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.
"Everybody's
Uncle "
“Uncle
Gus, Uncle Gus, can we have some crisps?”
It
was in the middle of 1965 and I had become ‘Uncle’ to
29 boys and girls, aged 3-18, in a local authority run reception
centre, somewhere in the Midlands. Apart from Mr. Wilkust and Matron,
his wife, all the remaining five care staff were known as either
Auntie or Uncle. Hence Uncle Gus.
I
could not get used to not having to count the children and young
people at regular intervals to make sure they were all still present.
After two and a half years at a boy’s remand home, in a busy
city, it was great to be with youngsters, who for the most part,
did not want to run away.
The
Reception Centre was located close to the centre of a then small
town in a large Edwardian house, surrounded by a spacious garden
in the front and a big hilly lawn at the rear.
There
were swings and a bike shed, (where I kept my Lambretta 125) and
a number of tall trees and a garden shed, where Mr. Bolds, the gardener,
kept his lawn mower etc.
The house was roomy, with a large lounge and a sizeable dining room.
There was a separate TV lounge, and a games room and a boiler room
in the basement. There was accommodation for two staff on the ground
floor and a flat for the Superintendent and the Matron and their
two young children on the first floor.
There
were three boys’ bedrooms on the first floor and three bedrooms
for girls on the top floor. There was also a bedroom for boys on
the ground floor. You really did need to enjoy working with children
because, as well there being so many of them in one crowded house,
most staff, including myself, lived on the premises.
On
my day off I used to wait until all the children had gone to school
before emerging from my room. Otherwise I would inevitably be drawn
into some dispute about who had taken the right clothing from the
nearby cloakroom.
Staff
sat at tables with the children in the dining room. At breakfast,
as they began their porridge, the cook would bring my cooked English
breakfast for me to eat. I felt uneasy as I tucked in this, even
though the children did not seem to notice. They expected adults
to have preferential treatment.
Another
practice I found hard to accept was quiet hour. After lunch, at
weekends and during holidays, all the children of whatever age would
troop into the lounge and sit on chairs in a large circle around
the room. They would be invited, in small groups, to go and pick
a book from the shelf and then read it in silence.
All
the staff, except one unlucky soul, would go for a break. The remaining
staff member would sit with the children to enforce the hour’s
silent reading. Children who failed to comply, and there were surprisingly
few, would be sent to stand outside the lounge door for an unspecified
time. It was a long hour.
Children
were, for the most part, expected to entertain themselves, especially
in fine weather, when they were sent outside to the garden. A couple
of staff might sit in the lounge window keeping an eye on them.
This attitude was, in part, because with so few staff working such
long hours, they often did not have the energy or the time to become
more directly engaged with the children, though some staff were
simply not interested.
I,
with my experience of the constant supervision of the remand home,
found this hard to accept. This was because I felt a need to be
aware of what was going on and because I believed that bored children
usually got up to mischief. I also enjoyed getting the children
involved in fun activities.
So
I often organised a game of football or rounders or some of the
scout-type chasing games, all of which the children greatly enjoyed.
Mr.
and Mrs. W’s children were often included in the group activities
of the other children. But this was not always a good idea. If things
did not go little Sammy’s way during a game of football, for
example, he would pick up the new football he had brought for the
group to play with and say, “That’s not fair. I’m
going in”.
On
one occasion he started sending saucy notes to some of the younger
teenage girls and they sent back notes to him in a similar vein.
Matron intercepted the girls’ notes and berated them for being
dirty-minded little strumpets.
On
other occasions, in the early evening, Matron would burst into the
lounge and holler at the group, “Shut up this noise. I am
trying to get little Susi to sleep”. To have staff living
on the premises, especially with their own children, was not always
a positive experience.
The
children in the home rarely had violent tantrums or swore at staff.
There was frequent bickering and the occasional fight, but for the
most part life was rather predictable after the constant drama of
my last job.
Most
of the children were only resident in the home while some family
crisis was sorted out but others would go on to foster homes or
other children’s homes. We would not admit children with known
delinquent behaviour.
Children
were in the home either on a Fit Person Order or under Section 1
of the 1948 Children Act, which meant they were in the home purely
by agreement with their parent or guardian. One day the father of
a small six-year old boy, who had been in the home for many months
without any family contact, turned up at the front door.
“I’ve
come for little Willie”, he announced. After some discussion
and attempts to ask for more notice, he was allowed to take Willie
home.
I
enjoyed the chance to see more ‘normal’ children, both
girls and boys, at the reception home but I felt ready to face greater
challenges. But first I need to become qualified, so I applied to
go on a full time course and was accepted. But it was training not
as we know it now.
To
be continued……
