Private fostering has a long history but few studies have been made of it. Bob Holman traces the development of private fostering in the last 50 years and then analyses what is known about it at ...present. He shows that, contrary to popular conception, far from being confined to West African children in Britain, private fostering now includes a number of different groupings. The evidence suggests that some private foster carers provide satisfactory care, but there is little doubt that numbers of private foster children are vulnerable to abuse. Black children are usually placed with white foster carers and their cultural and racial needs may not be met. Local authorities already possess considerable duties and powers concerning private fostering but few fully apply them. Proposals are made as to how private foster children can be properly safeguarded.
Drawing upon his own experience as a child care officer, the author draws attention to the local authority Children's Departments which were established 50 years ago in 1948. To mark the anniversary, ...interviews were held with 20 former children's officers. From these, it was possible to identify three major achievements of the Children's Departments, namely the restoration of natural parents to child care, the promotion of child care skills, and the formation of a highly committed staff force. The Children's Departments were abolished over a quarter of a century ago and amalgamated into the Social Services Departments (Social Work Departments in Scotland). Despite some notable advances, it is argued that, under these departments, preventative work with children, child care skills and staff morale have declined. As a way forward, the author proposes the formation of a local authority Family Department which would consist of family workers equipped with child care skills, a facility approach which offers open services, and backing for locally run neighbourhood groups. It is contended that this service would be acceptable to and particularly helpful to parents and children living in conditions of social deprivation.
FOREWORD Bob Holman
The Poetry of Everyday Life,
09/2016
Book Chapter
The Poetry of Everyday Lifeis a how-to book for everyone.
This is a book where language itself becomes a way of life, where poetry, so often thought of as obscure or elitist, takes its rightful place ...as the essence of language.
The Poetry of Everyday Lifeacknowledges and respects as “real” art what has come to be known as “folk” art, which is what Steve Zeitlin does for his day job as founding director of City Lore, the urban folklore center in New York. Since there’s precious little basket weaving and pottery making going on in the mean streets
Fifty years ago the Curtis and Clyde reports set out the blueprints for a new children's service. They contained an emphasis on the personal needs of deprived children, an insistence on fostering as ...the method of care best suited for them and the recommendation that a completely new local authority department was required. The following Children Act (1948) established the Children's Departments which soon became synonymous with enlightened child care. The origin of the reports is often attributed to the campaigns of Lady Allen in 1944 and the scandal of the death of a foster child in 1945. But the real origins stemmed from events precipitated by the Second World War, while the contents of the reports can be discerned in even earlier years.
"What have I in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself!" --Franz Kafka Kafka's quip--paradoxical, self-questioning, ironic--highlights vividly some of the key issues ...of identity and self-representation for Jewish writers in the 20th century. No group of writers better represents the problems of Jewish identity than Jewish poets writing in the American modernist tradition--specifically secular Jews: those disdainful or suspicious of organized religion, yet forever shaped by those traditions. This collection of essays is the first to address this often obscured dimension of modern and contemporary poetry: the secular Jewish dimension. Editors Daniel Morris and Stephen Paul Miller asked their contributors to address what constitutes radical poetry written by Jews defined as "secular," and whether or not there is a Jewish component or dimension to radical and modernist poetic practice in general. These poets and critics address these questions by exploring the legacy of those poets who preceded and influenced them--Stein, Zukofsky, Reznikoff, Oppen, and Ginsberg, among others. While there is no easy answer for these writers about what it means to be a Jew, in their responses there is a rich sense of how being Jewish reflects on their aesthetics and practices as poets, and how the tradition of the avant-garde informs their identities as Jews. Fragmented identities, irony, skepticism, a sense of self as "other" or "outsider," distrust of the literal, and belief in a tradition that questions rather than answers--these are some of the qualities these poets see as common to themselves, the poetry they make, and the tradition they work within.
Asserts that these reports were wide-ranging proposals for new statutory services for disadvantaged children. Argues that the impetus for the reports sprang from events and organizations before and ...during World War II. Reviews child care 1900-39, war and evacuation, and Lady Allen's influence on child care policy. Claims that the Children Act 1948 fulfilled the Curtis and Clyde Reports. (AMC)
