A
personal account of over 40 years’ experience in the residential
child service in the United Kingdom, based on involvement in the
services as a practitioner and manager.
Names and places have been changed for obvious reasons.
"Trained
& Ready for Testing"
When
I said I wouldn’t accept a job for less than £1000 per
year, my fellow students, on the one-year Home Office training course,
must have thought I was being rather boastful. Pay for residential
workers, in 1967, was still very poor and working hours remained
‘as required’.
I
was determined, however, I would get a well-paid job, with prospects
of career development. After all I was now one of the few, fully
trained residential workers in the system.
Somewhat
to my colleagues’ surprise, and to be honest, mine as well,
I quickly obtained a job for £1012 p.a, less £220 board
& lodging. Mind you, it was in London, where pay tended to be
higher.
Not
only was the pay good but I was to be working in a newly opened
establishment with a brief - new for many local authorities - of
reception and assessment, and I was to be Deputy Manager. I thought
I was going places.
We
admitted 12 boys and girls of school age, though most admissions
tended to be in their early to mid teens.
Admissions
were slow at first and we took time to see if the referral was appropriate.
No hardened delinquents, pregnant school girls or batches of toddlers
for example. (Later on referrals came thick and fast and some of
the selection criteria went out the window). The children were from
an inner London Borough and were usually streetwise. Some children
were from ethnic minorities, Afro-Caribbean or Turkish Cypriot,
for example.
Generally
the family histories were not as complex as those of children today.
On the other hand, not many of the staff, (the were about 8 of us),
myself included, were used to caring for children of first or second
generation migrant families and had many prejudices to overcome.
The
role of management was also a new experience for me. Being in charge
when my manager was off duty was something I could usually cope
with, but I could find it difficult when the manager was off duty,
yet still around. It was even more problematic when Mrs. Manager
- who had a secretarial role - would pop out to check on what was
going on. Living, as most of the staff did, on the premises, meant
that even when off duty one was very aware of the children and of
staff colleagues.
My
manager was an ex-Army officer who tended to run things in a mechanistic
way. He also seemed to expect staff to spend some off-duty evenings
playing parlour games with him and his family!
My
relations with my new manager became slowly strained. It all came
to a head, after about a year in post, when I had to cope with a
very challenging adolescent girl. In my anxiety and inexperience
of dealing with such matters I responded by relying on my status
to gain control, which made things worse. In the end the manager
felt he had to come from his quarters to sort things out.
From
then on he seemed to lose confidence in me, and I had lost some
confidence in myself. No one was offering me any support so I decided
that it was time I looked for another post.
In
1968 I was offered, and accepted, a job as housemaster in what was
then known as a school for maladjusted children. I shall call it
Bluebell Way School.
The
school was a local education authority establishment, deep in the
country and provided residential education and care for about 50
children aged 6-13. This post was to be one of the most insightful
and fulfilling, as well as slightly bizarre, experiences of my career.
The
headmaster was a disciple of the liberal educationalist A.S. Neill,
of Summerhill fame. Neill himself said that Summerhill was wrongly
known as a ‘go-as-you please school’ but that this was
far from the basis of his child care beliefs. He was reacting to
the age where children were meant to ‘be seen and not heard.’
Bluebell
School was based in a large rambling country house, with a newish
wing added. The headmaster and his wife, who was Matron, had a bungalow
in the grounds. A few teaching staff lived off campus but the rest
of us had rooms in the main building. My room overlooked the front
of the house, which was a large grassed area with a tall oak tree
in the middle of it.
The
head, Stanley, believed that children had to relearn the trusting
of adults and that the adults had to learn to listen and take seriously
what children said. In an effort to lessen barriers everyone, adults
and children, were known to each other by their first names.
Stanley
also maintained than informal education, for emotionally damaged
children, was more important than formal education, so that lessons
only began once the daily school meeting was finished, whenever
that was, and the education authority accepted this!
Bluebell
also had strong views on the significance of food, care of pets,
sexual maturity, management of disruptive behaviour and school democracy
for children, which many would say were ahead of their time and
others would say was nonsense.
It
was at Bluebell School that I really began to think deeply about
what was good child care practice and to enjoy what I was doing.
Some of the ideas were half baked and some more to do with adult
anxieties but many others offered real insights into providing helpful
professional relationships, support and structure to children whose
lives had fallen into chaos and confusion.
I
hope to tell you some of the incidents and my experiences, in this
unique setting, in my next chapter in my saga.
To
be continued……
