Book review
Title: Residential Child Care: Prospects and Challenges
Author: Andrew Kendrick
Year: 2007
Edition: 1
Number of pages: 248
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 978-1-84310-526-8
Price: £18.99
Reviewer: Nick Pike, Director of Studies for Social Work, University of Gloucestershire
Review date: 03/06/2009
For more information
This book offers a series of research summaries of key issues in residential child care. It is broken into four sections. The first of these is entitled ‘Promoting Well-being and Development’ and contains chapters by Francis on the education of looked after children, Scott, Ward and Hill on the health of looked after children, van Beinum on mental health, Daniel on resilience and Dixon on leaving care.
The second section, called ‘Addressing Issues of Discrimination’ has chapters by O’Neill on gender, Stalker on disability and Kendrick on black and minority ethnic children. The third section, ‘Conflict and Response’ contains chapters on peer violence (Barter), physical restraint (Steckley and Kendrick) and secure accommodation (Barclay and Hunter).
The final section, called ‘Context and Culture’ has chapters on children’s rights (Emond), therapeutic child care (Stevens and Furnivall), comparative approaches to staff training and development in England, Germany and Denmark (Cameron and Boddy) and a review of leadership studies by Bullock.
Chapters are generally short (11 – 12 pages), and typically contain a summary of current or recent research findings (sometimes a single recent research study conducted by the author (s)), a short discussion of the implications of the research and (usually) some suggestions as to how the findings might influence practice.
The majority of the authors are located in Scottish universities and the influence of the Scottish Centre for Residential Child Care is marked. Much of the research material draws on policy and practice in Scotland, although the implications for England are also explored.
This is an excellent text. The topic areas are well chosen and highly relevant to residential child care practice; the research summaries are clear and succinct; the links to practice well thought out and the individual reference lists at the end of each chapter give sound guidance as to further reading.
How might such a text be used? The problem is that it is a specialist text that is only really relevant to students or practitioners who are specialising in an advanced study of residential child care practice. It is not a text for the novice wishing to familiarise themselves with this area of practice (for that, Smith (2009) or Ward (2007) offer better starting points). The book is most likely to be useful in one of three ways:
- as supplementary reading on specialist advanced modules in residential child care;
- to support final year placements where working with children in a residential setting plays a significant part;
- on post qualifying child care courses.
There are three chapters that are exceptions to this general statement:
- Daniel’s succinct chapter on ‘resilience’ (pp.60 – 75) could be used on any module where a critical grasp of the concept of resilience is required.
- Bullock’s chapter on leadership and management ( pp.226 – 237) is a very good short summary of key issues that could appear on any module exploring or addressing leadership in social work, or on post qualifying ‘Leadership and Management’ courses.
- Cameron and Boddy’s comparative study, and their exploration of the increasingly popular concept of ‘social pedagogy’ (pp. 210 – 225)would be relevant to any module addressing child welfare policy issues, and its certainly one that I will be using on my module.
Overall, a very good text that is likely to be too specialist for most teachers and students but which will make good supplementary reading on appropriate specialist modules.
References
Smith, M (2009) Rethinking Residential Child Care: Positive Perspectives Bristol, Policy Press
Ward, A (2nd ed. 2007) Working in Group Care Bristol, Policy Press
