The needs of young children in care : a memorandum / prepared by the Home Office ; in consultation with the Advisory Council on Child Care.

  • Great Britain. Children's Department
Date:
1964
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The needs of young children in care : a memorandum / prepared by the Home Office ; in consultation with the Advisory Council on Child Care. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    19 and proof of his own unworthiness. Those to whom he then goes can help to restore his feelings of confidence by the warmth of the welcome they give him; and it is particularly helpful if he can return to someone who enjoyed caring for him previously. In such circumstances he may return to a residential group; and before any further change is considered for him he often needs to be given considerable time in which to recover his emotional balance. When a child in a group is given satisfactory continuity of individual care, he usually forms confident affectionate relationships with particular staff members. When he leaves them a change in attach- ments may be difficult for him, but he makes the change more easily for having had such satisfying relationships with them. It has sometimes been suggested that, when children are in resi- dential care, members of staff should have a somewhat less personal relationship with them particularly if it is likely that they will be placed in a foster home. Studies of children show, however, that impersonal care even for short periods presents a child with circumstances which severely handicap his development and which intensify the effects on him of separation. It may well be that when he Jeaves those to whom he is attached he inevitably feels some loss and suffers some disturbance. Ways are found of reducing these effects, particularly when a child is helped to under- stand that a move is to be made and if he can become accustomed to his future home and to those who are to care for him there before the final change takes place. Those who are to have the care of him should visit him and get to know him; and he should be able to make several visits to his fresh home before he goes to settle there. He is also helped by finding in his new home a welcome and warmth similar to what he had in the home he has just left and he is greatly re-assured by being able from time to time to make return visits to it. In this way he can preserve the continuing contact with his past experiences and memories which is a necessary basis for his sense of reality and the enrichment of his thinking. The needs of young children who cannot yet talk about their experiences require particular consideration in respect of preserving for them in practical ways already suggested means of contact with the real basis of their early experience and memories. Children who can talk can be given the added reassurance of references in conversation that call to mind their earlier background and relation- ships. The continual relinquishment of children by staff members 1]