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.
A
Healing Regime - Warts and All
Stanley,
the Headmaster of Bluebell Special School, where I worked as a Housemaster
from 1968 to 1971, had some ideas which were ahead of his time and
others that were not. He pointed out, for example, that toothpaste
was bad for your teeth and so banned children from using it.
My
reaction, as I suspect was most peoples’, was that this was
nonsense. But later I realised he had a point, certainly with the
toothpaste of the time. Because, back then, most popular pastes
had a sugary flavouring added to encourage use but sugar is the
main cause of decay.
One
of his main concerns was food. He considered that most of the food
the children were eating at home was harmful and full of additives.
This was at a time when very few others were saying this. As a result
there was little meat on the menu but frequent nut cutlets, fruit
and veg and the school had specially- made bread.
The
meals were collected using a self-service system, aimed at taking
the conflict out of meal times by allowing children to choose from
a range of healthy options. The other novelty was that there was
no school cook. Instead all staff, including Stanley himself, took
their turn, in pairs, to prepare and serve the main meals.
Sweets
were banned. In their place was a daily tuck shop made up of a selection
of fruit.
Stanley
and his wife Mavis, the Matron, were also not in favour of standard
proprietary medicines. Instead we used things like Olbas oil and
other herbal remedies for colds and suchlike.
Stanley
was so committed to the regime he believed to be life enhancing
and healing that at times, he bordered on the dictatorial. He was
also a very forceful personality. As a result most people tended
to go along with him. To be fair, he did encourage discussion in
staff meetings on issues and did adhere, generally, to democracy.
On
one occasion on staff meeting day, every Tuesday, I was working
in the kitchen. In the early afternoon I received a summons to go
the staff room. I went - mystified as to why I should be needed.
“We
have been discussing parents and the fact that some of them who
come to visit the children stir them and are generally a nuisance,”
said Stanley.
“True.”
I agreed.
“So
Gus, you have the casting vote. It has been proposed that from now
on we ban parents from visiting.”
“You’re
joking, aren’t you?” I said. “Yes, of course parents
can be a nuisance but they are an essential part of the children’s
lives and although it might make life easier for us I am afraid
I can’t vote for them to banned.”
Stanley
and the meeting accepted this.
The
main system in place to encourage discipline and social responsibility
was a process whereby children wrote to the meeting asking for agreement
that they should be trusted to do such things as use a pen knife,
climb trees, or answer the communal telephone. These were called
Maturities.
Linked
to this was a system of stop lists for children who were reported
to the meeting as being disruptive in some way. One of my jobs was
to keep the Stop List and Maturities Chart on display, upto date.
A
child’s alleged misdemeanour could be raised at the daily
meeting. So, for example, a child could be reported for throwing
a dinner knife across the table. If others came forward as witnesses
to this and the meeting accepted their statements, the offender
could be put on the Stop List for dinner knives. This meant he or
she would have to eat their meal with a spoon or fork.
To
come off the Stop List, the child had to write the meeting to say
that he or she had now learnt their lesson and it would not happen
again. If the meeting accepted this the use of knives would be then
allowed.
This
process worked well for most children. But as I monitored the chart
I noticed that a small group of children remained on the Stop List
. I realised the reason for this was that they could not write very
well and in a very few cases, not at all. (There were children as
young as six at the school who had failed to respond to normal education).
The
simple solution I proposed to the staff meeting was that children
should only be put on Stop Lists for a limited period and then automatically
come off unless someone had good reasons to object. This was agreed.
For
the vast majority of children in the school who could write there
was what was considered to be a safety valve in the shape of a large
blackboard in the sitting room. They could express their thoughts
and feelings on this at any time. So one child wrote after a member
of staff had been unduly harsh with them “Mike is an f….
bastard,” or another wrote after an argument with his best
friend, “I never want to speak to that swine Ruth again.”
But
Stanley’s regard for free expression evaporated one day when
he came on duty to see that one child had written on the board ”Beware:
Stanley is trying to take over your minds.”
An
emergency staff meeting was called, as Stanley feared, amazingly
to my mind, that the children were planning an uprising! I think
calmer views were able to put the incident in perspective but the
event did expose an unexpected insecurity in Stanley which I suspect
had something to do with his own upbringing.
Bluebell
School aim to give children a completely new outlook on life and
reclaim them from the emotionally damaging experience that they
had had in their own families. One of the biggest contradictions
about this laudable approach was that at the end of every school
term all the children were taken to or collected by these same families
for the long school holidays.
Although
there was a family liaison officer, no work was done with these
families and that seemed to significantly undermine, though not
invalidate, the otherwise unique healing regime of the school.
To
be continued……
