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If Only You Would Exclude ‘Ben’ We Would Be Able To Work With The Others Just Fine!
A Case Study of the ‘Excludable Child’ in a Residential Special School"
September 2006
Submitted in partial fulfilment for an
MA in Therapeutic Child Care
In my experience over twelve years working at the Mulberry Bush School, (a Non-Maintained Residential Special School for children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties) the organisation has had almost constantly a demand for pre-occupation with one child who it deems is the most difficult. In the staff group, this manifests itself as a child seen as the one who needs really to be excluded, for the safety and benefit of everyone else. As a manger I experienced a time when there was no such child. This intrigued and interested me.
This is a case study of the School, and explores the dynamic surrounding such children. It looks at those matters that create the dynamic and explores those things that the school has found effective in working with these situations. In doing so I explore some of the main theoretical concepts that relate to the work and look at relevant literature.
I gathered information from a variety of sources within the school and identified how the school tries to avoid creating such children. In doing this I have explained the information gathered alongside the detail of a hypothetical child I called Ben. I use all this information to develop a guide for ‘practice we need to remember when working with such children’.
I conclude by summarising the broader context for organisations working with such children with these findings mainly focusing on the support and management of the staff groups working with such children.
Introduction 6
The Personal Journey
The Task
Working with Strong Feelings
Oedipal Struggles
The Significance of the Study
Chapter One: Methods 13
The Form of the Dissertation
Research Questions
Discussion of the Method
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Case Study Approach
Ethical Issues
Indication of the Likely Outcome or Significance of the Study
Chapter Two: Literature Review 18
Exclusion
Wider Societal Exclusion
What is Exclusion all about?
Emotional Impact and Management
So – What Goes on in Groups?
The Role of the Organisation in this Constellation
Chapter Three: The Task, Structure and Organisation of the Mulberry Bush School 29
The Aim and Task of ‘The Bush’ – The Emotional and Physical Container
The Emotionally Bruised Staff Group
Chapter Four: The Information Gathered 33
The Management of Feelings Aroused
Relationships and Splitting
Consistency and Continuity
Perspective, Enmeshment, Observation and Meaning
The Wider Network/Family
Personal Authority
Fear
Child Profile and Self-esteem
Needs v. Responding to Presenting Behaviour
Planning/Transitions
Chapter Five: What has been learned in the process 59
The Management of Feelings Aroused
Relationships and Splitting
Consistency and Continuity
Perspective, Enmeshment, Observation and Meaning
The Wider Network/Family
Personal Authority
Fear
Child Profile and Self-esteem
Needs v. Responding to Presenting Behaviour
Planning/Transitions
Chapter Six: Conclusions 65
What does it mean for an organisation to have or not have an ‘excludable child’?
Did the use of the paper ‘Organic Growth and the Collective Enterprise’ (Diamond 2003) help to contain the organisation and enable it not to have an excludable child?
What factors help to avoid this phenomenon in an organisation?
Are there lessons that can be learnt from this that can enable organisations avoid having excludable children in the future?
The achievement of completing this dissertation after such a long time, has only been possible with the help and patience of a number of people.
I would firstly like to thank the staff and children of the Mulberry Bush for the experiences, conversations and learning without which this would not have been written.
I would also like to thank those staff members who supported me by giving their time and allowed me to take my time.
Linnet McMahon has been invaluable in her support and advice over the many years it took me to decide to complete the dissertation. Thank you for not giving up on me!
Finally I would like to thank my family, especially my wife, Nicky.
…………………………………………………………
It’s 11.30pm on Friday night (July 2002) and I have just fallen asleep, winding down from the pressures of a difficult week.
One household at work (a residential special school) has been struggling to contain their child group and one child, Ben, has been pushing them to their limits.
Some think this child is workable with, others are saying he should be excluded temporarily or permanently, to give everyone a break. There isn’t an allocated social worker and his family are despairing.
The week was spent trying to enable the team to share the thinking, understand the meaning and work with the difficulties.
I am not on call, but as always, on call to the on call.
The phone ringing jars me awake.
Ben is on the pitch of the top roof of the house; ‘on call’ is on site, it is raining.
Ben is saying he will only come down if I come in. The roof is slippery and staff are worried that he will fall and kill himself.
“Bloody hell, what do I do?”
I say I will think and phone back in five minutes.
……………………………………………………….
The title of this dissertation: ‘If Only You Would Exclude ‘Ben’ We Would Be Able To Work With The Others Just Fine!’ summarises something I have felt, said, heard, had to hear and had to manage in my many different roles at the Mulberry Bush School, a non-maintained residential special school for primary aged children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties. What has been common on each occasion is that it has been a very difficult and painful experience.
Recalling my experience working as a care worker – I remember the unimaginably difficult feelings aroused from working with a child who was so challenging and abusive, so offensive and anti-social, that I could not stand him or her any longer. I had got to the stage that I wanted the child out.
At the other end of the staff team I am now a manager on the receiving end of this pain from the staff team, trying to discover whether we, the school, are really at the point of exclusion. This is a similarly painful experience but in different ways.
These painful experiences have created an interest in me to look further at what creates these situations. Are they necessary and can they be avoided? If they can’t be avoided, how best should they be managed?
In this sense, the backbone to the dissertation is a personal journey through the different staffing groups of the school, from being an inexperienced volunteer who, because of the role, was somewhat shielded from the practical engagement of the work, although not from the emotional impact, to appointment as Therapeutic Care Worker, with responsibility for key working. I was then appointed as Team Leader of a household with responsibility for oversight of the care and treatment of nine children and a staff team of nine, and finally appointed as Deputy Director and Head of Residential Therapy, with responsibility for the day-to-day management of the school.
One of the central challenges of writing this dissertation reflects the challenge of my post which is to stay in touch with the pain of the children and the realities of their histories whilst managing, in the main, these issues related to me through the staff context, i.e. through the pain of the staff.
This dissertation will provide an exploratory study into the issues around organisations such as the Mulberry Bush School regularly having a child ‘without whom life would be so much easier’. This child is often the one suggested for exclusion and so for the purposes of this dissertation I will call them the ‘excludable child’.
I believe it is common for many different types of organisations to have a ‘problem individual’ whom they could do without; certainly for care settings and schools it is common to have such a child. The Mulberry Bush during my twelve years’ employment has almost always had at least one. However over a recent eighteen-month period this was not the case. In the last few months we now have one. This interests me and I hope to explore some ideas about why this may be the case.
The Mulberry Bush School is a Therapeutic Community for primary aged boys and girls, located in rural Oxfordshire. The school cares for up to thirty-six primary aged children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties. They are placed at the school by their local authorities for thirty-eight weeks a year. The average stay of a child at the school is three years. The school was established in 1948 on its current site and its work was widely written about by its founders, Steven and Barbara Dockar-Drysdale.
The basic treatment philosophy has not changed over the years but in 2003 the Director, in conjunction with the senior managers, documented in a paper ‘Organic Growth and the Collective Enterprise’ (Diamond 2003: 169) a review of the current way in which the work is thought about. This was written just before the period of time during which the school did not have an, ‘excludable child’. This paper was the subject of a staff team training day during which everyone was able to comment on its content. These thoughts were then used in regular training sessions, team meetings and throughout the school in other spaces where the ideas and developing thinking were used to assist in the development of practice.
To many inside the school this paper brought a sense of relief as it described what they thought they were doing. To others it was received as a threat to the ‘care’ of the children and to others perhaps a snub to the history of the school. This dissertation will look at some of the issues it raised, as I believe they directly relate to the internal dynamic in the population of the school, and consequently the containment provided.
Steven and Barbara Dockar-Drysdale began their work at the school with evacuees of the Second World War. The population of the school changed over time with the recognition by them that there was a need for the care and treatment of children who found living alongside their communities intolerable.
The child population today consists of a similar profile of children and the common theme for them all seems to be a displacement from their homes and losses associated with this, linked with confusions between love and violence.
The roles played within groups or families are widely documented and often the child that we receive at the Mulberry Bush is felt to be acting something out on behalf of others within their family. It is therefore no surprise that the children placed at the school are pre-disposed to take up this role in other groups or organisations.
It is our challenge therefore to dispossess them of this role and help them re-define their role in groups.
At the time of writing this, I find myself in the middle of managing demands around ‘excludable children’ and staff members whom their colleagues feel they could well do without! – Excludable adults?
Working with strong (sometimes unbearably so) feelings is at the heart of the task for many whose client group are severely traumatised young children. The management of anxiety behind these feelings is a challenge for all. At times it is exacerbated by the fact that one thing we all have in common in the work is that we were all children once. This itself can raise powerful emotions when working with children in distress.
Before admission others have found living with the children placed with the school intolerable. It is therefore expected that we also will find them so. Part of our job is to find ways of tolerating them and perhaps helping them tolerate themselves.
One of the concerns that I have always had about places like the Bush is that by accepting the children as referrals and individual members of families, it reinforces the idea that they are ‘the problem’. They are identified as ‘the problem’, needing to go away and ‘do the work’ to get better. What we know however is that often they are an expression of a more systemic difficulty within the family, sometimes over generations.
In looking at the ‘excludable child’ and working as we do in groups we must expect that those family dynamics will to some extent be re-created in the school in the different groups and groupings.
Part of my role now is to keep an eye on all these different possibilities.
In the provision of Primary Experience, Barbara Dockar-Drysdale talks about the role of Jane who ‘acted out’ her parents’ violence.
‘Nobody except Jane seemed to be violent in her family constellation. Actually, there was plenty of hidden violence, especially between her parents, who, although they never had ‘rows’, used Jane as a vehicle for their secret rages with each other - Jane acted out their fury. When ultimately, she made a recovery, the hidden violence in both her parents and her siblings could suddenly be seen more clearly in their relationships with each other, because Jane no longer accepted a safety valve/scapegoat role for her family.’ (Dockar-Drysdale 1990: 128/129)
In this example the child is ‘the problem’ in the family. In a similar way, do the ‘excludable children’ play this role for organisations such as the Mulberry Bush? If so how does the organisation avoid putting individuals in this role?
The deep-seated issues that the children at the school come with are often a result of pre-verbal experiences, which means making sense of their worlds is very difficult. The unconscious needs/desires of the children may compound the roles given to them by the organisation and groups within it? These children often seem to give the impression that they believe strongly, perhaps through unconscious drives, that others are responsible for them and their behaviour. This infantile mode of dependence on the ‘mother’ may also relate to the individual’s attack on the placement that is experienced by organisations.
Tom Main in his paper ‘The Ailment’ refers to Anna Freud (1953) who points out that, ‘like any parasite the baby does not excuse his host for failure but attacks her, reproaches her, and demands that she makes up for her fault and thereafter be perfect’. (Main 1989: 32)
Is there a common aspect of these children’s early life experiences, early failures of the mother or mother substitute to contain/survive these feelings/demands for the infant? Are these the very feelings that we are not working with by rejecting the infant too early?
We know that in the past, when children have been ‘moved on’ before the natural end of their placement, the relief to the front line workers has been short lived and a replacement ‘excludable child’ quickly falls into place. This would suggest that however difficult the child is, they are carrying or acting out something on behalf of others – the organisation?
I am suggesting therefore that two main phenomena need thought:
1. The role of the organisation in the excludable child, and
2. The valency of the child to fulfil this role.
Away from the work place I am a father of three young children, aged six months, two and five. I hope to make use of some of my experiences as a father to inform my reflections on my work in relation to the excludable child.
I am very aware of the Oedipal struggles that my five-year-old son is having with me at the moment. It is a painful time for him and a struggle for me to not feel rejected by him or me to reject him.
This Oedipal struggle may closely relate to the paternal role of management in organisations and the struggle that some children have with respecting this authority and ultimately the containment it is attempting to provide, without being rejected by it.
I hope that the ideas generated in this study can be shared with staff at the school and more widely to other residential care settings to support their thinking about their ‘excludable children’.
Increasing the ideas available to the staff who are struggling with that child’s presenting behaviour may support them to develop their understanding of the child’s needs and so help them to identify ways in which those needs may be met, without them needing to be acted out in ways that lead to exclusion.
This dissertation flows from this introduction to a short chapter on the methods employed; I then review relevant literature before explaining a little more about the internal working of the Mulberry Bush. This provides the background for the main body of the information in chapter four, which interweaves a hypothetical case study to bring the information to life. In the final two chapters I draw together some of the learning, applying this to the research questions in the final conclusions.
The dissertation takes the form of a case study of some of the aspects of the work of the school.
I include a literature search with reflections on the school’s theoretical perspective and its movement to become a more open and accessible establishment and some detail about the way the school works exploring the dynamic surrounding the ‘excludable child’.
This exploration relates particularly to my perspective on these issues within the school as Deputy Director/Head of Residential Therapy, as well as looking at other staff members’ views and perspectives.
What does it mean for an organisation to have or not have an ‘excludable child’?
Did the use of the paper ‘Organic Growth and the Collective Enterprise’ (Diamond 2003) help to contain the organisation and enable it not to have an excludable child?
What factors help avoid this phenomenon in an organisation?
Are there lessons that can be learnt from this that can avoid organisations having excludable children in the future?
Discussion of the Method
The study is a qualitative one, based on reflective enquiry of the subject. A qualitative study focuses on textual rather than numerical study. It will therefore focus on evidence such as interview narratives, written diary entries, meeting minutes or descriptions of observed interactions. This allows greater focus on exploring meaning in interactions, which is more difficult in quantitative studies. There are of course advantages and disadvantages in both forms. Quantitative studies usually,
‘collect data from large groups of respondents. The data that are produced have the great advantage of being amenable to statistical analyses’ (Lees 2004: 32) ‘Qualitative research is exploratory – it is usually more concerned with hypothesis generation than hypothesis testing’. (Lees 2004: 33)
The latter allows greater possibility of exploring psychological process, which are at the centre of the therapeutic community work.
The main method of study will be a case study,
‘a strategy for doing research which involves an empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon within its real life context using multiple sources of evidence.’ (Robson 1993: 43)
The focus is on the work of the ‘Residential Therapy’ of the school from my perspective as Head of Residential Therapy. In this sense it is the study of the organisation.
Throughout I use the reflective notes that I keep to assist in my role as Head of Residential Therapy. These help me make sense of what is happening on a day-to-day basis as well as reflecting on past events.
I carry out a brief literature search to provide the information on which to base the study. This needs to be selective, as the broader subject of exclusion has been widely written about. The areas that I include will cover emotional containment, attachment theory, physical containment, inclusion and exclusion, authority in management and staff support systems. As can be seen, the area is potentially vast and so I need to be very selective in the areas of literature researched. I have selected particular themes and looked more closely into these. Due to the range of literature and the topic it seems clear that some of the older papers and books are still relevant.The risk of selecting and tracking themes is that I will miss some relevant and interesting work. I hope however to be able in this brief way to provide some ideas about a different aspect of exclusion and provide a contribution to the field of residential child care.
I have used meeting minutes from the Wednesday Group meetings. This Group, consisting of middle and senior manager representatives from all school departments, was set up to tackle the culture of violence in the school in approximately 2001 and meets weekly. It is a very important structure for the organisation and accepting the existence of the ‘culture of violence’ was an important admission for the organisation and has enabled it to move on. I will also use notes from these meetings and reflections on these. I will also use my notes and reflections on informal conversations that I have on a regular basis about the issues raised with a wide variety of staff. These conversations give me the opportunity to share ideas and gain from the different perspectives that different staff in different roles and levels have within the organisation.
I track themes across the case records of a number of children. It is not necessary to use specific details from any individual child.
I have also brought in my reflections on my experience of visiting other organisations where I have provided or sought consultation. These experiences have been valuable in gaining different perspectives on the subject.
There are limitations in using this approach.
The information is from one organisation, one source, and so it is not clear that the outcomes are transferable. However from my experience in discussion groups with representatives from similar organisations, e.g. The Care and Treatment Group at the Charterhouse Group of Therapeutic Communities, The National Children’s Bureau, and the Association of Therapeutic Communities, the themes in the group dynamics of the organisations are very similar and these parallels give me the confidence that a case study on this subject will be informative for others.
I am extremely close to the subject and so have had to work hard to maintain an objective approach. As described in ‘the Culture of Enquiry’, the writer was extremely close and involved in the organisation they were describing. This made it very difficult for them to stand back and look objectively at the therapeutic communities ‘disinterestedly’ (Lees et al. 2004: 37).
Using the method of reflective enquiry that I have chosen, and using my role and place of work as the context, means that I cannot guarantee objectivity as I am inevitably part of the dynamic. I hope however to use my conscious awareness of this fact to support me to maintain a participant observer position. I have also used my line manager, the Director, as a support in this.
Issues of power in relation to my role and my enquiry are complex although I have mainly used historical meeting minutes to inform the enquiry, at some of which I was present and at some I was not. The authority I have in my role is however very relevant to this case study as it is through the pressure I feel to ensure we do not exclude a child that leads to my interest in this subject.
In writing this case study there are a number of ethical issues. The anonymity and confidentiality of the children and their families is of course central. There is also the use of views and opinions reported through meeting minutes, or informal discussions, and respecting the anonymity of any other organisation or associated professional that may be referred to in the text. I have therefore addressed these issues in the following ways.
As this study relates to the work of the Mulberry Bush School I have sought the permission of the Director and the Chair of Trustees to investigate and write about the subject. They are very supportive of this research. They are aware that I might quote from minutes taken during meetings at the school, in the knowledge that I have access to this information in the course of my job.
To ensure that the confidentiality of the school’s children and staff is maintained I have changed any names and dates. I have also changed the names of any other organisation that I need to refer to.
This study is important because the ‘excludable child’ phenomenon is common in many organisations and is one that is not well understood. Many hours are spent in organisations poring over how to work with the ‘problem child’; the cost of this is huge. Through this process the child also receives a great deal of unhelpful negative attention.
In many mainstream schools the statistics generated by exclusion affect league table results and in this way schools either have to really think about the issues and tackle them or feel under pressure to sweep them under the carpet. This is not helpful to the organisation or the child.
The findings of this study will be shared with the staff group at the Mulberry Bush School. I also hope that, if there are helpful suggestions for practice in organisations like our own, I will be able to share these with such organisations through the Charterhouse Group, National Association of Special Schools or by converting them into a paper that could be published in a relevant journal.
In the next chapter I look at some of the literature relevant to the theme of exclusion and look at how this applies to the Mulberry Bush.
In this chapter I look at some of the many thoughts and ideas others have had about the broader issues of exclusion of individuals from groups. As mentioned in the earlier chapters I have been quite selective owing to the wide range of writing around the subject. I hope to bring together some of the literature that can help the thinking and understanding about the identification of an individual within the residential institution who seems on the edge of exclusion from the group or school.
The title of the dissertation 'If Only You Would Exclude ‘Ben’ We Would Be Able To Work With The Others Just Fine!’ is a demand or request from staff and so in many ways is as much about the staff group as it is about the child ‘Ben’. It is also representative of the wider communities from which the children have come who have excluded the child to the Mulberry Bush. In this chapter I look at these areas and how they come together.
A good starting place is always a definition of the word.
‘Exclusion’ is defined in the Collins Paperback English Dictionary as:
the act or an instance of excluding or the state of being excluded.
‘Exclude’ is defined as:
1. to keep out or prevent from entering. 2. to reject or not consider; leave out. 3. to expel forcibly; eject.
The language within the definition of exclusion says much about the act of exclusion itself. It suggests the act is physical, perhaps violent, and laden with feeling. In this sense it is a good description of the reality of an exclusion from an organisation such as the Mulberry Bush School.
‘Social exclusion happens when people or places suffer from a series of problems such as unemployment, discrimination, unemployment, low incomes, poor housing, high crime, ill health and family breakdown. When such problems combine they can create a vicious cycle.
Social exclusion can happen as a result of problems that face one person in their life. But it can also be from birth. Being born into poverty or to parents with low skills still has a major influence on future life chances.’ (Office of Deputy Prime Minister 2006)
Social exclusion, although far wider in context than the focus of this dissertation, is very relevant, especially when considering the sort of client group being worked with at the Mulberry Bush, many of whom fall into the category of individuals who suffer from multiple combinations of such problems.
‘ Early preventative action is critical. Even today a child’s prospects are strongly affected by the background, health and education of their parents. A boy born into the bottom social class is still more likely to leave school with no qualifications, to live in relative poverty and to live seven years less than his peer born into the professional classes.’’(Office of Deputy Prime Minister 2006)
‘Disciplinary exclusion from school occurs disproportionately among young people, mainly boys, from poor families in disadvantaged areas’. (Lloyd et al. 2003: 78)
The children referred to the Mulberry Bush School have in the vast majority of cases suffered multiple exclusions from schools, homes and their communities, as have in many cases their families. They are therefore representative of this high-risk group. The children, who come to the school as well as having suffered these exclusions, including of course their exclusion from their community to attend the Mulberry Bush, have also experienced very complex and often abusive early life experiences.
A central theme of the societal/social or any exclusion is the separating of an individual or group from the larger group. One could therefore say that the individual or group has not been able to function as a whole and therefore has separated off that problem part perceived as causing the problem. To function on their own, as an isolate in life, is not an option. Life experiences revolve around functioning in groups.
‘If the behaviour of pupils was to be improved, consideration needs to be given first as to how to enable pupils to work effectively in groups’ (Mongan, Hart 1989: 26)
Consequently, a core part of the work with the children at the Mulberry Bush is to try and allow the children the time and space to make some sense of their experiences and to function in a group. The complex experiences they brought with them were predominantly in groups and therefore it is most likely that they will make use of these spaces to do the work.
The child who is the subject of exclusion from a group or organisation is usually in this position as a result of some sort of crisis. The group/organisation is then bound with making very complex decisions about the child, which may be life changing for the child, in an atmosphere that is tense, under immense pressure, thus emotionally charged; all of which are not conducive to making thoughtful well-reasoned decisions.
In my struggle to narrow down the reading material for this dissertation I found myself repeatedly returning to my reflective diary, especially from my first few days at the Mulberry Bush. It reminded me just how difficult I found working right at the sharp end with the children, when I was young and inexperienced. A short excerpt from the diary reads:
September 1993 (R.D.)
“..good, bad, f……. nightmare, sad, nerve racking – all words that spring to mind to sum up today. – felt like two days in one!”
The impact on me at that time is clear. The pressures and feelings I experienced found voice in my diary. I remember voicing them in the various staff meetings and groups of which I was a part in the school at that time.
These pressures or dynamics that I was experiencing were also therefore ‘in the group’ at that time and are common on most days at the school. It is easy to imagine that the intensity of working in such conditions could, over time, become unbearable if not dealt with or understood. Consequently the support structures of the school provide vital opportunities to explore and make sense of these pressures.
The basis of psychodynamic theory underpinning the work of the school is very important in helping staff to cope with and understand these powerful feelings evoked in them. The reflective groups (staff meetings provided to enable staff who work together to talk about the emotional impact of the work) help staff make sense of these feelings by encouraging them to look at and understand them as projections between staff members or between children and staff. ‘Projections’ in this context, could be explained by
‘... through a piece of irritating behaviour, the child’s peers or teachers are made to have the intolerable feeling which really belongs to the child in difficulty’ (Greenhalgh 1994: 54)
If the staff support system can enable the staff member to better understand what their feelings are and what they are processing on behalf of the child they will be better able to work with that child in a thoughtful and creative way. However, if they are unable to cope with and understand these strong feelings, another reaction may be to want to get rid of the perceived cause of them through exclusion, either of oneself or of the other from the group. Therefore, looking at how this information was/is processed, and what this means for the work, the worker and the child, is very important and when successfully done provides a level of containment for the staff group and the child. Containment in this sense provides emotional holding for the staff and consequently the child, a feeling of safety and understanding or being understood.
‘..their growth is not via the intellect primarily, but through actual emotional experience – only after which occurs fusion between thought and feeling.’ (Rollinson 1992: 10)
To develop the understanding of the child, the worker has to be able to manage the ‘acting out’, but also understand the more often powerful unconscious processes of transference, counter transference and projective identification. A definition of the transference used by Janet Mattinson is,
‘the experiencing of feelings, drives, attitudes, fantasies and defences towards a person in the present which do not befit that person in the present but are a repetition of reactions originating in regard to significant persons of early childhood, unconsciously displaced on to figures in the present’. (Mattinson 1975: 33)
She goes on to describe the counter transference as,
‘the reaction to the transference’. (ibid, p36)
A definition offered by Greenhalgh of projective identification is,
‘a process whereby individuals and groups expel parts of themselves (into another person or object) and unconsciously identifies with the projected material seen in others. The person or object is then experienced as if it were the projected content’. (Greenhalgh 1994: 310)
These powerful processes, present in all environments, are particularly powerful in work with emotionally damaged young people. If they are not able to consciously communicate the pain, confusion, anger or sadness, the worker is made to feel it for them. To enable such disturbed children to communicate, they need to risk change, and to do this the children need to feel safe, emotionally and physically.
‘Basic to all treatment is the issue of safety. Unless an individual feels safe, it will be difficult to overcome defences and resistances to change. Unless he feels safe there will be little energy available for continued growth and change. Therefore, basic to the creation of the Therapeutic Milieu is the necessity of creating an environment in which children feel both physically and psychologically safe.’ (Fahlberg 1990: 143)
The task of developing such a level of containment/emotional holding and safety should not be underestimated nor should the capacity of the client group to relentlessly project their confusions into staff, perhaps in the unconscious hope that they will understand. The staff’s ability to respond or contain this may be termed the staff’s physical and emotional resilience.
‘Through the holding of the adult there arises in the child in the course of time a sense of trust in the adult and the environment, and there comes about a relationship between adult and child which Winnicott refers to as ‘ego-relatedness’. (Davis, Wallbridge 1990: 108)
Jenny Sprince, in discussing how to develop containment in a therapeutic community, quotes some children’s impressions of staff applicants to their therapeutic community, which show how intuitive the children often are in knowing who can look after them/understand/contain them:
‘one was very nice but he wouldn’t be able to put up with the tons of shit from us: they need to be able to take twenty tons of shit and come up smiling’, another wanted ‘to show off too much and had to know all the answers’. (Sprince 2002: 159)
The children are very astute in reading people. This is a common experience at the Bush where it is often the case that the children ‘know’ things although they will not have been told. This can be hard to work with and demands a high level of transparency and openness between staff members in teams and between teams. It is not helpful when the children ‘know’ something before staff’s colleagues!
There are many dimensions to groups and these revolve around the relationships developed within the groups and groupings of which its members are a part. These relationships of course are founded on the previous experience of relationships of the group members.
The children at the school have very complex histories; many have suffered sexual or physical abuse, neglect or may have been witness to things that they ought not to have seen. All this they carry with them into the groups.
‘…what children bring to the therapeutic community is not just their own troubled inner worlds but also their often distorted and disturbed relationships with their families and others.’ (Ward 2003:27)
In order for the staff to begin to make sense of what is going on in their groups we need to develop very open and honest working relationships to make sure any difficulties in the work place can be talked about and are not acted out by them or the children.
It is also true that the quote above by Ward, also applies to the staff’s own life experiences. In order to understand the child’s confusions, staff will need to have processed their own, and be willing to re-explore these with their colleagues when relevant to the work. This is one aspect of the task of the regular dynamics meetings that take place for all staff who work directly with the children. It is also the case that many staff find individual psychotherapy very helpful in their personal/professional development.
In working with children with such, at times, raw emotion, staff need to have a good understanding of attachment theory. It is likely they will be put in the position of experiencing those feelings that the children’s primary carers would or should have felt when the child was a baby. These feelings however, projected from an older child, can be very powerful indeed as well as confusing. This ‘transference’ needs to be able to be thought about by the staff member and in turn their team, to enable some sense to be made of it and for this learning to be used in the work with that child.
‘There were long standing feuds between members of staff, and everyone I met told me, in confidence, of some minor delinquency in another adult. I thought that this secret list of grievances replicated the delinquencies among the children that were ignored by the staff, but apparent to the local villagers. The staff did not want to know. They knew the children had dreadful lives, and they wanted to make them better by loving them. But these were not loveable children. …Most of the staff did not dare let themselves see what the children were like or what they were doing for fear of hating them.’ (Sprince 2002: 150)
I can recall a dynamics meeting where we were despairing with the ‘network’ of a child. They said she was a ‘lovely girl underneath’ and wanted to continue to try and place her with foster parents. We were trying very hard to like her, but no matter what we did for her she found a way of destroying it and then attacked us for having tried. Our breakthrough came when we all accepted that nobody had any positive feelings towards her and we felt, consequently, at this time that she was un-fosterable. We recommended that she would benefit for the time being from living, outside term times, at a children’s home where there was less pressure on her to develop important and meaningful relationships. This acknowledgment by us as a group enabled us to work with these feelings of badness, hatred, and abhorrence. We grew to like her over the coming months and she consequently grew to have some positive feelings about herself.
One risk of such feelings being put into the staff group is that they may be acted out in unconscious ways and staff may then just repeat patterns of relating that the child may have experienced in the past. This can of course include the drive to be excluded.
Children placed in organisations such as the Mulberry Bush often carry a disproportionate burden of responsibility for their family’s problems, sometimes over generations. If they feel, or have been, excluded from their family, they may drive for this to be repeated at the school in an attempt to understand it. It is such a child, when not understood, who may well push the containment of staff to the limit. The sense of despair felt in the staff group can lead the child to become the uncontainable child.
Dockar-Drysdale summarizes the type of child that most often becomes this un-containable child:
‘The only quiescent periods were at those times when, for a while, all normal social demands could be removed and he could be treated quite individually and differently from anyone else. These were also, however, periods which roused great anxiety and insecurity for him as feeling incurably different, although his special individual needs in this respect, were understood, discussed and accepted by the other children. He became increasingly suspicious, defensive, and also increasingly believed in his own lying. This position became, in fact, of great importance to him – what he believed to be real (and which was real for him, in fact) had to be unquestioningly believed by others if violence was to be averted’ (Dockar-Drysdale 1990: 135)
Main explores the dynamic that surrounds these ‘special’ children. He calls them this because through their level of difficulty they establish themselves a status that is special in comparison to their peers. They may have a special programme, may have an extra key worker; in this sense they are seen as having extra special needs. All these factors can reinforce their sense of being different from the group. It is also often enacted by a special relationship with one or a small number of staff who are ‘able to connect’ with or contain the child. Main called this “….’sentimental appeal’ (from the patient) and the ‘arousal of omnipotence’ (in the worker)...”. (Main 1989:22)
The risk of this is that it can easily lead to splitting in the staff group, with those who are reserved the ‘special treatment’ seeing the rest of the team as less competent, uncaring and so on. When then the child becomes more challenging to the special staff, those others can become less willing to support or scornful of the special staff’s gullibility. Main suggests that in his research there was something about these splits that demonstrated that the ‘special patient’ simply,
‘widened and deepened incipient staff splits that would otherwise have been tolerable and more or less unnoticed.’ (Main 1989: 27)
Are these children therefore especially sensitive to these ‘parental relationships’ and possible rift? Are they trying to take responsibility for the family separation?
Main also suggests that,
‘these patients also fit the description of the early stages of infancy to which Winnicott has given the term pre-truth. They needed more love than could easily have been given and could give little in return except the honour of being cared for. They could be quieted but not satiated by desperate acts of goodwill, but they were afraid of the inconsistency of their object, so they would cling to what they had and seek more. The fact they were aggressive towards and contemptuous of their objects need not blind us therefore to the fact that the needing is an early form of love. But catering for the object’s wishes is impossible in the early stages of development prior to what Klein calls the depressive position.’ (Main 1989: 32)
This quotation seems to lend some understanding to the words of Helen Shapiro’s song,
“I’m not, not, not responsible
not, not, not, responsible
I can’t answer for the things I do…….
(cos I’m so in love with you)” Helen Shapiro (1963)
in which it suggests that she is completely dependent on the person, to the extent that she gives up all responsibility for herself due to the depth of her love. In an adult this would normally be conscious and therefore uncomfortable in its suggestion. However for a small baby it is how it relates to the mother, to the point that it is as one with the mother.
This seems to clarify to some extent the work that needs to be done in the staff group, but to what extent is the dynamic in the organisation adding to the identification of this child as ‘excludable’?
Does the ‘excludable child’ have this role of identifying gaps in the relationships of staff, ensuring everyone is working together? If so how does the organisation avoid putting individuals in this role?
In a piece of research into parents’ experience of exclusion, the following view was given,
‘…two parents interviewed believed that their sons were excluded, …… due to a culmination of petty misbehaviours that built up over time,…….her son didn’t do anything serious and at the end of the day it was petty things that got on their nerves’ (McDonald, Thomas 2003: 111)
Does this statement support the idea that the time of the exclusion of a child reflects the emotional state of the organisation? Why could these petty misbehaviours not be tolerated and worked with?
‘Young people with identified special needs and those looked after away from home are over-represented. However the numbers excluded vary considerably from school to school, even in similar areas. So the ethos and educational ideology of schools, and the way schools operate their disciplinary and support systems, affect the level of disciplinary exclusion’. (Parsons 1999, Lloyd et al. 2003: 79)
Cooper et al. (2000) focuses on joined up working and inter-agency support to provide better outcomes for schools in reducing disciplinary exclusion. This notion links directly to the intra-organisational working and support to avoid splitting and the need for the staff group to join up in their thinking to more effectively meet the child’s needs and understand their behaviour - to emotionally hold them.
The organisation needs therefore to be well joined up; emotionally resilient and open to thinking at all levels about the communication from and around that child.
What is being suggested is that the organisation needs to function as strong, competent, clear, caring and consistent parents.
If there are common aspects of these children’s early life experiences, early failures of the mother or mother substitute to contain/survive these feelings/demands from the infant, then are these the very feelings that we are not working with and repeating patterns by rejecting the infant too early? By aiming to be the sort of good parent described above perhaps we can help the children address those confusions, often expressed as anger, and become more in touch with their own depressive feelings.
‘He lifted his head for a moment and shouted I haven’t had a mother for eight years! His face puffy with tears.
Later that day he rang his mother for the first time in many months. She was as usual cold and dismissive. He came off the phone with tears streaming down his face and Andrew his key worker, told him how upset he felt for him: why did Derek have to put himself through this? ‘Don’t you see, I’ve got to’, said Derek. ‘If I don’t, I’ll forget what happens and then I’ll get really violent and lose my placement here.’ It is a huge step in emotional development when children like Derek and Mandy move from unthinking rage to feelings of intense grief. Paradoxically, for their key workers it can feel harder to cope with. Depression is every bit as contagious as anger.’ (Sprince 2002: 154)
In the next chapter I explain a little about the structure of the Mulberry Bush School and how it has adapted itself to manage the task of treating its child group, whilst supporting its staff group. This will link with the issues surrounding exclusion highlighted in the literature and inform the further chapters when looking at the material gathered.
In order to explore the issues raised in the literature search further I set out briefly some more detail about the Mulberry Bush, the way it is structured and organised. This detail will help inform the next chapters which explore in more depth the information gathered and apply it to the practice at the school.
The Aim and Task of ‘The Bush’ – The Emotional and Physical Container
The overall aim of the Mulberry Bush School is to
‘In partnership with an actively involved referring authority,.. equip each child with the personal, emotional, social and learning skills to cope in a family, in a local school and community.’ (MBS School brochure page 1)
To achieve this there are four Group Living households, an Education Area with five classes, a Family Team, a Psychotherapy Department, an Administration Department, Maintenance, Kitchen and cleaning teams, all working together.
There is an emphasis on observing the children, which implies a distance that enables adults to think as a team about the needs of the individual child or of the group. We do not ask adults to offer deep relationships with the children as these can, in our experience, with such disturbed children, lead to inappropriate and complicated attachments, often repeating past patterns. This is something we would, of course, wish to avoid.
We are not saying that staff and children should not develop important attachments but that entering this process in a more objective way, with the support of the team, tends to provide a less complicated relationship. The children’s needs, once identified by the team can then be met in more conscious and planned ways.
This process avoids the ‘gap filling’ relationships, and the promise of something special. Through these processes we hope that the child can internalise an experience of close management, being cared for, role modelling, and a re-education in social/emotional awareness.
Many of the children in our care have developed coping mechanisms built on attracting attention through negative behaviour. We look to provide children with ways of re-defining themselves and their personalities through positive experiences, focussing on their strengths, understanding their regressive tendencies and providing nurture when needed. In this way we try to remember that you usually get more of what you talk about!
At the core of this professional task is a commitment by each adult to the conscious use of themselves within the staff group to make sense of and understand the work at all levels and the feelings engendered by it.
The complexity of managing so many different teams working together means they are clearly differentiated in their tasks. However, the clear differentiation of task areas and teams means that thought has to be given to how those come together, - ‘integration of the different task areas’ (Diamond 2003: 180). It is also important however that when they come together they are clear about what they are bringing, that the communications are thought out and processed.
This coming together needs to be within the context of - ‘what binds the thinking together’ - for the staff group. This is the theoretical underpinning of the work, which is at the heart of the school’s training programme for all staff.
Within this context the meeting structures are authorised.
‘Through the organisation’s structures and dynamics it consciously authorises or de-authorises members’ experiences and hence their access to such experiences and learning.’ (Long 1972: 67)
All staff working directly with the children have weekly ‘dynamics meetings’, facilitated by a senior manager. These enable adults to explore the complexities experienced in their working relationships in the group. We are looking to ensure that adults do not act out their confusions through the child group or put them into other teams.
Within this space the ‘negative capability’ (Diamond 2003:173) can be explored. This means staff sharing the hopelessness or depressive feelings experienced and the sharing of the ‘not knowing’, unpicking those feelings that are attributable to oneself and those that are projections and transferencial experiences in the relationships with the children.
In support of this task all staff have individual supervision and group supervision.
By helping structure staff members’ thinking and processing in these ways we are supporting the parallel practice of the staff being enabled to follow through this process with the child group. In this sense the ‘matching principle’ (Ward: 1998) is valued and attended to.
We hope from the structuring of the environment that we maximise opportunities for the children to experience the greatest possible consistency and continuity of therapeutic intent in their interactions with the staff.
Despite the high level of support and structure described above, there is almost always a demand for the school to focus on a child who is ‘the most difficult’ and thus ‘on the verge of exclusion’. This demand comes from many different places but usually from a staff team that are struggling to contain the child and are finding themselves very ‘bruised’ by the experience.
In the following chapters I explore this dynamic further and identify some of the ways this ‘need’ is communicated and understood, at the different levels of the school.
When the systems and structures are working well in the school, the move towards the understanding that a child is ‘uncontainable' is gradually understood and is communicated through various meetings and from staff at all levels with a final delivery of the conclusion from a Care and Treatment Leader to senior manager. If this is the way the conclusion is reached then it is usually un-complicated. This however is rarely the case and more often the ‘conclusion’ is reached following a crisis of some sort, a serious incident in which staff or children have been placed at unacceptable risk or through the desperation of a staff team who are struggling to survive one shift after another.
At these times the importance of the Exclusion Policy comes to the fore as it re-structures the thinking that needs to take place in order to decide whether the decision to exclude is valid or not.
In the following chapter I set out the information gathered and use the explanation of the Bush to describe how the issues are thought about and worked with.
In this chapter I present the information gathered and bring this to life by providing more information about Ben - ‘the boy on the roof’ - applying some of the information to a practical, if hypothetical, example. All this integrates with and around the research questions.
The complexity of the information brought together for this study highlights the complexity of the task of making sense of the communications behind the children’s behaviour. This information, verbal and non verbal, from staff, children, colleagues in the children’s networks as well as local villagers, has led me throughout the process to think more and more about the task as being that of an ‘organisational parent’.
This term applies to all those who have to struggle with understanding the communication from the perspective of their role, their responsibilities and with their prior experience of having been a child, parent etc.
The demands this places on the staff team in essence is to try and function as therapeutic parents; all knowing, containing and healing.
This immediately presents challenges as the organisation has staff at many different levels of authority and with widely varying responsibilities, whereas, I would suggest, the ‘ideal parenting couple’, share evenly authority and responsibility.
In presenting the ‘information gathered’, the thoughts, views and evidence presented are not distinguished one from another, minutes from views, managers from new workers. In my experience it is rare that any piece of ‘knowledge’ gained is more relevant or directly applicable than another to any particular case, child or set of circumstances. The observation of a manager, the thoughts of a care worker or the evidence shown by statistics should carry equal credence in the thinking process of any situation. All may be equally relevant or irrelevant, and all carry equal importance in building in the staff team a body of knowledge to inform each and every situation.
To ease the delivery of this body of information I have divided it into a number of sub-sections. In addition to the main body of writing there are also:
1. Entries from my reflective diary (RD) are aligned to the left of the page and in italics.
2. Entries about Ben are centred and in italics, indented.
3. ‘Information gathered’ entries are in tables aligned to the left and in italic, underlined.
A background to ‘Ben’, the ‘boy on the roof’:
Ben is a white boy born in London in 1990. His family had/have complex needs;
His mum – Martha has an eating disorder, depression, abuses alcohol and drugs. As a child she had very abusive parents and ended up in care where she also was subject to abuse. Martha met and married Ben senior at a homeless persons’ resettlement unit.
His Dad – Ben Senior was easy going, relaxed, but easily became aggressive, and threatening, especially after consuming alcohol. He wasn’t able to acknowledge his violence or its effect on his wife and children.
Ben’s sister – Nicky was the eldest child of Martha and stepchild of Ben Senior. She is of mixed parentage and Martha does not know who is Nicky’s father.
His sister - Anna is the youngest child of Martha and Ben Senior. She is now adopted.
Ben has had brief periods of foster care until the age of five. At the age of two and a half Ben was placed in emergency foster care due to his mother’s feeling suicidal and drinking heavily.
Concerns were raised by the age of two about his aggressive tendencies at nursery. Ben’s name was put on the child protection register at the age of three. His foster placements failed mostly due to Ben’s difficult behaviours. His adoptive placement broke down after six months;
He was described as a likeable, sociable boy who can be extremely good company. He can be kind, caring and affectionate towards children and adults he knows well.
He can also be wilful, demanding, disobedient and frustrating. He tests those caring for him to their limits, often doing the opposite of what is expected. He is able to reflect afterwards and will show remorse and become angry with himself. Ben has exhibited sexualised behaviour towards children and female adults; sometimes this is coupled with aggressive body language.
Ben thrives on one-to-one time with an adult. He finds it difficult to accept praise and will revert to negative behaviour if people comment on something he has done well.
Ben has a statement of Special Educational Needs because of his disruptive behaviour. Educationally Ben is attaining average levels in most areas and above average in some.
Examples of recent behaviours cited: being aggressive to carer, e.g. kicking foster mother’s damaged knee, he threw a tray over the balcony at people below whilst out shopping, he also threw himself over a staircase seeking to hurt himself.
Not all the children referred to the school have such complex family histories. Those ‘excludable’ children nearly always do.
In developing the previous section’s information I will integrate some examples of experiences and work that happen around children like Ben.
With children like Ben, the feelings aroused have the potential to be very powerful and complex. One of the biggest struggles for staff at the Bush is to regulate the right ‘emotional distance’ with such children. Before a child starts at the school staff will have read their paperwork and will start to have some ideas about the child: how will they relate to us and us to them; will there be a honeymoon period when we are protected from the real difficulties the child can display; will they trust us enough to show us how they really feel? Maybe they will come in like a whirlwind, looking to prove we cannot and would not want to be with them.
Just before a child starts at the school, the director visits to make an assessment of the child for placement.
Ben greeted John saying “Hi, Johnny”; then said, “I’m not going to that school” and ran out of the building. After a couple of games of pool, which Ben was very good at, he felt that he would be happy to come and visit.
Some of the conclusions from the assessment are:
“Ben is a child with some functioning and ability, but also is very defended from the pain of not being able to fully relate to people. He will try to interact with people on his own terms and this will include some quite serious testing of the immediate boundaries and structures of the day-to-day living in school. He has a real ability to make use of caring, concerned adults and show some fondness and warmth in his interactions, particularly with female members of staff. His omnipotent cheekiness will be an issue…..”
Ben, from what is written, is clearly a likeable boy and in many ways will be easy to get on with. He has many skills in developing relationships, is charismatic, sporting, a leader possibly? But can he manage this ability to relate appropriately, and how do we establish relationships with appropriate distance form the start?
In the information above it can be seen that Ben struggles to manage his relationships with others around him in ways people would find appropriate. With the Director he is immediately overly familiar, cheeky but showing an ability to engage.
It has been the experience of many staff members that they can become very quickly attached to such children. They are endearing, rewarding perhaps, and can be fun to be with. (This is also true of some of the littlest children we have cared for.) It is also the experience however that these staff, having been drawn in to such a relationship, feel their relationship is abused by the children; their goodwill is spurned or they are attacked physically or emotionally.
In my reflective diary (R.D.) October 1998:
“Today was hard, Nick (my key child), spent the whole day angry. I spent loads of time trying to help him think about what was going on. The day was punctuated with long restraints. I just feel like he has sucked me in, chewed me up and spat me out”
In ‘Organic Growth and the Collective Enterprise’ (Diamond 2003) John looked to clarify this issue of emotional distance regulation. When I first joined the school, staff were encouraged to make close attachments. These were often quite dependent, for child and adult, and the theory was that the child and adult should re-work this early dependency and find a way through it that provides a more appropriate experience of attachment and then separation and ultimately loss.
The trouble with this was that we, as an organisation, were not at a stage where we could think enough about the staff member’s needs in this attachment/relationship. Consequently, staff’s needs, unmet elsewhere, were unconsciously met through the child and created confusion about the work with the child. Attachments were therefore often enmeshed and complicated.
In this set of circumstances, a child who has previously experienced confusion between love and violence or pain is likely to repeat this confusion in their relationships. The staff member is likely to be the one who is put in the role of the abuser, the inflictor of painful feelings, a painful and confusing experience for staff and child.
The ‘right distance’ is therefore one that acknowledges the staff member’s needs and avoids them becoming lost in the ‘unconscious sea of needs’. It is one that enables some participant observation of what is going on in the relationship. This then enables this staff member to use the team to help think about this relationship and their experience in it, and identify the child’s needs and how they can be consciously met.
Staff identified sado-masochistic tendencies in behaviour. Children drawing staff into situations where they are relating through unpleasant, painful, harmful incidents. These are often through complicated restraints. (I.G.)
Staff’s identifying children who draw them into sado-masochistic relationships seems to enable thinking and is therefore containing.
However this ‘emotional distance’ does not and should not take away from staff engaging in the pain of the work – feeling the child’s pain. It is this that helps inform practice with and around the child. I wrote up in my diary a game I played with a child, which I found really painful.
R.D. - July 1995
“Spent the afternoon with Alex, playing a game in which he and I were eagles, we were free. He was the little eagle and I was the daddy. One day when we were flying he got hurt. He needed some magic cream to make him better. I got the cream and applied it to his leg, but there was not enough cream. I got another tube but there was still not enough. No matter how hard I tried I could not make him better and a man came and took him to a zoo to get better. I was allowed to visit him but never to take him home again.”
Although written some years ago I remember the pain of not being able to make Alex better like it was yesterday, and remember talking with the team about how hopeless and helpless this left me feeling.
The management of anxiety is highlighted not surprisingly as a core issue.
The children who struggle most are those who manage to induce anxiety in the most people, adults and children around them. (I.G.)
When children are struggling, most thinking/feeling spaces are eliminated. (I.G.)
These points of course link to the issues of emotional distance regulation. If as a member of staff you are too close in, you are more likely to experience the anxiety generated by the child in a way that makes it hard to think about. This will make it difficult to understand what the communication is and how to manage it.
The sorts of children we are talking about are usually with us because the levels of anxiety they induced in others had been overwhelming. Our task is therefore to try and survive it and understand it for the child.
4 months into placement
Ben off site with another boy and on the roofs of adjoining cottages. They were very sexualised and damaged the roof and chimney. Remained up there for three hours despite adult attempts to get them down. Came down when left to do so with no audience, but then ran off site again. Returned to house on site and flooded bathroom. Water set off fire alarms at 11pm.November 2001
Ben off site with five other children. Ben very much the leader. Damage being reported by neighbours of garden equipment. Children intimidating villagers.
Under this sort of pressure it is very difficult to hold on to thinking and not feel panicked and out of control. Holding on to the ability to think is of particular importance however, and is one of the advantages of institutions that usually have a number of staff at different levels, so that even if some are feeling panicked and out of control, others can observe and voice this and take over the thinking, or support them to re-engage.
I recall a time as a Team Leader when I felt we had done everything we could with a particular child. Chad, had pushed us to our limits and we felt sapped dry of creativity. At each level in the house he had developed ways of ‘drawing us all in, chewing us up and spitting us out’. It was not long before he left us.
We now recognise the importance of using all levels and groups to contain the child: ownership of the problem by the whole organisation.
As Head of Residential Therapy, I still experience this ‘draw’ with some children. It is as if they want me closer, involved. For some this is appropriate and feels fine. For others, whose teams are struggling, I feel I now know that if I succumb, I will also get chewed and the organisation will end up spitting them out, as my level of authority at the top of the organisation, if lost, will mean that as an organisation we cannot contain them.
For this reason I now use this experience to identify the anxiety in me about the possibility of this child becoming ‘excludable’, talk about this and encourage community ownership of the problem. I can then become involved in a way that supports authority through the appropriate structures of the organisation, adult determined rather than by the child. I also know that if a child makes me anxious and the staff team experience this, I will not be able to contain them (the staff group).
So what happened to Ben – ‘the boy on the roof’?
July 2002
I went into work, tired and frustrated. When I got there he was high up on the pitch of the roof, in the rain and did not come down as he said he would. He was shouting that he wants to die and go to hell.
He said he would come down if I went up and got him. I knew this was not the right thing to do; I also hate heights but knew that it would be very dangerous to go up. He was likely to ‘up’ the stakes even further and we would both end up getting hurt. We called the fire brigade and waited. He eventually came down to the fire brigade, once we (staff) had all removed ourselves from view. He was extremely angry and defiant with the fire officer and staff, but settled when returned to his house group.
What is interesting about this situation is the relationship that Ben was drawing me into. I was, for him, the ‘most important one’, and he was going to put us in danger together: to share the adrenalin or be together in death, to share a sado-masochistic relationship?
In an earlier chapter I raised the idea that these children are those that may have unresolved Oedipal issues. I think this is a good example of a child whom I liked and who, I think, at some level liked/loved me and yet could not bear me to exist, as well as him. In this sense I wonder whether I represented the father for him and he was working through something very difficult in a complicated and dangerous way.
Children who struggle most develop sado-masochistic relationships with adults that care for them. (I.G.)
Adults who enter into this type of relationship with the child do so because they have positive feelings about the child. (I.G.)
The most difficult children are those who draw adults into complex relationships with inappropriate distance - this difficulty is as much about adult’s distance as it is about child’s distance. (I.G.)
Children who struggle most find it difficult to show affection. (I.G.)
The above examples demonstrate the importance of the management of anxiety in the staff group if we are to contain the most challenging children. These children also are almost always able to create situations that we have not had to deal with before.
R.D. - May 1998
‘It was really scary today; we had been struggling to help Alex find a way out of his angry mood. He was in his bedroom and I had just, I thought, avoided a potentially very big restraint with him. I had gone downstairs to get a drink when Sarah (staff member) came running down the stairs calling for me in an alarmed state. This was unusual for her as she is usually very calm and contained – a good container. I followed her up the stairs quickly as she explained Alex was cutting up his face with a piece of wire. I went into the room and he was, scratching the wire into his face and there was quite a bit of blood. I removed the wire from him and he calmed quickly and cried. I sat with him in shock and he said in an angry way that Sarah had not cared for him enough to stop him. I felt pleased he had let me stop him, but again I felt dragged into something that felt very uncomfortable. Again I was relating to him around something horrible. I felt it was my fault he had had to do it to be with me…. How do we move forward with someone who is so good at drawing us into these sado-masochistic relationships and who do I represent for him?’
A theme identified is the splits that are so easily created between the professional groupings in the organisation. At the Mulberry Bush this is most usually created between Education and Group Living. This dynamic often reflects parental roles for children. In this case they represent for the child their ‘two sets of parents’ at the school, or perhaps one group the more maternal function and the other the paternal. It is common for us, having identified splits in the staff group, for one group of staff to be left feeling the situation is hopeless and the other group to feel far more positive. Structures are put in place to understand this and bring the work together.
Concern raised about the observed splitting of violence between education and group living, good in one area and violent in the other. (I.G.)
The children are ‘experts at finding gaps between people’ (I.G.)
As described in an earlier chapter, many of the children we see carry a disproportionate burden of responsibility for their family’s troubles, including often the separation of the parents. This is rarely a factual reality. However we try very hard to work as well-functioning parents should. Talking, thinking and working together, as well as disagreeing, in front of the child. It is important for the child to experience adults who can disagree without coming to blows.
As well as working with this dynamic in the school we try to address splitting with/within the network. This is covered in the section ‘The Wider Network and Family’.
This point provides some clarity to the research questions that relate to the function of such children for the organisation. They, if ‘experts at finding gaps between people’, then serve to hold the organisation together, or conversely identify the splits and make them very visible. There are many examples of parents who stay together for their children, or who are held together by a joint focus on a problem. In our examples the child could be seen to be taking responsibility for testing out the strength of the relationship.
Prior to the group polarising negative thoughts about the child there is often a lot of splitting. (I.G.)
Within the school, groups working with the child may mirror dynamics present in the external network. (I.G.)
The effects of some of the above can be that the child is in effect excluded socially from their group to maintain the stability for the majority. (I.G.)
This last point is important as it approaches the issue of splitting from a different angle. In managing the different projections, fantasies and realities about the child, it is possible that the way these are resolved for the integrated parents is to reject the problem child, again a mirroring of the child’s experience on coming to the school. We must therefore take care to balance the coming together in an inclusive way, with the child’s care and treatment at the heart of the relationship.
This identification of ‘gaps’ between people or groupings brings to the fore the lack of consistency and continuity in experience for the child.
This section of information gathered highlights practice issues, which need to be attended to once the created gap has been identified either by the child or ideally by an observant staff member.
It is important for the child that they experience consistency and continuity of relationships across the staff group. This ensures that they know what to expect in the different relationships they have and as they transit from one task space to the next. We are not saying that everyone has to be the same, but that the relationships and responses within them need to make sense to the child.
Different ways of working with the child in different areas/different ways of responding to presenting behaviour. (I.G.)
The need for ‘consistent effective responses’ to behaviours. (I.G.)
Children become harder to contain when the different groups in the school are not working consistently with them/not communicating. (I.G.)
As well as highlighting the lack of consistency or continuity, the issue of how thinking in one team, can be communicated in a way that enables a mutual understanding and thus application to practice that creates continuity of experience for the child.
The psychodynamic underpinning of the theory base of the school supports this challenge. All staff approach the thinking from a similar foundation knowledge and this helps lead everybody to a broadly similar understanding. The two main tools supporting this process of understanding and consistency/continuity are the school’s Integrated Treatment Plan (ITP), and the Internal Case Conference (ICC).
The former is the one document that all staff work from in their care, treatment and education of the child and family. This document is used both internally as a live practice guide and risk assessment tool, as well as being used at the child’s ‘Looked After Children’ or ‘Annual Education Review’ and shared with carers and network professionals.
The ICC is a six monthly meeting of representatives from all departments within the school to review, assess and set targets based on an in-depth discussion of the child, in the knowledge of the child’s ITP and with the facilitation of a psychotherapist.
Identifying patterns of difficult behaviour – transitions! (I.G.)
It is interesting to see that transitions are highlighted as a space where difficult behaviour is identified. The movement from one space to another, one set of relationships to another and one task to another is the area that challenges how we work together and highlights ‘gaps’. These are a particular difficulty for many of our children. For some children who are not held enough (emotionally and sometimes physically) in transitions, the opportunity to run off or become involved in problems is common. This is especially true of those children who are very pre-occupied with problems at home or in some state of distress. If the child is not speaking about these feelings, it is in transitions that these feelings can quickly become overwhelming.
May 2002
Ben ran off twice during transitions and on return was very reflective about his mother and sister. Talking about his mother not being able to care for him. Ben very upset.
It is often the ‘excludable’ children that need close supervision and pre-occupation at transition times.
At the Mulberry Bush you would see lots of hand holding, skipping, games or tasks for children in transition to ensure the child is ‘held’ in the relationship between child and adult.
This area continues the process of understanding the distance in the relationship and the effect of this on our ability to understand the meaning in children’s behaviour. Others with a different distance will almost inevitably see the matter differently.
Use of independent observations of work around a child to gain a different perspective. (I.G.)
The need for independent observations often arises when staff feel stuck. They are at a point where they cannot ‘see the wood for the trees’; they perhaps are struggling with a child, have no more ideas of what to do or feel concerned they are missing something. They may just want a different view.
We engage a staff member who does not normally work with the child to observe a set activity/transition or time. The observer would be looking at what was going on for the child before, after and during the time: how they related to others and others to them as well as what else was going on around. This is then written up and looked at by the teams working with the child. It is often illuminating, and the findings enable further thought and ideas, enabling everyone to move forward.
Children become less contained when feelings in the adult group become polarised and adults struggle to find anything positive to say about the child. (I.G.)
At times this observation process has identified relationships that feel overly intense or stuck, issues around gender, or the missing of cues from the child. It is also often the case that when staff are at this point they are struggling to see anything positive that the child is doing and this different perspective can provide a different view of the child and thus opportunities for positive feedback.
Introduced co-key-working and regular panel meeting cycle plus a woman to chair the panel meetings. (I.G.)
Understanding the meaning of children’s behaviour around the birth of new sibling or confusion in life history etc. (I.G.)
Did the absence of bigger children, who were away on the school’s ‘outward bound’ trip, lead to smaller children’s acting out? (I.G.)
Child undressing in class and killing a fish, what is the meaning of this? (I.G.)
Child scaring other children by using bizarre responses. (I.G.)
At regular staff training days we re-think the importance of continuing to ‘struggle for meaning’ in the children’s behaviour and communications. This is often referred to as enabling staff to hold on to the ‘therapeutic intent’ in their practice.
Concern raised about children climbing on roofs – does the school provide spaces where the children can go to show their distress? (I.G.)
How to raise the profile of children who are achieving and consistently managing. There is a risk they become invisible. (I.G.)
I wrote in the introduction to the last training day:
“We do not necessarily need to analyse that communication, interpret or respond to it, but it is important to the child to acknowledge that we are aware that it is there. If we do not acknowledge it is there and instead respond purely to the presenting behaviour, we will leave that child with an important part of them as invisible and with a dilemma - how to make themselves visible. ‘How do I get them to really hear, or if they can’t hear, feel what I am saying?’ Will the way we respond stop us colluding with the patterns the child has had repeated for them time and time again?
Without a doubt those children who do best are those whose family and networks take an active involvement and interest in the work and progress of their child.
It is important that in a ‘systemic’ sense we enable all those involved in the work to feel a part of the team. This involves engaging the network – parents, carers, social workers, guardians, education professionals, etc., in thinking and planning with us in our work. This has to begin before a child starts at the school, to set the foundations for a positive working alliance. Often carers or parents and sometimes social workers and other professionals feel they have been a part of the problem and thus carry an enormous burden of guilt. We need therefore to work hard to explore these issues and then enable them to feel a part of the solution.
For the majority, this is extremely difficult for a whole range of reasons and needs constant work. Often parents/carers carrying this burden will find themselves on a parallel journey of change whilst the child is at the school and need a great deal of support.
August 2001
Visit to foster carer: carer tired and concerned about Ben’s behaviour. Play-scheme he attends at the family centre also very concerned about his bullying.
The tensions, when children become ‘high profile’ for negative reasons, often focus on our working relationships within the network.
Is the network of this child too distant? Is the network being supportive or undermining? (I.G.)
Concerns about the management of Sam when his mother is with him at school. (I.G.)
Children struggle more when their networks or important individuals within them do not actively support the placement. (I.G.)
Children struggle most when there is a lack of stability in their home- base arrangements or professional network. (I.G.)
Networks often involve the school in focussing on trivial issues when they are struggling to think positively about the placement. (I.G.)
The information gathered highlights most of these tensions and it is true to say that we have not had an ‘excludable child’ whose network has been working well with us. The sense of urgency around the possible exclusion of the child has brought adults together in some cases with renewed focus to address the tensions and find a way forward. For others it has only served to increase the splits in the network and been disastrous.
March 2002
Ben off site with another boy. On return neighbours report damage to property. Ben temporarily excluded.March 2002
Visit to foster carer following Ben’s temporary exclusion. Ben had been difficult since the exclusion and had run away from home. She reported that at 58 years old she was increasingly feeling unable to cope with him. Local authority has offered more support. Ben to return to the school the next day.May 2002 – Network meeting:
Tensions in the professional group as all seem to be struggling to know how best to care for Ben but all in support of the placement at the school. Ben to start therapy in September.
For families, they are often of the view that ‘they were not referred to the school, their child was’ and take some time to see that we all need to be in this together. For some it is questionable whether having got to the point where their child is referred, they are beyond the point of being able to re-engage with the work. For some they seem simply burned out.
The knowledge and experience for staff of a supportive network makes all the difference in the work with the child. The more supportive the network the more creative staff teams are able to be with their ideas about finding ways forward. On the contrary, an unsupportive network can undermine the authority of the staff, rendering the work with the child impossible if taken to the extreme.
I mentioned this theme above directly in relation to my role, but here I focus more specifically on the paternal authority of staff at all levels of the school, and structures that can be put in place by an organisation to create levels of paternal authority.
Children who struggle most become less contained when they can affect the confidence of those in authority in the school. (I.G.)
It is useful to think about all staff having to provide ‘maternal and paternal functions for the children’. Staff and the organisation itself provide these roles for the staff.
As an organisation we have worked hard to empower staff at all levels. We have moved on from the model of the inspirational leader who holds all, to a focus on shared authority and responsibility for the knowing about the work, and the not knowing. This means that we do not have ‘experts’, who hold the answer to the children’s problems. It is a finding out journey for us all!
However we also accept that because of the different roles within the organisation, there are different levels of responsibility and the children and staff experience these as authority. It is therefore important to manage these carefully in relation to the children. A close relationship between a child and a senior staff member may raise strong feelings in the child and adult group. A child, who is struggling to be contained by a team, will inevitably attract the attentions of the team’s leader. If this is the only one whom they will feel contained by where does this leave the staff on each shift? If they too are not able to contain the child and senior managers take on this role, does this take the authority outside the team?
As well as this being attended to in the day-to-day shift work of the teams and managers, oversight of these issues is maintained by the ‘Wednesday Group’. This group comprising middle managers and senior managers carefully monitors issues of authority and containment of the children.
Use of panel meetings to provide clear school authority for the child. Does this take authority outside the group and therefore disempower? Will the child make sense of it as a response – is it what they want? Will it increase the level of containment or decrease it? (I.G.)
It has certainly been the experience of the school in the past that if senior managers are involved too early on in the management of a child, the levels of management and containment for the child become collapsed and if the senior manager is unsuccessful, the child is ‘lost’. For this reason the group look to use the authority of senior managers as a last resort. The Wednesday Group holds teams accountable for what they are and are not doing, and in which ways they are maximising the team’s authority and individuals within it. Beyond this they may look to use a panel meeting.
This is a space that is created to address with a child certain patterns of behaviour. A meeting is called, attended by the child and those who work closely with him or her. A manager speaks on behalf of the whole school, empowering the work of the staff with the child.
These have been extremely effective and save the individual authority of senior managers in case additional levels/tiers of authority are needed. These meetings have been run in a whole range of ways: by managers, by key workers, by the ‘victim’, by the child, in the presence of the child’s carers or social worker, etc. They are often repeated each week or fortnight to monitor patterns of behaviour. They have also been managed as part of the child’s treatment, enabling the child to take over responsibility for the chairing of them, and taking responsibility for frequency, agenda, attendance and of course outcome.
The involvement of senior managers in the cases of ‘excludable children’ is used and has been of mixed effectiveness. The challenge, if the intervention has been effective, is how to pass this authority back into teams so that they again can contain the child. It is also true to say that, commonly when a senior manager becomes involved with the child about a fixed term (temporary) exclusion, it is usual that the child’s placement will end early, either through careful planning with the network or in exceptional cases, permanent exclusion.
Staff feeling frightened of, or bullied by, a child or appearing frightened of a child is very un-containing, for that child. (I.G.)
Identified here is the belief that a fearful staff group is not a containing one. Experience shows that this is so and yet it is also true that staff often find themselves managing frightening situations. It is important to differentiate between where a staff member is frightened for the safety of the child or in a frightening environment, and where a staff member is frightened for his or her own self or feels at risk of serious injury or death.
It is this psychopathology or engagement with a sense of madness that can be very frightening and for a child to experience making an adult feel this way can be terrifying for them.
R.D. May 2002
I was walking back to my room today and Ben was out on the front field with another boy, clearly not doing what they were asked. Ben looked at me and for the first time with him I felt fearful, as I just didn’t know what he was going to do. “Watch this”, he said to the other boy and approached me. Usually I would have spoken to him, trying to calm him down, but today it felt different. I instinctively grabbed him and called for help. Two staff members supported me quickly and I left them to calm him down. He was extremely angry shouting abuse at me and saying I was frightened of him. I walked away trying to regain my composure but I knew he knew I was rattled by the experience . I don’t know what would have happened if I had responded differently and am left concerned that my authority has been undermined by my management of this incident.
R.D. Oct 2005
‘…just facilitated an additional dynamics meeting of one of the households at their request. It focussed on some of the junior staff members feeling intimidated by one of the girls in the group. She has been punching staff members in the face and they are scared of being hurt. It was a very painful meeting with a good understanding about the girl’s needs and the impact of this on the containment in the house and specifically this girl. Beyond this there was a real sense of stalemate. What became clear however was that the staff team felt very sorry for this girl because of all that had happened to her and this made it hard for them to feel to be cross with her. We talked about this affection through feeling sorry, linked to the violent relationship they were engaged in, linked with the girl’s life experience of abusive parents, both of whom were drug addicts who died in her first three years of life. I am hoping this realisation will help them feel able to be angry and look at ways of not repeating this pattern of relating for her.’
Children trying to raise their profiles, developing their identities in negative ways/through negative behaviours – how can we help them raise them in positive or appropriate ways? (I.G.)
The children at the school have all experienced far greater interest in them and their lives for the negative reasons: abuse, trauma, challenging behaviour, family crisis. They are therefore used to this way of relating and it is therefore highly likely that they will continue to try and relate in this way.
R.D. Feb 1995
Had another individual time with Jim today (these followed him asking in his review for a time to talk about his abuse by his father; we had been meeting at the same time and place each week for three months). As usual he talked to me about what his dad did to him, (the details of which were horrific), but I think he must have sensed that I was a bit bored with hearing the same thing (he repeated it each week and in most meetings). He then asked me why nobody was interested in his dad for good things? I asked him what he meant and he said that he loved his dad and had lots of good memories that made him sad but that nobody was interested because everyone thought he was bad. He then told me all about his trips to the park and playing with the dog, and remembering tea times with all the family. He said he knew what dad had done wasn’t right but he was saddest that the family were not together any more.
Jim had one of the most awful histories I have ever read and I have always remembered what he said. He is absolutely right that we often write off people whom we see as abhorrent for what they did but the experience or memory for their family may be something completely different.
With children who are so capable of developing their profile in life for negative reasons it is important to provide plenty of opportunities for them to experience gaining status/growing self esteem for positive reasons. At the Mulberry Bush we work hard at creating opportunities to celebrate success or give positive feedback and reinforce positive behaviour or contributions to the community. We have a weekly sharing time at which we celebrate, as a community, achievements of staff and children. The children often help run this. We have a positive value that we all work towards and spend time in sharing time each week sharing our observations of how individuals have demonstrated this value: being kind, caring, keeping safe, respectful and so on. We have an active school council which now reports to and attends the first part of the senior managers’ meeting. We also have a number of school teams, which compete with other schools in the area.
Raising the profile of a child across the school in constructive ways. (I.G.)
Despite all these efforts, I am reminded of some comments of the inmates of a therapeutic prison we, as senior managers, visited two years ago. We arranged the visit to think with them about how to work with these most challenging children.
Acknowledging that they probably had been those children, they questioned the practice of ‘positively reinforcing or building the egos of children who already have large egos for negative reasons’. They said that we ought to be wary of further building ego strength in children who, when acting out, may then use this ‘super strength’ to fuel their acting out. They felt it was important to be positive but not to raise these individuals’ profiles as peer leaders. I then and still now, struggle to take this forward in very constructive ways as it leaves us with a ‘you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t’ scenario.
May 2002
Ben led the sharing time today with the head teacher and did extremely well.May 2002
Ben captained the football team, scored a goal and was very pleased with himself. Struggled to get home safely on the vehicle.June 2002
Foster carer reported a very difficult holiday. Had been running off, accused of theft and in trouble with the police. She feels she has reached the point of not being able to continue with the placement.June 2003
Ben led a group of boys and climbed on porch roof of house. Tried to smash windows and damage house. When approached, missiles thrown at staff. Senior staff called in as boys destroying the roof. Slates thrown at senior staff. Local police officer called who contacted senior officers. Riot squad on site with shields to remove children from the roof. Slates thrown with full force at senior officers, who eventually removed children from roof. Roof completely demolished. Ben arrested and charged with criminal damage and assaulting police officers
What is without question is that we need to help our children feel good about themselves.
The three different pieces of information found in this section are very different but raise similar issues.
Holding on to the infantile needs of some children who present as big bullies – are they just being a ‘big baby’? (I.G.)
This first is a common perception from staff of the children. Many children that we see have ‘lost their childhood’ and so it is often the case that they present as many years below their chronological age. This much of the time is fine but if the child is big/approaching adolescence it can be hard to remember, when feeling threatened by the child, that their needs may be infantile, sometimes founded in pre-verbal experiences or lack of them. The challenge to provide for such children needs careful thought by a team that has the confidence to relate in this way and deliver experiences that feel age-appropriate to the child, making sense of their behaviours for them. They may benefit from some rough and tumble play, or enjoy stories in a bubbly bath. They may want a hug or to play ‘peek a boo’.
Use of common spaces for positive reasons – being used/abused by children to come together in complex ways. (I.G.)
The second relates to the use of the spaces that fall between direct ownership at the school, often transitional spaces or play spaces. Individuals or groups of acting out children can easily own these. Effort has to be maintained to create positive use and ownership of these spaces. If they are starting to be used for unhelpful associations it is important this does not become a part of the culture.
Children who struggle most do so when structures that usually provide stability for the group have to be changed to accommodate them. (I.G.)
This last point identifies the observation that there is a vicious circle that can be created that relates to changes in the normal structures of the day. Children who struggle most often drive the teams into altering the day’s structure to accommodate them and yet it is often the changes of this very structure that they find un-containing. It is therefore very important to think carefully before changing established team structures to accommodate such a child, as it can be even more difficult to establish a norm again.
Pulling force initiatives. (I.G.)
Establishing structures that provide a culture that supports the task is very important. Pulling force initiatives are those that provide a pull, behaviourally, for the children to develop in constructive ways. For example we provide a Shifford club, twice a week. Children are nominated by their house or class to attend, one club being for the ‘bigger children’ and one for the ‘smaller’. At these clubs the children play games, eat crisps and have fun. The children aspire to attend and will at times try to achieve a nomination.
Another example would be helping present the sharing time or being a member of the school council. It may also be setting up a group for children who are leaving this year. This space encourages those children to share their difficult feelings and thoughts with those who will be able to empathise with each other.
Pulling force initiatives can be a whole range of things and set a culture of aspiring to grow and develop in appropriate ways.
This final section recognises the importance for the children of the biggest transitions they make in life. These should always be planned well in advance and thought be given to how much information and time the child will be able to cope with. This may depend on their chronological age and/or stage of emotional integration. The transition into the school is generally fairly quick and timing is largely determined by money – when the funding becomes available. We have little control over this transition and it is often pressured by the sense of crisis in the network.
Generally a child takes about a year to settle into the school.
To try and make the beginning more comfortable and child-centred we have a buddy system, with a child identified to be alongside the new child and help make sure they are included in games and activities and to provide some positive behavioural role-modelling.
Children struggle more around any transitions that are significant for them. (I.G.)
Importance of planning the leaving processes well in advance. (I.G.)
Looked at buddy system to encourage good role modelling. (I.G.)
Children struggle most when they have ambivalent feelings about leaving/joining/being at the Mulberry Bush. (I.G.)
Children struggle as they come towards the end of their stay at the Mulberry Bush. (I.G.)
Children often feel ambivalent during their stay at the school and this needs to be acknowledged and worked with. It is of course not normal for a child to be away from that which they have known for up to three years and so it is in some ways positive that children have such feelings.
The transition out of the school has to be planned far further in advance than the outside networks give time for and consequently our experience is one of frustration and uncertainty for the children.
We, throughout the child’s stay, each half term meet to review the child’s leaving date and maintain a pre-occupation with any issues about leaving that should be being thought about. A year and a half before the end of the placement we start encouraging the network to think and plan for the child’s leaving. Children almost always have ambivalent feelings about leaving the Bush and often act this out by repeating many of the behaviours that have challenged us during the placement. The acknowledgement of this being a part of the process helps staff manage the difficulties and survive the feelings aroused.
It is not always this straightforward and often additional meetings are put in place to think about how to work together towards the ending. This year, of our twelve ‘leavers’, the local authorities of half have not planned for the child’s next placement and so have asked the child to stay on for at least an extra term. This situation is very difficult for the child as well as for the staff group.
It is rare that an ’excludable child' is so in their last year of stay at the Bush.
Before moving to the next chapter, I will summarise what happened to Ben.
December 2002
Ben is told his social worker is leaving. No replacement currently allocated.
December 2002
Professionals meeting: social services looking at moving Ben back to previous foster carer who now wants to re-engage. We question this and ask if they have thought about 52-week schooling.
April 2003
Family team met Ben’s father and partner (aged 16) with new baby. Father wants to work with us.
June 2003
Ben involved in another dangerous incident off site. He damaged property and when challenged threw metal stakes at staff and the public.
He was temporarily excluded. This was then extended and it was agreed an ending at the school would be planned. He did not return to the school apart from a visit to say goodbye.
He was placed at a children’s home for 9 months and then in a 52-week boarding school. He was excluded after a few months.
January 2006
Ben contacted the school asking to come back and try again.
Having presented the information in more detail I will in the next chapter look to draw together any themes that may provide answers to the research questions. I will then summarise the aspects of this learning that I feel have helped the Bush to avoid having an excludable child.
In the previous chapter, the material gathered was presented alongside case study material and in some areas applications of the material were given in relation to what is done at the Mulberry Bush.
In this chapter I gather together these applications and extend them, giving some pointers about what has been learned in applying this when working with a high profile or ‘excludable child’. I then in the last chapter draw together some conclusions answering where possible the research questions posed.
This section is not intended to provide a prescriptive list or indeed ‘the answers’, but highlights those things we need to remember.
When working with a potentially excludable child we need to:
Think about distance as an issue for all staff in all relationships as well as that which we foster between the organisation and staff.
o Allow space to think, don’t encourage dependent relationships; they will happen and will be more appropriate if they occur slowly through a reflective process involving the team.
Ensure that acting out does not eliminate thinking spaces.
Encourage openness and honesty and work through the difficult feelings that will arise.
Look to meet staff’s needs in the staff group and be clear about those needs that we feel require meeting outside the work place.
Use the team.
Be in touch with, but not overwhelmed by, the pain of the children (maintain a good work/life balance).
Help staff manage their punitive feelings or those of sorrow/pity.
Understand transference, counter transference, projection and projective identification. These help staff make sense of the meaning of the children’s behaviour.
We need to:
Identify all the ‘parental couples’ in the organisation for the children and use this to think about how we all relate, for the children.
Enable open and honest communication between different individuals, groups and levels in the organisation.
Look for the ‘gaps’ before the children identify them for us.
Look at what ‘binds us together’, in our task. If we don’t know, the children will create something to bring us together – usually a problem.
Try to create warmth in our culture / rituals. This enables children to understand more appropriately the positive relationships.
We need to:
Develop the consistency and continuity of experience for the children, not confusing this with sameness.
Enable the child to connect and make sense of their different relationships.
Keep a close eye on all transitions for the child.
Help develop consistency of understanding of how we are working with the child not just the application of practice, as this doesn’t feel the same to the child and undermines staff authority in their relationships with the child. They will see the gap!
Be clear about our model of work and agreed theory base. This provides a stable foundation for understanding the children in similar ways.
Look at how we bring staff together to think about the children, formally, informally and in the use of documents. If we don’t do it enough or in the right ways, the children will do things to make sure we do.
Set targets so that we are all working towards the same goals. We also need to get the children to invest in these too, at a level appropriate to their age and stage.
Look at how our staff hold the children in mind and remain clear about how we understand that the children know or feel this.
We need to:
Look for the meaning behind behaviour. Try to increase the extent to which the staff group respond in conscious planned ways rather than in the here and now to complicated presenting behaviours. – De-personalise responses to such behaviours.
Use our colleagues to observe and feedback.
Look at the roles played in groups by children and staff.
Be aware of gender issues.
Look for the positives and remember we usually ‘get more of what we talk about’.
Look for reflections and or mirroring going on in the staff group of what is going on in the child group and visa versa.
We need to:
Remember that each individual in the group has a different ‘sense of family’, not forgetting each child’s sense of family when working with them, they won’t.
Work in partnership with all in the network and develop good communication with them.
Look to engage them in the culture of communication we have in our organisation.
Be as honest and open with them as we can.
Work within the limitations of the network, remembering that the child has to.
We need to:
Think in staff teams about the roles played in and for the group
Empower staff at all levels of the organisation, especially those working directly with the children. The children know when the ‘authority figure’ has left the building, and so do the staff disempowered by them!
Share the not understanding and not knowing. Be honest about this. The reality is: no one person has the answers and if they think they do often, then they will be creating complicated dynamics for the staff and the children.
Look at how structures can symbolise the authority of the school for the children, rather than being pushed into creating certain powerful individuals.
Keep an eye on the special relationships between staff and our most challenging children. These will probably lead us into problems.
Develop peer accountability to the task and to practice. This will demand openness and honesty.
Look to empower the children to use their authority experienced in negative ways, in creative and positive ways.
Remember that children can do well if they are given responsibility for arranging and chairing their own meetings.
Always try to balance the agenda with positive feedback, providing the child with a sense of direction.
Use the children’s peers to hold each other to account for not keeping to the rules they are a part of setting.
We need to:
Help fearful staff clarify whether they are fearful for the safety of the situation and the child or for themselves.
Acknowledge that situations can be very frightening.
Acknowledge that a frightened staff group is not a containing one.
Look at how the staff group can be helped to feel less fearful and more empowered with the children. Do not disempower them in doing so.
Acknowledge that it is okay for staff to feel angry with the children. However they should remember not to let sympathy or pity get in the way of real and honest feelings/responses.
We need to:
Remember that the children have been given attention because they are difficult or have experienced difficult things.
Look for the positive things they do that can give opportunities to notice them publicly and privately. These opportunities will probably need to be created by the team. Be creative!
Remember that children may still have fond memories of those who did ‘awful things’ to them. They may not talk about them because they think we think only bad things about them.
Be thoughtful about fuelling further the egos of children who, when acting out, appear to already have super ego’s.
Try and help the children feel good about themselves.
We need to:
Remember ‘big bullies’ are sometimes ‘big babies’ pushing their weight around. Don’t forget baby games like ‘peek-a-boo’ or ‘rough and tumble’.
Make sure all our spaces are owned and inhabited. If we don’t, the children will, probably in unhelpful ways.
Be wary of changing the structures of the day to accommodate an acting out child. It may leave them feeling even more uncontained. These may be just the structures we need to re-enforce.
Establish ‘pulling force’ initiatives. These will help children know how we want them to develop and help create a culture of looking for adult acceptance and approval.
We need to:
Think carefully about all the children’s transitions.
Plan them well in advance; others probably won’t give them enough time or thought.
Think about how the transitions can be eased, marked and supported.
Think about rituals that help them to be recognised as important.
Avoid making assumptions about which staff are important to children.
Use a child’s peers to support transitions if appropriate.
Allow the child to voice and explore their ambivalent feelings about the transition.
Expect a child to revisit many of their complicated behaviours in preparation for leaving. This serves to remind us that they still need our thought and pre-occupation
At the Mulberry Bush we find ourselves reminding each other of theses things, remembering them and re-remembering them, especially at times of difficulty.
In the next chapter I will draw together some answers to the research questions posed.
In this chapter I look at the material presented and draw together some responses to the research questions posed.
In looking at this question my first reaction was to write, ‘perhaps they were just an inappropriate referral’, and I am sure that this has been said many times in many dif