Bush School,  Maurice Fenton writes about unity in relationship,  Iain Macleod reflects on his journey through the Scottish care system as he gathered  an identity through relationships with significant others,  Jeremy Millar offers reflections inspired by reading  Borstal Lives, a novel by "Louis Edward,"   Charles Sharpe reviews Social Care Learning from Practice edited by Noel Howard and Denise Lyons,  Mark Smith considers the nature of relationships through the lens of social pedagogy,  John Stein recalls important relationships in his life other than those with his parents, the late Ian D. Suttie, in an extract from his 1935 book, The Origins of Love and Hate,  argues that an unnecessary "taboo on tenderness" exists in many human relationships  and.  in a short vignette depicting a scene from a Pupil Referral Unit where she taught,  Christina Williamson raises questions about the relationships between students and teachers and  asks readers to provide the answers.

Read the goodenoughcaring Journal at 

http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/the-journal/

Inequality, Poverty, Education A Political Economy of School Exclusion

Palsgrave Macmillan has sent us details of  Inequality, Poverty, Education A Political Economy of School Exclusion  by Francesca Ashurst and Couze Venn which was published earlier this year.

The authors develop a political economy and a genealogy of school exclusion in order to reveal exclusion to be a symptom of more fundamental issues relating to poverty and inequality, reflected in the role of the state in managing their consequences, particularly regarding juvenile delinquency. Using  archival and documentary evidence they uncover the roots of exclusionary practices in political and economic struggles going back to the 19th century. These conflicts, the authors claim, have had decisive effects on key shifts in social and educational policy from the Poor Law Reforms of 1834 to the emergence of the welfare state and the current neoliberal reconstitution of society according to the model of the market. In arguing that competing views of an equitable and just society underlie exclusion, the authors believe their analysis opens up a space for envisaging radical new approaches and practices for dealing with children in trouble.

Francesca Ashurst is an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University, Wales

Couze Venn is Visiting Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London and Associate Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

This book will be reviewed in the June  2015 issue of the goodenoughcaring Journal.

This news item first appeared on the home page of the goodenoughcaring.com website on December 15th, 2014

Issue 16 of the goodenoughcaring Journal will be online on December 15th

Issue 16 of the  goodenoughcaring Journal will be online on Monday, December 15th at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/the-journal The principal theme of the new issue is the significance relationships have for children as they grow up.

John Stein has composed the Editorial for this issue. The authors providing us with their knowledge, experiences, questions and insights in this issue are Lorea Boneke,  John Burton, Cynthia Cross,  Evelyn Daniel, John Diamond, Maurice Fenton, Iain Macleod, Jeremy Millar, Charles Sharpe,  Mark Smith, John Stein with an additional article,  Ian D. Suttie, and Christina Williamson.


This news item first appeared on December 12th, 2014 on the goodenoughcaring.com website home page at http;//www.goodenoughcaring.com 

New book : Leading Good Care: the task, heart and art of managing social care by John Burton

Jessica Kingsley Publishers have given us prior notice of John Burton’s forthcoming book Leading Good Care: the task, heart and art of managing social care due to be published on February 15th, 2015. John is a regular contributor of articles to the goodenoughcaring  Journal. This book will be reviewed in the June 2015 issue of the goodenoughcaring Journal.

Comments from readers who have previewed the book include :

‘This book wants reading for several reasons. It is a book from the heart and highly readable. It identifies straightforwardly, matter-of-factly and scathingly the mindless, blinkered and harmful bureaucracy which has infected and distorted the social and health care system. Yet, in the face of these identified evils, it cleaves to optimism and independence of thought throughout and a determination that things can, and must, change. It discusses systems and ideas, but is written by an author with a detailed practical knowledge of care and who uses, throughout the book, care settings to illustrate in depth the issues as played out in the real world. Above all, this book challenges managers to break out of the vicious circle within which they can all too easily become enmired and ultimately, to lead good care.’ 

Michael Mandelstam, author of How We Treat the Sick: Neglect and Abuse in our Health Services

‘If you want to step up to leadership, and to lead good care, this book will help you do just that. It’s borne of long experience and a passionate belief in the difference good leadership can make. So if you want to transform people’s lives, start here.

From the foreword by Debbie Sorkin, National Director of Systems Leadership, the Leadership Centre

‘Leaving bureaucracy and compliance in its wake, John Burton takes the book’s reader on a journey to leadership both as a role and as an aspiration… With sobering references to the health and social care scandals of Cornwall, Staffordshire and Winterbourne View, and more recently the Savile debacle, John exposes the myth that managers were principally to blame by showing how there are wider systemic failings that leave most managers believing that they are powerless to take a stand and simply doing as they are told… With compassion entering the social care vocabulary again, John’s book is a timely inspiration for managers to return to humanity and core tasks with confidence and to lead their services to real and meaningful excellence.’ 

Philip Nightingale, Registered Social Care Manager

For more details about the John Burton’s new book go to http://www.jkp.com/uk/leading-good-care.html

This news item first appeared on December 3rd, 2014 on the goodenoughcaring.com homepage   at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com

Issue 16 of the goodenoughcaring Journal is on its way

On December 15th, 2014, issue 16 of the goodenoughcaring Journal will published online. This issue has a broad principal theme : 'significant relationships” John Stein provides our editorial and there are articles from Lorea Boneke, Cynthia Cross, Evelyn Daniel, John Diamond, Iain Macleod, Jeremy Millar, Christine Williamson, Charles Sharpe and John Stein provides a further article. More articles are in the pipeline. News of these will appear at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com in the coming days.

Further submissions of articles are welcome until December 1st. Submit an article as an attachment to goodenoughcaring@icloud.com

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