Children in Care: Needs, challenges and evidence

By Terry Philpot

Written by leading children’s services experts and clinical researchers, this book is for anyone interested in up-to-date, evidence-based approaches to working with children in care. Drawing on modern research, the book offers practical guidance on how to plan and deliver round-the-clock care and education to children who have experienced traumatic events and disruptions to their attachments. This emphasis will be particularly important for those working in schools, children’s homes and providing care in families through fostering and in other everyday settings such as hospitals, surgeries and dental practices.

Child protection professionals today are often working in extremely challenging environments, with scant resources. The advice offered in this book will equip readers with considered approaches that help to build co-operation and connection between services and communities where children can be helped to thrive and to ensure creative resolutions are found for vulnerable children. This text book will help those studying social work, teaching, social policy, child psychology, nursing, occupational therapy and speech therapy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805146254

Book preview

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Copyright © 2023 Terry Philpot

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Editor’s note

Sadly, Ann Buchanan, one of our authors, died before this book was published. Indeed, her chapter on residential care was delivered only weeks before her unexpected death in February 2022, while on holiday. It is likely the last piece she wrote for publication.

Details of her life and achievements can be found in the Obituary published in The Guardian, 13 May 2022 (available online at www.theguardian.com/society/2022/may/13/ann-buchanan-obituary).

Contents

List of Contributors

Ann Buchanan was Senior Research Associate at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University and Professor Emerita of Social Work. Before becoming an academic she spent 10 years working as a social worker in an inner city. At Oxford she set up the Centre for Research into Parenting and Children and undertook studies on parenting, fathering, grandfathering, sibling relations and child well-being. Some of her earliest studies were on children who were looked after, using both national longitudinal data sets to track what happened to children in care, and studies that gave voice to the young people who were being looked after. Later in her career, she worked with Barnardo’s and Research in Practice co-writing a book for social workers in 2004 with Charlotte Ritchie titled What Works for Troubled Children. She travelled extensively and lectured on her work across the world. Her last book (co-edited with Anna Rotkirch) was Brothers and Sisters: Sibling relationships across the life course (2021, published by Macmillan). She died in February 2022.

Antonella Cirasola is a qualified clinical psychologist registered at both the Italian Council of Psychologists and the UK Health & Care Professions Council. She holds a BSc and MSc in Clinical Psychology from Sapienza University and an MSc in Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology from University College London (UCL). She also completed a funded PhD at the UCL Psychoanalysis Unit on the role of the therapeutic alliance in the treatment of adolescent depression. She works as a clinical practitioner within the School Remote Service at the Anna Freud Centre and as Module Lead and Senior Research Tutor at UCL. Her research interests are psychotherapy process and outcome; attachment and therapeutic alliance; and trauma and mental health.

Richard Cross is Head of Assessment and Therapy for Five Rivers Child Care. He began his work with children, young people and adults who have experienced significant adversity and complex trauma in 1991. He has developed and piloted numerous relational therapeutic programs to meet the needs of children and young people, from his first group work approach in Scotland for adolescents to addressing sexually harmful behaviour; to developing the advanced EQUIP (a program designed to meet the needs of anti-social youth with severe conduct disorder) in New Zealand; and to bringing trauma-informed care to the UK through the Sanctuary Model in 2006. He specialises in complex trauma and dissociative disorders and frequently offers training internationally to qualified mental health professionals. He is a fellow and faculty member of the world’s oldest society for trauma and dissociation, the International Society for Trauma & Dissociation, and a faculty member of the Arizona Trauma Institute. His research aims to improve understanding of what works in assessment and interventions for children and young people who have experienced significant adversity. He is also a Director of the Bowlby Centre, London and the Institute of Recovery from Children Trauma.

Chris Hanvey was the Chief Executive of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and, prior to this, was the Deputy Chief Executive of Barnardo’s and Chief Executive of the Thomas Coram Foundation. His career has spanned posts in local government and health, the voluntary sector and the Cabinet Office. He was a Non-executive Director of the Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, chairing the quality committee and being lead on safeguarding. He was also vice-chair of the Department of Education’s Family Fund and is both a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Dartington Social Policy Unit for children. He is author of several books and numerous articles. His latest book is Shaping Children’s Services (2019, published by Routledge).

Saul Hillman is a Senior Research Fellow at the Anna Freud Centre and an honorary lecturer at University College London. He teaches and supervises across several different postgraduate programmes at both institutions. Within his research role, he has primarily managed and worked on studies around attachment and mentalization. Much of his work has been in the field of children who were either looked-after or adopted. He has a specific interest in measure development following on from completing a PhD on the Story Stem Assessment Profile. He also works as a research consultant for a number of other charities and organisations. He is also a qualified integrative therapist. His research interests and attachment; mentalization; measure development; and looked-after children and adoption.

Richard Machin is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Health at Nottingham Trent University. He teaches social policy on a range of courses including social work, health and social care and public health. His area of expertise is social security and welfare rights. Before moving into academia, he worked for many years as a case worker and manager in a local authority welfare rights team and maintains links to this sector by giving freelance training for the Child Poverty Action Group. He has published in Critical Social Policy, Disability and Society, Social Work and Social Sciences Review, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, and Ethics and Social Welfare.

Pam McConnell is the Chief Executive of Five Rivers, which she founded in 1989. She qualified as a social worker with a dual qualification in social policy and administration and the Certificate in Social Work from Coventry University, and continued professional training as a psychotherapist, group analyst, and family therapist. She specialised in child protection and mental health in families with vulnerable children, working in the London Boroughs of Chiswick and Croydon and with the NSPCC in Wiltshire and then became an independent expert in the courts. As a result of seeing that the experience of being in not able to deliver a therapeutic experience to children, she began her first therapeutic children’s home in 1989. This led to a progression onto other associated services for children in care, namely education, fostering and direct therapy and research and training.

Perdita Mousley is an educational leader with over 20 years’ experience within a variety of educational, residential and health settings for children, young people and adults with additional and complex needs. As well as being a qualified teacher, she holds qualifications in educational leadership and special educational needs. She has a particular interest in inclusion and supporting learners with additional needs in particular autism and dyslexia. Most recently, her work includes educational research and consultancy. Previous to this, she was an executive director for a national charity with overall responsibility for education, therapy and residential care within independent special schools and colleges; she also led day care services within the high secure hospital sector. Dr Mousley has successfully developed services from inception through to delivery, including independent special schools and children’s homes. She has led national projects to raise awareness of mental health as well as leading research on the educational experiences of looked-after children.

Fungisai Mushawa has been A Senior Social Work Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University since 2017. She is the Course Lead for the BA Social Work Course and has teaching duties across the undergraduate, postgraduate and continual progressional development programmes in social work. Her interest in research is related to work with children and families and issues that affect black communities. Her publications have been centred around work with black sub-Saharan communities. She has practice experience in generic social work whilst working in Zimbabwe where she qualified as a social worker, and in the UK, social work with children and families including working with foster carers and children in foster placements from social worker to managerial level. She then worked as a fostering independent reviewing officer and social work consultant before moving on to higher education.

Paula Oliveira is a Senior Research Fellow at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, working across several research projects involving vulnerable children and families, such as children in care or at risk of entering care. She also teaches applied developmental neuroscience and developmental psychopathology in the developmental neuroscience and psychopathology research Masters, a UCL programme that runs in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre and Yale University. Previously, she undertook psychology training at University of Minho in Portugal and a Masters in clinical psychology. She then completed a PhD in psychology at UCL, researching institutionalised children with attachment disorders and other socio–emotional difficulties. After that she worked on a randomised controlled trial to adapt a parenting intervention for children in foster care with symptoms of attachment disorder. Her research has been focused on attachment, attachment disorders and neurodevelopment among children in care.

Terry Philpot is a writer and journalist. He is the author or editor of 23 books, including ones on adoption, fostering, the voluntary sector, and sex offenders. His most recent books books are 31 London Cemeteries to Visit Before You Die (2012); Beside the Seaside: Brighton‘s Places and its People (2015); Secret Lewes (2017); Secret Rye (2017); Secret Aldeburgh to Southwold (2018); and Over Here, Over There: The People and the Places that Made the Story of London and America (2019). His book, III Literary Sights in London that You Shouldn’t Miss, will be published next year. He has contributed 23 entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and writes and reviews regularly for The Tablet, while contributing to The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph. A former editor, he has won several awards for journalism. He has been a trustee of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, the Centre Policy on Ageing, the Cardinal Hume Centre, and Circles UK. He has volunteered with Circles UK and Human Writes, and presently volunteers for New Bridge and as a tour guide at the Weiner Holocaust Library, London.

John Pierson moved from the US to Britain in the early 1970s. He taught courses with the Workers Education Association and Sussex University Extra-mural Department, before working with the Richmond Fellowship. He subsequently qualified as a social worker at Liverpool University and joined Cheshire social services department as a field worker with children and families, and later as service manager. Moving into academia he taught at Staffordshire University for 30 years on courses covering childcare law, the evolution of the welfare state, and community development. He is the author of several books including, Understanding Social Work: History and Context (2012), Tackling Social Exclusion and Poverty (2016), and A New History of Social Work: Values and Practice in the Struggle for Social Justice (2022). He retired in 2021 but continues to research how and why social work philosophies change over time, and to help at the local youth centre where he has volunteered for the last 20 years.

Richard Rose is the Director of Therapeutic Life Story Work International, which provides consultancy and training on therapeutic life story work and working with hard-to-reach children and adolescents, and develops academic training programmes in the UK and Internationally. He has worked with traumatised children and families since he was 17 years old, and over the last 40 years his direct work with hurt children and young people is still at the heart of his working life. He works with organisations across the world promoting best practice. He is an adjunct Associate Professor of Social Work and Social Policy at La Trobe University, Melbourne, an Honorary Associate of Berry Street, Melbourne, and an Honorary Associate of the Open Adoption Institute, University of Sydney. He works with the Department of Human Services, Oregon, USA, and ORPARC (Adoption Services), and is a Clinical Complex Case Consultant for the child protection services in Australian Capital Territories; he provides similar services to social care teams across the globe. Richard Rose is the author (with Terry Philpot) of The Child’s Own Story: Life Story Work with Traumatised Children (2004); Life Story Therapy with Traumatised Children: A Model for Practice (2012); and Innovative Therapeutic Life Story Work (2017).

Jennifer E. Simpson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Course Leader for MA Advanced Social Work in the Department of Social Work, Care and Community at Nottingham Trent University (NTU). Her social work practice background is fostering; it was her interest in this area that led her to undertake a PhD focusing on how children in care use mobile devices and social media to stay in touch with their families. She has also carried out research spanning social media and social work; child, adult and family social work and services; as well as higher education continual professional development for integrated social services workforces. She now teaches a variety of continuing professional development (CPD ) modules as the course leader for NTU’s advanced social work course.

Simon Ward is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Liverpool John Moores University. He is a registered social worker and has worked in various positions, as a social worker and team manager, mostly within local authority services and especially with children in care and in court settings. He is Vice-chair of a national voluntary organisation’s regional fostering panel. His ‘second’ career is teaching social work and social policy with The Open University, University of Manchester, Staffordshire University and LJMU.

Foreword

Pam McConnell

Five Rivers Child Care is a social care and