Introduction Communicating micro skills – self-reflection Mark Zanita Millie Stewart Peter Bohemia Josh Sorrell Hakim Poppy A Thing called Love The Earned Wisdom of Children End Notes Residential Childcare Theory Interventions
Biography
Abbi Jackson has worked in children’s services for around 25 years. She has been a foster carer and has worked in secure care and children’s residential care. She spent time as a social worker in a statutory childcare team, an independent Form F assessor and a supervising social worker. She has led large scale practice audits in children’s services and more recently in adult protection. Currently she is a senior planning officer for adult social work and integrated services in a local authority area and is an independent panel member for a private fostering company.
Abbi is also an active practice educator and lectures in critical social work practice. She has an interest in early intervention with young people who experience emerging mental health concerns. Never a dull moment, she is currently undertaking a piece of action research with young people receiving alternative therapies. She is a beekeeper in her spare time.
Supervisors and practice teachers have long struggled to support workers and students to bring appropriate theory to residential child care, and often revert to what they know from casework oriented approaches. This small book confirms what I have always believed to be at the root of this difficulty, and that it that there is just too much going on in the life-spaces where adults and children come together in the course of everyday living to be able to package it in the nice clean ways that students, workers and managers would like to think we should be able to... The book should be a boon to practice educators and supervisors supporting students and workers as they embark on what Abbi Jackson recognises as the ‘unique privilege’ of life-space work.
Mark SmithProfessor of Social Work, University of DundeeThis unique book provides in depth perspectives on the complex task of effectively caring for children living in residential care. It is written in a heartfelt way and is immensely useful for all staff working in such settings or those considering or supporting these roles. The overarching emphasis is on placing children, and the trauma they have experienced, at the very centre of the task of the residential child care worker. It does this by the skilful use of fictional case vignettes, “Today’s Events” and reflective tasks for workers and staff teams to undertake. Personal challenges for staff are acknowledged including how sometimes this complex work can test our ability to remain the ‘adult in the room’. In doing this it provides the possibility to work in not just a trauma informed way but in a trauma responsive way.
Dr Janet Melville-WisemanPrincipal Lecturer in Social Work & Member of the Association of Care Experienced Social Care Workers (ACESCW)
