Creating a Warm Place Where Children Can Blossom

Abstract

This paper addresses the themes of resilience, rights and responsibilities, to explore how community life, professional practice and social policy can be more attuned to the needs of vulnerable children. It considers the parts children, families, communities, professionals, government and the wider public can play in creating conditions under which children can thrive. It argues that our approach must be guided not only by an application of knowledge, but also by a sense of hope. VULNERABILITY AND ISOLATION A colleague and friend of mine is a gifted and sensitive social worker. She makes a great job of running a local children’s support project in Dublin. One day she received a note about a boy in primary school who was causing concern. He was being referred to her project for ongoing work, because of his challenging behaviour in the classroom and elsewhere. He was a pupil at the school where her project is based. She decided to observe his behaviour in the lively playground at lunchtime, as part of her preparation for engaging with him. She saw him running around relentlessly in a manic game of chasing. But as she looked more closely, she realised that there was actually no one else in the game with him. He was running around this busy playground on his own. Imagine any attempt to work with this boy that did not have this level of detail about his predicament. Any such attempt would veer far wide of the mark in terms of impact and effectiveness.

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