| Valerie Mason-John
This is a frank and revealing memoir of the author's childhood and adolescence, alternately living in the Dr Barnardo's Village in Essex, with her mother in a London high-rise, and in a string of juvenile and detention centres. This is an important story powerfully told about growing up black, female and in care. It has much to say about the perils of childhood and how we raise children in today’s society.
| Kate Cairns and Eileen Fursland
For both children and carers, it is essential to manage transitions well and prevent them from turning into destructive endings. This course aims to help carers help traumatised children and themselves to face change and loss in a managed and constructive way.
| Multiple
This special issue of the journal is guest edited by Sonia Jackson, editor of Nobody Ever Told Us School Mattered(BAAF, 2001) and a leading researcher and writer in the field. It focuses on the education of looked-after children and how and where they are supported or – more often – failed by “the system”. It features articles from England, Scotland and Australia. Themes include: the role of social pedagogy in foster care; education and self-reliance among care leavers; the work of Our Place, a special centre promoting the educational achievement of looked after and adopted children; and the views of adoptive parents.
| Judith Foxon
This engaging picture book, designed for use with young children, looks at the difficult issue of domestic violence and what this could mean for the children involved. Spark and Flame learn to understand why they had to leave home, why they cannot live with their birth parents any more, and to come to terms with their painful emotions.
| Jill Seeney
All young children have worries, but looked after children may have more worries than most as they lack the reassurance and security of permanent, stable family life. In this colourful picture book for young children, Morris the mole finds out that talking about his problems, and facing his worries with the help of others, is more helpful than hiding his fears.
| Kate Cairns and Eileen Fursland
Many children in foster care show a range of challenging behaviour. When foster carers look after these children, they are taking certain risks with their own health, which can include “secondary traumatic stress”. This training course gives carers the knowledge they need to recognise stress disorders, to help prevent them and to get the right treatment to assess and manage risk and to work as part of a team to provide safe caring.
| Mary Beek and Gillian Schofield
This DVD accompanies the handbook and training programme of the same name, and supports each module in the training programme. The programme will provide workers and carers with a framework both for understanding the thinking and behaviour of the children in their care and for helping children to settle and flourish in their family placements.
| Jo Lipscombe
Since the early 1990s, the number of children and young people remanded to custody has more than doubled and continues to increase. This timely study explores the use of foster care as an alternative to custodial and residential accommodation for young people on remand.
| Mary Beek and Gillian Schofield
This training programme will provide workers and carers with a framework both for understanding the thinking and behaviour of the children in their care and for helping children to settle and flourish in their family placements. It accompanies the handbook and DVD of the same name.
