It's time to view care in a positive light

After all, for some decades now, we have heard nothing but bad news and blame in relation to the public care system and its alleged lack of care for so-called looked-after children. There have, of course, been horror stories that are etched in the mind: Pindown in Staffordshire, the Waterhouse Inquiry into child abuse in homes in north Wales, and the recent police investigation in Jersey.

Some other very different things come into my mind. My dad was a childcare officer and I spent a great deal of my own childhood in various sorts of children's homes - admittedly visiting rather than living there, but observing and soaking up the atmosphere nonetheless. Later I worked in residential childcare for a short while and then, as a researcher, I did various studies that involved looked-after children. I gained a range of perspectives through this experience, some not so good but many that were very positive.

So much seemed to depend, predictably, on the rapport and relationships between staff and children, and perhaps on the children's feeling that the staff occasionally went an "extra mile" for them. I was introduced to Tamla Motown by a girl called Catherine who adored her "housemother". I refined my football abilities with boys in another children's home who always spoke well of their staff. And I was taken to watch Aston Villa Football Club with some other kids in care at a home nearby by a "housefather" who worked there.

I was recently in Malta and my father, now aged 84, asked me to pay a visit to an old colleague of his now living on the island of Gozo, who, it transpired, had been chair of the city children's committee during the 1960s. He told me that they had had their occasional tragedies, scandals and witch-hunts but, by and large, they had protected and cared for thousands of vulnerable children. Indeed, at the funeral of one housemother more than a thousand of her former children turned up to pay their respects.

This all reminded me of research conducted some years ago by the Dartington Social Research Unit. It had focused on both the structure and culture of children's homes and maintained that it was quite possible to establish a positive environment for young people in the care system, provided staff had sufficient discretion and authority to exercise "parental" judgement. If this was denied, however, then all hell risked being let loose - hell for the kids and hell for the staff. It became a war of attrition, and the children were invariably the losers.

This research resonated with my own experiences and it must certainly be the basis on which the new proposals have made such a volte-face - and perhaps heralded a new dawn for residential services and the children in their care.

-Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan.