Chris Taylor on Caring for Children and Teenagers with Attachment Difficulties

“Our attachment history affects us all, and children who have had sub-optimal early care are likely to be anxiously attached and to carry this anxiety as a self-fulfilling prophecy into other relationships, developing behavioural coping mechanisms that may make them difficult to care for. If the caregiver is also frightening, the child cannot organize their coping strategy in a coherent way. Such a child presents a huge challenge to be adequately cared for. Understanding attachment allows professionals charged with this task to unpack the child’s adjustment and work out ways of responding to the child that answers their attachment need and switches of the child’s self-defeating behaviours.”

Belinda Hopkins on the healing power of Restorative Justice

“Many people equate justice having been done with the administering of a punishment, and in schools and residential child care contexts a similar expectation prevails, or is believed to prevail. The logic is that if somebody does a bad thing then a bad thing needs to be done to them. […] A restorative response, with its focus not on blame, punishment and alienation but on repair and re-connection, encourages a wrongdoer to take responsibility for the harm they have caused, and gives them an opportunity to repair the harm…”

Mike Stein on Quality Matters in Children’s Services

“Crude outcome statistics which are used to condemn the state in blanket fashion fail to recognise the progress made by young people, including major achievements, such as getting back into education after many years, furthering leisure interests and vocational skills, and, often for the first time, developing consistent, positive and trusting relationships with adults. But no outcome boxes to tick!”