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edited by Keith White |
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This is Keith White's second volume as Editor, and the fact that he chairs the web magazine's Editorial Board is co-incidental. This is an independent review! Titles for reviews of this sort tend, like those dreamt up for big conferences and congresses, to be portmanteaux. They are designed to be flexible enough to contain a bit of everything, or whatever the contributors send in. Certainly the review has a good variety of subject matter and writing styles. This is refreshing and it would be a mistake to edit it into a composite style, as if it were a working party report. Portmanteau or Treasure Chest? If you want to get the gist of the review, read Keith White's introduction, which not only covers all the chapters in brief but also raises lots of issues in its own right. As with the rest of Keith's writing, it is thought-provoking and yet readable, though I had to go over some paragraphs more than once to think my way through them. (The mental process was also slowed down by some glorious Alpine vistas as we were coming in to land at Zurich at the time.) The theme of change may be a portmanteau, but it is certainly apposite. Actually, the variety of subject matter makes the review more of a treasure chest than a trunk. The volume of change in British childcare is greater than ever before. After a couple of decades characterised by relative stagnation (apart from the Children Act 1989), the Labour Government has bombarded the services with new initiatives affecting children and young people, both in education and social care. The review is divided into two parts - theory, legislation and policy in the first part and practice in the second, though as Keith acknowledges, the division is a little artificial as there are chapters which properly straddle the division. Ideas In the first article, Peter Moss looks at the need to pay proper attention to the role of children in society, not just as the recipients of services decided on by adults but as people who need their own opportunities, or "spaces", to control their own lives and contribute to society. Having had the taster for the idea in Keith's introduction, I felt mildly disappointed to find that the chapter did not develop the idea further. The case was well argued, but it is a really important idea, and its consequences deserve more attention. Children used to be taught that they should be seen but not heard; now they are heard, but are they listened to? Rupert Hughes's exposition of the thinking behind the Children Act 1989 is lucid and his defence of the Act against some of the subsequent criticisms appears to be well argued. For anyone wanting to know the thinking about this Act, such as students, it is succinct and interesting. If the theme of the review is change, though, it might also have been helpful to have an article by someone who is dissatisfied and wants the legislation to move on. A role of this sort of publication is to act as prophet, uttering threats of impending doom and pointing out possible promised lands, rather than just as historian. Two articles in the first part (Eva Lloyd on early years and Rob Smith and Neil Ramsbery on education) seemed to me to be sound detailed descriptions of the changes and developments which have taken place. They need to be noted and are useful for reference, but they have little spark of questioning the status quo or evaluating the past critically. One gripe about the early years piece : it has scarcely a mention of child-minding, and yet there are about 90,000 childminders doing sterling work in this field. Then there are three pieces on specific types of service. For people wanting to get up to date on adoption, Felicity Collier's chapter was well written and informative. Unfortunately, because of current parliamentary action, it may soon be out of date, but it is still worth reading. Another chapter which is particularly helpful to non-specialists who want to get a grasp of a subject within a few pages is Pat Verity's on fostering. A fascinating aspect of this chapter is the analysis of the driving forces at work within fostercare, for example in the way that fostercarers have organised themselves, regardless of what their local authority paymasters would have liked. From humble beginnings, the workforce has become steadily more professional, and fostering is a field in which our record compares well internationally. The third article of this genre is Philippa Russell's on children with disabilities, which lays out the issues and the challenges with admirable clarity. Practice Moving on to the second section, I really liked Terry Connor's piece. Having been a residential childcare worker myself, I was pleased to see a positive description of the real change that good care can achieve. Marion Thorpe's piece draws attention to an area of work which has been hidden until very recently - the need of young carers for support - and it was good to see it getting attention here Christine Lenehan's piece also looks at an important issue, but since it focuses on systems, it should perhaps have been in the first half of the book. Moraene Roberts's piece is a welcome antidote, nicely juxtaposed in that it speaks from the heart and stirs the reader's emotions, which is necessary if action is to be taken. The second half closes with a piece on involving fathers in primary schools by Jayne Clough, Alan Richardson and Ann Le Coutier (or Couteur?), a further piece on adoption and a nice description of Childline's work by Hereward Harrison. Overview I had got to Budapest (a few days later) when I got to the close of Hereward's piece, and it felt a bit like the end of 1066 and All That, when History came to a sudden . As the focus of the book is on change, and began with Peter Moss's challenging ideas, I had expected more of the contents to be forward-looking, questioning the status quo and arguing for more change. There is always next year's review. To end the review on a more trivial note, I found it irritating that the page headings gave no clue as to which chapter I was reading, and there were places where the editing should have been fiercer, but the blue ink in which the review was printed (is that NCVCCO policy?) is very restful on the eye, and it was a good book to take on my travels. NCVCCO Annual Review Journal No
2 (1990) ISBN 1 870575 22 9 |
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