Dear Sirs,
Please find below letter written in response to John Nelson’s letter (Letters 9th Nov) & Martin Narey (Second Thoughts 4th Nov)
Residential Care can join the dots.
Martin Narey’s review of the residential care of children (Second Thoughts 4th Nov) has prompted much discussion, and an important recognition of the existence and needs of some of the UK’s most vulnerable citizens. All too often, the complexity surrounding these marginalised children bewilders the professional networks around them. They elude planning because their circumstances are just too complicated. Then they languish in children’s homes staffed by untrained workers earning the minimum wage.
John Nelson’s letter (9th Nov) encourages an alternative vision in which residential care offers a robust and flexible response to complexity. Crucially, the relationships young people have with staff and other residents within children’s homes can be the central anchor in their lives – The predictable pattern of familiar faces who take turns to look after them, have the potential to join the dots, and to ensure that their disparate experience can be brought together to make sense.
It will be the staff in children’s homes who help navigate changes of social worker and changes of school, likewise it will be these staff who are best placed to clean up the mess when young people’s complicated behaviours put them at odds with those around them. It will be these same staff who help manage the chaos and vulnerability that all too often characterises the lives of these young people’s families.
With good training, support, and appropriate remuneration, workers in children’s homes are uniquely placed to enable young people to cope with the difficulties of their lives. This opportunity for strength and compassion creates the very best possibility for stability, then educational achievement, and the chance that this generation’s children will not need to be looked after by the state.
Yours Sincerely,
Mark Waddington