Some of the most disruptive, disturbing children and young people are in residential child care, often viewed as a placement of “last resort” after multiple family-based placement breakdowns. The children arrive with feelings and behaviours that test to the maximum their carers’ efforts to empathise, to stay emotionally committed, to hold limits in a non-retaliatory way and to bring about change. The Mulberry Bush School (MBS) is one such placement of “last resort”, a therapeutic residential special school caring for primary-aged children with severe social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Children at MBS return to their foster, adoptive or birth families for some weekends and outside term time, although from autumn 2018, MBS has offered 52-week care. The children’s experiences of neglect, abuse and loss inform the nature of MBS’s therapeutic work with them and with their families during the three-year placements at the school.
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