Series:

Routledge Revivals

5 total works

Cover of Making Residential Care Work
Over 6,000 children live in residential homes in England and Wales, but it is proving increasingly difficult to provide them with satisfactory care. The fact that some children's homes are better than others is well established, but why should this be so? Past answers have tended to be tautologous - rather on the lines of "a good home is one where children do well; children do well because they are in a good home". This Dartington study examines various aspects of children's homes and explores the connections between them in an attempt to break down the old circular argument. Structures are discernible in the relationship between different types of goals - societal, formal and belief; the variable balance between these goals determines staff cultures, which, in turn, shape the child cultures that develop. Such relationships are important because of their close association with outcomes - whether the children do well, whether the homes prosper. The model described in the book provides a conceptual framework and a set of causal relationships that should help professionals to plan and manage residential care better and so meet the needs of vulnerable children more effectively.

Cover of Prevention and Early Intervention with Children in Need
This text is based on the fact that all children have needs. Focusing on those who are in need, its main objective is to improve knowledge about how needs can be prevented from emerging in the first place - failing that, about how early action will prevent them persisting. The essay is aimed at managers and practitioners in health, education, social and police services charged with supporting children in need, particularly children who have or are likely to develop social and psychological difficulties. More specifically, it aims to prove of some value to those responsible for purchasing services on behalf of children in need on the basis of a professional diagnosis or, in a managerial capacity, for commissioning large blocks of provisions. The essay reaches into many areas of professional work, including early years day care, parental support, the response to family dysfunction and domestic violence, work with juvenile delinquents and young people with other behaviour problems, including some aspects of mental health problems and those that lead to school exclusion. The essay consists of two equal sections.
The first considers different ways of understanding children's needs and their associated social and psychological problems. The second looks at success and failure in responding to children's needs, drawing wherever possible on carefully evaluated programmes and referring to important overviews of research and some policy driven initiatives.

Cover of Research in Practice

First published in 1998, this volume focuses on increasingly important aspects of research activity by analysing the various development and dissemination projects undertaken at Dartington during the last 15 years, setting out the evidence for their success or failure and then suggesting a strategy for others who may wish to develop their work by similar means. It introduces researchers to the language of information design, designers to some of the complexities of scientific research and looks forward to a research climate in which new knowledge and new practice spring from the same solid theoretical ground.

Methods of disseminating the findings of social care research have changed radically in recent years, but little is known about the effects of the process on policy and practice. Professionals may have access to more information but do they understand it? Do they use it? Does it affect their practice?

Cover of Children Going Home

First published in 1998, this Darlington child care study looks at the return experiences of children looked after by local authorities. It shows that although the great majority of children go back to their families and home communities, little is known about the process. How can professionals and carers make the transition as easy as possible? The book takes forward ideas first reported in the Dartmouth publication, going home: The return of children separated from their families and tested in subsequent research. It charts patterns of separation and return, considers the experiences of those involved and highlights factors associated with the likelihood of return and its success. Because the factors described in the earlier research have since been confirmed in a blind prospective study they are among the most robust indicators available.

Cover of Secure Treatment Outcomes

Secure Treatment Outcomes

by Roger Bullock

Published 25 June 1998
This work explores the care careers of adolescents in long-stay treatment units with emotional and conduct disorders. But this is only one part of the equation for treatment eligibility - the other being the professional, administrative and legal framework in which the problems are addressed.