Working with Children in Care European Perspectives

by Petrie, Pat; Boddy, Janet; Cameron, Claire; Wigfall, Valerie; Simon, Antonia

• ISBN13: 9780335216352
• ISBN10: 0335216358
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-01
• Publisher: Open University Press

Summary

The book is written against the background of the gross social disadvantage suffered by most looked-after children in England. The book compares European policy and approaches and compares these to the care system in England. It draws on the authors' research in six countries and asks how different policies and practice can affect young people in residential homes. A particular focus is on 'social pedagogy' and what this distinctive approach, commonly used in continental Europe, has to offer. The book compares young people's own experiences and appraisals of living in a residential home, and the extent to which the residential care compounds social exclusion. It discusses possible solutions for current dilemmas concerning looked after children in the UK, in terms of lessons learned from policy and practice elsewhere, including training and staffing issues.

Author Biography

Dr. Janet Boddy has been a researcher at the Thomas Coram Research Unit in London since 1997. Her background is in child psychology and her recent research has focused on studies of parenting, and on services for children and families, including studies of the residential care workforce and of parenting support, with funders including the UK Department of Health and The Home Office.

Claire Cameron has been a researcher at Thomas Coram Research Unit since 1992. Before this she worked at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. She read sociology and politics at Durham University and then trained as a social worker at Goldsmiths’ College. She was employed as social worker in several local authorities before turning to research. She gained her PhD in 1999. Her main research interests are the childcare and the social care workforces, including gender issues, care work over the life course and comparative work, including pedagogy and residential care.

Pat Petrie is Professor of Education at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. She has spent many years researching and writing about provision for children of all ages in the UK and abroad. Her major international research has been in school-age childcare, services for children in public care, the 'social pedagogy' approach to children's services, and the developing role of the school, in USA, Sweden.

Valerie Wigfall has been a researcher at the Institute of Education since 1996. She has a degree in sociology from Sussex University, a professional social work qualification and Diploma in Social and Administrative Studies from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from University College London. At the Thomas Coram Research Unit, her work has focused largely on studies of the family, children and young people, with special reference to children in and leaving care.

Table of Contents

Introduction
What is pedagogy?

National differences in policy and training for work with looked after children
Working in residential care
Understandings and values: Staff responses to hypothetical situations
Looked-after lives
Giving children a good start?
Policy and practice in England: What is it in our current situation that makes it difficult to do well?
Concluding discussion, lessons learned
Appendix