From Chaos To Calm: Routines, Relationships, And Real Change In Residential Care

Quality residential care for children who have experienced trauma starts long before any therapy session. It lives in the culture of the home, the clarity of purpose, and the daily rhythm that makes life predictable enough for healing to begin. Experienced organisations describe how knowledge seeps into the “wallpaper” over time: shared language, trusted rituals, and the confidence to pause and think. Reflective spaces matter because staff carry complex feelings that need sorting, not suppressing. Without room to think, practice drifts into firefighting. With it, teams align on a simple aim: help each child feel seen, safe, and understood, then build connection on top of that safety.

Understanding isn’t a soft extra; it is the work. One story shows why. A boy became volatile every evening around bath time. Staff felt scared and resentful until a life story worker shared a missing piece: as a younger child, he was punished with cold baths and held underwater. That single fact transformed how the team felt and acted. They softened bath time, stayed close, and let empathy guide tone and timing. More than tactics, it was the emotional shift that eased the storms. When we know a child’s story, our stance changes from “stop this” to “I get why this is hard,” and behaviour often follows. Curiosity beats control because it treats the child as a mind with a history, not a set of problems to manage.

Routines and rituals are the unsung heroes. They create a steady beat that steadies bodies and minds. Meals at known times, a Sunday ritual everyone can name, bedtime that doesn’t slide around, and roles that are clear reduce guesswork and anxiety. Predictability is not dull for traumatised children; it is relief. The running of the home should be “boringly” consistent so relationships can carry the colour. When homes rush to add models, labels, and jargon, staff drown in concepts and children still don’t know what happens next. Start with the basics: reliable routines, agreed boundaries, and a shared understanding of the primary task. Add reflective practice to tune those basics to each child.

Admission itself is a major intervention. Moving from one world to another is unforgettable, and how a home claims a child sets the tone for belonging. Sending a key worker to meet, bridge, and “claim” the young person helps answer the first-night question: who will keep me alive here? Belonging grows faster when one adult becomes the gateway to the wider team, rituals signal “you are ours,” and the environment feels warm and homely. This foundation lets therapy take root. As clinicians remind us, therapeutic impact depends on dose and context; a technique without the right environment often does nothing. A well-held daily life is already therapeutic, and it makes formal help far more effective.

Staff hold a parental role, but an enriched one. Ordinary parenting isn’t enough when early adversity has shaped development. Children may function well in calm moments, then buckle when routines touch old fears. Authority therefore must be consistent, compassionate, and shared across the team. Boundaries like phone use or curfews are hard to hold if staff disagree or legal orders sow confusion. Still, good parenting means sometimes saying no and always explaining why with care. The aim is not compliance for its own sake; it is safety, dignity, and the experience of being held in mind. Over time, kids test, watch, and learn: do you keep me safe when I lose it? Do you stay when I push you away?

Ask alumni what mattered and you hear the same themes: love, belonging, and small, joyful moments. A weekly quiz show, a silly in-joke, a hot chocolate after a hard evening. These memories are not incidental; they are the texture of healing. For new workers, this is good news. You don’t need perfect theory to matter. Bring steady presence, protect routines, get curious about one child’s story, and use your authority like a good parent would: firm, fair, and warm. Keep building that reservoir of knowledge, together. The child won’t forget how you made their world predictable and how you made them feel understood. That is what transforms futures.

You can listen to the podcast episode here:

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Transcript:

Colby: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Secure Start podcast.

Tom: 0:04

Organisations that have been engaged in this work for a while tend to be pretty good at it. I’ve been involved in a number of startups over the last few years. And there are things that you can do that help. Regardless of what the therapeutic or the theoretical framework you use is, it’s good to have a therapeutic or theoretical framework. It’s good to have terms of reference that everybody can agree upon. The thing that works really well is a basic framework of this is how we work and some clarity about what are we here to do. And in above all, a space to think and reflect. The idea that we pause in the work regularly and we think about what’s going on for the children and what’s going on for us and what’s going on in the space between. What might staff starting this work need to know, and what might foster care need to know? The thing that I would say is the thing that you’re striving for is understanding. If you’re an RCW, you residential care worker and you started in the work last week, a good place to start is what would give me a better understanding of one of these children. The act of admission is a massive intervention. If you know the stories of the children, it will affect how you are with them. But actually, I think there’s a huge value in structure and boundaries and routines and rituals and the care plan and the the running of the home should be quite boring. Because the children, because it should be so predictable. You know, if you want to establish a children’s home that that and you want it to be beyond the ordinary, there needs to be a lot of focus on okay, what are our rituals and routines and uh how do we deliver those consistently? And how do we get to understand our children better? And by definition of therapeutic is it’s the conscious use of relationships to deliver transformation. But I think sometimes you need to be reminded, and your custodians of childhood. So you part of your job is to give these children a childhood that they will remember fondly. If the thing that has led you to being where you are is a failure of parenting, the solution should be some kind of parenting. What everything we do has the potential to be something that that child makes use of later. As an adult, I think children have a sense of people trying, even when they’re getting it wrong.

Colby: 2:45

Hello and welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I’m Colby Pearce, and rejoining me this episode is highly regarded social care consultant in the UK, Tom Ellison. Now, before we begin our conversation, I’d just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I come to you from, the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Ghana people feel to land, waters, culture, and community. I’d also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. So as I said, I’ve got Tom Ellison uh rejoining me for this episode. And uh Tom previously was on the podcast for episode 27. So um if you want to hear more me uh read out his bio. Um we’re streamlining streamlining it a bit this time, but uh his bio is there, it will be in the notes for this show. Um, and it was episode 27. Welcome, Tom. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. It’s good to be back. Yeah, no, it’s good to have you back because I do I did feel at the end of the last podcast interview that we we kind of only got the conversation half done in a way.

Tom: 4:14

Yeah, well, I think um there was there was a big focus on leadership, and and I know you wanted to come back and talk about uh the work with children and and what what effective residential childcare might look like. Um so happy to be back.

Colby: 4:33

Well, that’s probably an excellent spot to start uh in terms of um I’m interested to hear your views, and I’m sure our listeners and watchers will will be too about what effective, what quality um residential care looks like, and is there any distinction between quality and effective? I’m not really sure, but happy to hear your views.

Tom: 4:55

Yeah, I think um there’s a big invitation to jump into talking about attachment and trauma and therapeutic frameworks, etc. But I think the there’s there’s a few things that you just can’t help noticing when you’ve been around the work for a while. So one is um organizations that have been engaged in this work for a while tend to be pretty good at it. So so you know, I saw your interview with uh John Turberville and Kevin Gallagher, who each come from you know their organizations have been around a while, certainly decades. And the there is something about organizations doing this work accumulate knowledge over time. And that you know, one of the phrases I’ve used is it kind of gets into the wallpaper. So it’s not so much about, yeah, there are individuals you could point to and say, okay, that person’s been around a while, that’s a wise head. We could go and ask them an opinion on an issue. Um, but there is something to be said for um the culture that develops over time, and that’s you know, that that’s partly shaped by the theoretical framework, the consultants, the the people leading those organizations. It’s also shaped by the children. So there’s a organizations respond to what the children, the challenges that the children bring through the door, and and you know, uh uh a good organization or a good uh children’s home is responsive to the children, not just in terms of uh what the children tell you they need or they want, but what the children show you they need and they want. And so, you know, one one of the again, you know, if I’m visiting a service, a children’s home or an establishment, I’ll quite often ask the manager how long have you been here? And and and you can draw conclusions from that. You you you know that that there are there are few substitutes for experience and and time travel. That said, there are things I’ve been involved in um a number of startups over the last few years, and there are things that you can do that help, you know, and so um regardless of what the therapeutic or the theoretical framework you use is, it’s good to have a therapeutic or theoretical framework, it’s good to have terms of reference that everybody can agree upon, and you know, there’s various. If you sort of wander around and do a tour of the UK, there are various, and there are various kind of levels as well. There’s there’s uh so, for example, in the last few years, there’s um a training called pace training, which is you know, um it it it’s kind of a training in how to be around children, involving things like being curious and being empathetic, and things that are just a good idea if you’re gonna be around children who’ve experienced trauma. But I I would treat that as that’s almost universal now, it’s almost a standard training for anybody working in residential, but then there are layers beyond that, and and quite often one of the phrases I use is there’s levels to this game. There are there are, and and certainly uh in my career, I it it’s almost like layers of understanding as you travel. It becomes deeper and deeper and deeper. And the the the danger is that you hear about that there’s so many theoretical frameworks and models that you can choose from that you end up overloading the staff because a senior a senior manager comes across pace training or social pedagogy or pillars of parenting or secure base, and they think, oh, well, I’ll bring that one in, and then they’ll bring another one in, and then they’ll bring another one in. And then before long, the staff at the call face are a little bit overwhelmed, and they’re mixing up their metaphors, and a lot of jargon’s getting deployed. And you’ll know from the last podcast, I’m not particularly a fan of jargon. That that, but I think the thing that works really well is um a basic framework of this is how we work and some clarity about what we are here to do, and you know, above all, a space to think and reflect. So whether that’s um individually with staff in supervision or whether that’s in moreover, whether that’s in a a group setting, and and that gets called different things depending on the organization, might be reflective practice in one, it might be called dynamics in another. But the the idea that we pause in the work regularly and we think about what’s going on for the children and what’s going on for us and what’s going on in the space between. And so um when I when I’ve been helping, as I have been recently, organizations to establish new services, they’re the kind of uh the reference points that I go to. The first one being what what’s it for? What what what what does what is what is this service, children’s home? What is it for? What’s it to do? What’s the problem that it solves? And then build out from there. But universally, if you were, you know, in terms of working with looked after children, universally, there’s some level of trauma and attachment there. It might be variable in how it manifests, but but it’s there. And so therefore, I would always kind of build in the idea of well, there needs to be reflective spaces, and there needs to be somewhere where the staff can reflect on and think about the experiences of the children. And again, you going back to you know the organizations that you would say, oh, they’re pretty good at this stuff. That’s where they’ve iteratively done that over decades. The thing that’s allowed that culture to develop so that they’ve got good at doing the work is that there is an iterative process of things happening between the staff and the children, and then the staff having a space where they can think about it and process it and develop a greater understanding of what’s going on for the children.

Colby: 11:35

I talk about this a bit in my own work, that um one of the things that you you if you work for a long time and if an organization has it has existed for a long time, um, serving a community, then you have the opportunity to reflect back on not just immediate or short-term impacts of the work that you do, but longer-term impacts uh of the work that you do as well. So you build up a bank of knowledge really about what what works and doesn’t work and what lot long-term outcomes, medium to long-term outcomes look like for um for the for the for the people that we’re serving um just based on on being around for a long time and trying different things and seeing how those things work or don’t work. And I know, for example, um you you mentioned the mulberry bush, that they have um with Richard Rawlinson and and others, they have become quite proactive in terms of reconnecting with alumni of of the mulberry bush, um adults now, parents, you know, husbands and wives, um who came through that system and and are still they’re still getting this, they’re getting longer-term feedback about the experience of young people as they’ve gone through the mulberry bush, which um which can only really um add to that important practice wisdom that develops over time.

Tom: 13:19

Yeah, I think that you someone said to me if I look at um residential care in the UK as a whole, there are fewer, I’m gonna say controversial things now, but there are fewer specialist providers than there used to be. So that so it if I think 15-20 years ago, there were a number of providers, usually operated by their founder, who were um doing innovative and creative things, some that you might agree with, some that you might find a bit more controversial, but they were all trying to pioneer um working with children who’ve experienced trauma and who are in the looked-after children’s system. Um I think increasingly there are I think something’s happened over the last 15 years where there are fewer of those organizations than there used to be. Um, I think that it creates a space because it creates an opportunity for other people to jump in who’ve got ideas. But I think that someone um said to me a couple of years ago, we’ve forgotten how to do this work. And he’s not talking about individual establishments, he’s talking about as a sector, the the knowledge, um, the reservoir of knowledge in the sector is less than it used to be. And I I kind of agree with that, that um the thinking that gets deployed in some organizations is not as great as it should be. And so where organizations are, um, as I know some of some of the organizations you’ve been in contact with are um gathering and preserving knowledge about this work, that becomes important. Because it’s because where do where do you where do you go to learn to be good at this work? Because an awful lot of um practice has been distilled into short courses, and we’ll deliver a short course and you can go off and do therapeutic work with children without an understanding of actually it’s an ongoing process, you never actually get there. You never you in you know when you got in touch and said, Well, let’s do another one where we talk about the children, I always feel a bit um I’m much more nervous talking about the practice with the children than I would be about talking about leadership because I feel like with the children, you never actually get there. You you’re you’re just constantly trying to you’re constantly trying to get closer to something that’s helpful. And um so what one of the things that you know in terms of experience, one of the things that I went through is as I got more knowledgeable in this work over decades, I felt guilt that I wasn’t good enough in the beginning. So you so you look back to the children that I worked with in the first, I don’t know, three, four, five, six years in residential practice. And the more sophisticated me can look back and go, Yeah, that wasn’t that wasn’t good enough, that wasn’t, that wasn’t great, or you weren’t connecting, you weren’t being still enough, you weren’t um you weren’t understanding what that child was trying to communicate to you. And so that experience for me is the idea of well, you never actually get there. There is no you don’t arrive, you don’t get to I am now um you know maximum proficiency at working with you know children who’ve had negative experiences of uh early childhood. You you don’t get there, you try and you try and get closer to it.

Colby: 17:14

There’s a couple of things that you said in there and in your earlier response that um I’d pick up on um and love to talk more about. I love the idea of reservoir building a reservoir of knowledge, a reservoir of knowledge. I think that that’s uh gets to what I was you were saying and what I was taking from what you were saying in my my previous reflection. Um I agree that I think what comes from experience is the understanding that there are enduring sensitiv, I call them enduring sensitivities. There are um enduring sensitivities that the children carry from their experiences growing up and uh including their adverse experiences that they take with them through life. And um that makes sense because we all we we all consider that we are in some way shaped as a person by the experiences that we had growing up as well as our contemporary experiences. Um and I think I think it’s really important to know to have a really good target in a sense or a realistic a realistic goal for the work that you’re doing. Otherwise otherwise you you can become you can feel inadequate, you can become despondent, you can feel um like you just you just haven’t done enough for the children. And without without hogging the floor too much, I see this a lot with in foster care, where where foster carers are um brought into the system both with with the ideas that they come with and with ideas that um that exist within child protection and out-of-home care systems, that you know, kinda all the children need is a you know is a loving home, uh a bedroom and a loving home and and all will be put right. And I don’t that’s just not the case. It is manifestly not the case, and and it is um uh highly problematic in my view to you know for these advertising campaigns to exist and these recruitment campaigns saying that you know you will if you have a spare room and a lot of love to give, you will experience this extra this fulfillment of being able to turn around the life of a young person. Now you may well do that. You you and and um often enough lives do get turned around. Um but you don’t you don’t erase what’s happening, what’s happened in the past, sorry. There’s there’s there is always an enduring sensitivity. So I think we just need to be really uh mindful of what is possible um lest we become overwhelmed, uh despondent. And I think that that is the case right through um the the social care sector. And you you hinted a little bit at at primary tasks, and we did spend a lot of time talking about primary tasks last time, but I think it it’s really important to start somewhere and and starting with having an understanding of what you’re actually here for, what is your role, what is the role of the organization, what is my role in this organisation, where do I sit? I think is a a really good place to start. But it do it does make me think when you look back, and I have done the same, and you think, oh, I wish I knew back then what I know now, and and of course it’s not possible to know, and then it is part of the reason I set up this podcast was to kind of speak to people with tremendous experience and have uh a reservoir of knowledge. I’m gonna I I might pinch that, uh, a reservoir of knowledge that people who are embarking or are early in their career journey can dip into and and um for their learning and understanding of the work. But I’m wondering if there is there are particular there’s particular advice that you would give um relatively inexperienced workers in the social care sector about how to approach the work.

Tom: 21:47

Yeah. Just before I do that, I want to respond to the the the because I it occurred to me even as I was saying it that oh, that’s what you’re doing. You’re the the reservoir of knowledge thing. You’re capturing it on video and on audio. And making it accessible. So, you know, and um in terms of the last podcast, all kinds of people have fed back to me that they listen to that. Not necessarily people in our line of work, even, but I think you in creating conversations about the work with people who you know have uh have some experience to share, I think is uh incredibly valuable. In terms of I don’t know, and I was interested in your point about foster carers as well, and saying, well, you know, do you have a spare bedroom and do you have some love to give? Maybe you could help a child. And it’s not a bad beginning. You know, it’s not a bad beginning. I think where that goes wrong a little bit is there is a little lack of uh understanding of the primary task and the challenges that these children are likely to bring. Because there’s a there’s a sort of fostering crisis in the UK, in that the pool of foster carers is getting smaller over time, and there’s there’s many reasons for that. And uh the government at the moment is putting a lot of resource into advertising campaigns for foster carers. I’m not sure whether that’s going to lead to uh a sustained increase in the number of foster carers because I think there is a problem about how foster care is described and what it is, what what what is it that we are asking these people to do? Because yes, um we’re asking them to provide a home and we’re asking them to provide love, but we’re also there’s there also needs to be an understanding. Well, first of all, needs to be an understanding of what these children might bring through the door with them, and an understanding of well, what do they actually need? Because you know, and if I link that, if I link into uh what does staff starting in the work, what might staff starting in this work need to know, and what might foster care need to know. The the thing that I would say is the thing that you’re striving for is understanding, so that the the it the um not just children, human beings, um rarely have instances of being fully understood by another human being, yeah. It’s it when it happens, it’s usually fleeting. There are people in your life that you’ll think, oh well, that person gets me. And so there’s some understanding there, but those moments of deep understanding and connection are rare, and I think that that uh in in therapy, in relation-based relationship-based therapies, one of the things you’re aiming for is that not just that the therapist understands the client, but that the client has an experience of being understood. So that’s that that that two-way thing, and it’s a connection. So I think for and I I think I talked in the last podcast about the idea of I do come across people who think the job is to make children behave. And I think that’s um you know, and in and in circumstances where a child is in a foster placement or a residential placement and they do well and their behavior improves, that’s a good thing. That’s not that’s not that’s not bad, but uh I don’t think that’s what the work is. I think the work is about um allowing children to have an experience of being understood by an adult and that a relationship grows. Because obviously, well, I say obviously, it’s it um uh it it follows that if you have a repeated experience of being with somebody who you feel understands you, you will develop a relationship with them. A relationship will blossom from that. That is um helpful. So, so in terms of if you’re an RCW, residential care worker, and you started in the work last week, a good place to start is well, what would give me um a better understanding of one of these children? It’s easier to start with one, you’re not gonna if you’re working with you know a number of children, it it’s easier to pick one, and maybe you’ll be directed to one by the management, but it’s easier to just pick one and say, Okay, I’m going to go on a little mission to develop a greater understanding of that child there. And that can be done. Um certainly in my early career, there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on it. I think I’ve worked in environments where an understanding of the child’s history was significant enough that there were dedicated professionals in the organization that went out and found it. And because one of I don’t know how it is in Australia, but one of the issues, anybody who’s worked in residential for a short while in the UK will tell you is that the the paperwork is never accurate. And that that’s not the local authorities’ fault, it’s just that you know, gathering information on a lifetime of experience is not an easy thing to condense into a short biography in a social work report. So um, so one of the things that I would invite that new RCW to do is to turn themselves into a detective and try and find out that child’s story. And yeah, you know, a good place to start would be the the paperwork that the child arrives with, but I wouldn’t uh I wouldn’t restrict it to that. I would get curious about who are the people that this child has uh been around, whether whether they’ve been carers or teachers or uh social workers or you know, who can I who can I speak to who knows this child and try and gather a deeper understanding of this child and their history? Because that will play out in the relationship with the child, the the your deeper understanding. I’ll give you an example. A thing that happened. So um some years ago, I was um managing teams of children’s souls, and we had a uh an office that the teams came to fortnightly for team meetings and to do some reflection. And one of the managers asked me um to come into the meeting because the team were in open rebellion. So I went into the meeting and was confronted by some really angry um residential care workers. Um, and and they directed that anger at me as I came in through there was there was a real kind of um I was bombarded with indignation. And the reason they were angry is one of the children they were working with was pretty much on a daily basis being very violent and hurting people. And once we got through the the anger and the frustration and and the conversation shifted to me, me being curious and saying, Well, you know, tell me what’s happening, tell me, tell me the story. And they were describing uh a boy who was about he was about 12, something like that at the time. And what they were describing was actually, you know, in the morning he was lovely, he went to school. Uh, the feedback from school was the teachers said he was delightful, very quiet. Uh, he’d get home in the evening, he was he was fine until around dinner time, so five 5:30 in the evening, and then he became more agitated, aroused, and that played out. He would be quite manic and giggling and grinning. And I remember someone saying he looks like the devil. They said when he he’s got this devilish look on his face, and he’d start to push things off the dinner table and run around the house, and this escalated through the evening until you know nine, ten o’clock at night, windows are being broken and people are being hurt, and it would go on till the early hours of the morning. And just by asking questions, we gradually got a picture of a child who’s in the day’s baseline was relatively steady and low, and then there was this sort of gradual escalation in the evening till around eight, nine in the evening. And then usually the what what they were describing was um he wanted to come out of it, but he didn’t know how. So he thought he wanted he wanted to kind of get back to normal, but he didn’t know how, and it took a few hours to get him back back to normal. And there was he had a dedicated life story worker, and there was a life story worker in the room, and the life story worker noticed that the peak of the acting out was 8, 8:30 at night when in that home, it was all boys. In that home, the boys were having baths and showers. Coming in from evening activities, they’d been doing sport or something like that, and they were having baths and showers, then they’d have supper and you know, a window to bedtime. And she she kind of jumped on this and homed in on it a little bit and said, Oh, that’s significant. And no one in the room really understood why it was significant. Okay, why is that significant? And she said, Well, when he was when he was five, he lived with a foster carer, and whenever he wet the bed, the foster carer ran a cold bath and held him underwater. And there was a there was there was a I get emotional when I tell this story, but there was a hush, and somebody started to cry. And then the meeting ended because um the it had taken that long to get to that conversation that the school runs people had to go off and do school runs, so the meeting came to an end. And normally when when we were dealing with something like that, we’d start planning. We’d say, okay, so what could we do differently? How could we plan? But there was no time for it. And and I didn’t hear any more about this. And I went to the meet, the next meeting two weeks later. I thought, right, I’m gonna go in and see what’s going on. And I went to the meeting and everything was fine. No one’s no one was discussing this boy, they were discussing other things, they were discussing the rotor and the paperwork and who’s not filling in the paperwork properly and the things that get talked about in those meetings. And um I was really curious. I said, Well, what’s going on with with this boy? And they said, Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine. And and then and I said, Well, what’s going on around bath times and stuff? And they described, well, oh, they said, Oh, he’s having baths. And they described, like, they’ve done some things. They they they um they decided that they were going to put a member of staff outside the bathroom on a chair so there was someone close, and they bought in some bath toys and bubble bath, and they made bath time softer, nurturing, you know, but I don’t think it’s what they did that made the difference. Yeah, I mean it made some difference, but but I think the big shift was they understood. Their understanding, yeah, they understood, and that wasn’t in his the paperwork that came, because he’d had a pretty you know awful uh set of experiences throughout childhood. That detail wasn’t there, and so we only knew that detail because the social worker, uh the life story worker who was a social worker, had gone out and done the digging and done the uncovered these stories, and so that team didn’t need to they didn’t need a deep understanding of any therapeutic model, they didn’t need to understand neurology or have studied you know the effects of trauma on the development of the brain, they just needed to hear that story, and once they heard that story, it made sense. It’s powerful, yeah, and and then and then everything just everything just fell into place, and so that was a real um uh powerful lesson in if you know the stories of the children, it will affect how you are with them, how you relate to them, it how how you respond to um agitation as bath and shower time approaches, you know, in his case. But the but there’s there’s probably a version of that for every child, and uh and understanding the story really thoroughly informs in a way that allows understanding to take place. Because without that understanding, certainly the the anger that I walked into, they they would they thought he was just gratuitously hurting people, you know, and as much as they were a really empathetic team, you you know, you um if you’re day after day after day dealing with a child who’s trying to hurt you, it does, you know, that that resentment can, you know, feelings of resentment can get into you, you know. So so I think that one, um do your best to understand the children you’re working with.

Colby: 35:26

Yeah. And while just if I can jump in there, uh while you were telling that story, I was thinking he’s you know, he’s been hurt. That’s when he’s been hurt. And and um I didn’t go to what had happened maybe in a foster placement, but I was thinking about um, you know, maybe he in his history, his there had been an adult that returned to the home at around you know after work hour, uh after normal work hours, and that something um uh adverse had was happening to him at that time. Yeah. And I think that’s that what you’re talking about is um it go it’s it’s about working beyond the need and the behaviour to understanding that the child that children are not just needs and behaviors, they have a mind. And I talk about this in in my podcast interview with Peter Blake, um, which I which is already released, but how I think he was saying that people don’t always see that children have a mind, a thinking mind, or an experiencing mind, and that um and that these experiences they go somewhere, and we and it’s important to be curious about well, where do they go? How are they stored and how do they present uh later on? And he Peter and I were talking about, you know, this goes right back to the very early days of a child’s life. Um if we agree, if we understand that they have a mind, that they’re not just needs and behaviours, then we have to have this an understanding that well, where where does all the these experiences and their their processing of these experiences go? How is it held? And how does it then manifest in the way they approach life and relationships thereafter?

Tom: 37:31

I think um because I I I I feel like when I came into this work, I was uh blundering around in the dark. And some um one of the other things in turn in terms of you useful things is that when I came into this work, people talked about structure and routines and boundaries all the time. Anyone you met in residential and consistency, words like consistency, but consistency, structure, routines, boundaries, and that that’s less fashionable to talk about now. It’s much more fashionable to talk about trauma-informed practice, but actually, I think there’s a huge value in structure and boundaries and routines and rituals, and like you know, people didn’t really talk about rituals, but you know, you know, I I remember um working in a children’s home that had a very distinct ritual around Sunday mornings, and it was lovely, and I enjoyed it. You know, I I enjoyed joining in. Okay, we’ve we’ve got this ritual, they’ve got the pattern of the week, but Sundays are a bit different. This is the ritual on a Sunday, and those the rhythm of the day today is extraordinarily helpful, and I again I think that it can be underestimated. People reach for they want to talk about trauma-informed work or aces or um you know, therapeutic uh jargon work to embellish their work, to say, okay, my work’s sophisticated. Whereas actually I’d say, well, look, really understanding the children helps, um, a clear structure with routines and boundaries and consistency. Um, though one of the things that I often said to people working with children who are new to the home is actually to some extent, the um the care plan and the the running of the home should be quite boring because the children you because it should be so predictable, because the children are bringing such a high state of anxiety that that’s what they need. Absolutely. They’re they’re accustomed to um mealtime shifting, bedtime shifting, uh who’s looking after me shifting. Am I going to bed at this time? Am I going to bed at that time? What time am I going to school? Am I going to school? So they’re used to that uh lack of consistency. So that one of the biggest gifts we can give is okay, here’s some consistency and predictability. Now you know what will happen. You know, and that that that that daily ritual and routine is enormously helpful. And but people don’t talk about that anymore. They’ll they’ll they’ll talk about you know the need to be empathetic and curious, and those things are useful, but uh, but I think the basics tend to get um overlooked a little bit. And and if you’re working in a really sophisticated service, that’s fine because it’s just part of the culture and the ritual routines will look after themselves. If you’re establishing, you know, you if you want to establish a children’s home that that and you want it to be beyond the ordinary, there needs to be a lot of focus on, okay, where are our rituals and routines and uh how do we deliver those consistently? And how do we get to understand our children better? Before you start layering on, okay, well, let’s let’s bring in a specialist consultant to do um you know to explore the unconscious processes that might be going on between the staff and the children. That stuff’s important, but actually, without the um without setting the stage by saying, well, actually, you know, we’ve got consistency, we’ve got routines, we’ve got boundaries, the roles are clearly understood between, you know, we we know what the manager does, what the deputy manager does, what the senior workers or team leaders do, what the RCWs do. We’re really clear about that stuff, and we’ve got this routine that we that in a way we try to grind out. It will never go like that because the children will bring in, um they will disrupt that routine, and and and that’s where the work lies, actually. Then then disrupting the routine is an opportunity for some work to take place, but uh, but I think um it’s interesting. You know, I’ve been involved in the establishment of some new services in the last year, and and it’s interesting where I found my mind going. And yes, you know, we did introduce um reflective spaces and consultancy, but actually there was quite a bit of focus on what are the rituals, what are the routines, what what you know, what what are we putting in the environment, how are we using the environment um to create something that is warm and nurturing and homely.

Colby: 42:33

And some would say that’s what pace is. I mean, pace is about the a therapeutic establishing a therapeutic environment or milieu. Um I’m with you. I I I just think that you have to start with consistency of routines, of rituals, um, of care. And everything that you set out to do, you should be able to set out to do it consistently. And if you can’t do it consistently, or there can’t be consistency managed between staff members, then you need to pair it back a bit or find something that they can do. I think I think consistency comes second to connection. It certainly in the work that I do, what I’ve taught in terms of importance. So connection absolutely the over the length and breadth of the service that we’re providing is is the most important thing. But I think consistency runs a close second, and part of that is while I was listening to you, I was thinking about you know, we’re the children come from chaos or or or bad things have happened unpredictable, unpredictably. And part of and and talking about that um the the case example that you gave a little bit earlier, it was important to develop a ritual and routine, I think, for that young person to have um to know what. What was going on, and to have an alternative experience of that. But I don’t think the care that what we’re doing in this aspect of the work is that sophisticated as you say. It’s it’s relatively boring. And if people don’t know it uh in this way, I I would have them, and when I talk, I have them think about well, how do we raise little babies? Yeah, because that’s I think that that’s often enough where things started to go wrong for the for the children that we come across, that they didn’t have those experiences of predictability, of uh routines around nurturance and care that a child who grows up in a in a comparatively stable, loving, responsive home had. And so, you know, there’s a there’s a I think there’s a lot of similarity between how we set out to manage our home for for the children we’re talking about, whether that be a children’s home or a um or a foster home, a kinship home. A lot of a lot of what we’re seeing comes from deficiencies and how they were cared for in the past. And if you think about, well, how do we how do we set a new pattern, how do we reset? Well, that we go back and we redo some of that in a more age-appropriate way, perhaps in some respects, but we we reinstitute or we institute the kind of consistency that you see when you’re raising infants. While you’re pausing there, the other thing I was I I wanted to pick up on something else you just said, which was um get to know the children. And I think that there’s my mind goes to a number in a number of directions, I guess, on that. But one so there’s two. Actually, it’s one. People will sometimes say, well, we don’t get enough information in this sector. A common a common um complaint is that is from um people who are in a care role with the children and young people is that they haven’t got all the information. It hasn’t been shared with them. So it’s very difficult for them to know you know the the details of the history. Now, you know, while you’re telling that story, my head would, because I’ve worked in the sector for 30 years, my head immediately goes to something bad has happened at that time. And I didn’t necessarily need to know that it was in that foster care placement. My mind went to an adult comes home and something bad happens at that time. Um I didn’t need to know the the intricacies of that um or the finer points of that history to know that we’ve got to change the child’s experience of this time. And and and as you say, we’ve got to acknowledge that that um this is lightly because um he has had some adverse experiences around this time. So as you say, it just changes the way in which people approach the the relationship.

Tom: 47:24

I think it’s more than that. I think it it because it it changes the way people feel. So it’s not just it so, yes, of course, knowing that information might change the care plan, you know, might change the way you approach those tasks. But I think the great of it is it changes the way you feel as a worker. So so the the resentment and anger that was being experienced based on the child’s behavior evaporated as soon as people understood, oh, that’s what’s going on. And like I say, one person cried, but the the thing there was a real shift in the emotion in the room, yeah. And and so, you know, the I can understand how someone being hurt by a child would develop feelings of resentment, and that evaporated once the staff understood why why that was happening, and that then changed the way they so it wasn’t, I don’t think it was about I don’t think what happened after that meeting is they got together at another time and had and had a real powwow about how they were going to handle bath times. I think just the way they their emotional response to his um agitation was enough. I think it I think that was enough, and yeah, that you know, and then maybe over the two weeks they developed a uh they they shifted the ritual around bath time to make it more tolerable then. But I think the big thing that happened was the a shift in how they felt. Um absolutely, you know, and and that you that’s the sort of thing, you know, you’ve that’s the sort of thing that makes reflective spaces necessary, so that stuff can be processed and you can get in touch with okay, I feel like this right now. Uh, I feel you know, resentful and annoyed with this 12-year-old. That you can find your way to um what what happened to the infant that led to this 12-year-old that’s smashing the house to pieces. Going back to the the the thing you said about um going back to very early childhood, and and one of I had a conversation in the last week with someone about when children are admitted to children’s homes. And I kind of um it’s going out of fashion now, but there was a there was a fashion of um if you were coming at it from a children’s rights perspective, well, when a child joins a children’s home, they should um spend time with each of the staff, we’ll see who they get along with, and they can choose their own key worker. Yeah, and that was that was pretty widespread, I don’t know, 15 years ago or something like that. And I always felt that missed a big opportunity, and and the big opportunity is that the act of admission is a massive intervention. So, so that’s like the the biggest thing a children’s home can do for a child is admit them because you’re taking them from one situation and you’re bringing them into another well, you take you take them from one world and you’re bringing them into another world, and when um and I use this metaphor, when a woman is pregnant with a child, everybody talks to her about what’s gonna happen when the baby gets it. You know, someone might help create a nursery and they might have a baby shower, and um they will there’ll be lots of conversation about motherhood, what motherhood’s gonna be like, and uh you know, ideas like you know, you are you’re gonna have the baby in your bedroom, are you gonna when you’re gonna move in the nursery? All these kind of conversations go on and set up the minds. What that does is it prepares everybody for the idea of there’s going to be a child and there’s going to be a mother. And I think a version of that can happen even for a teenager when a teenager moves into a children’s home. That with the the the home can do that preparatory work, the conversations about who’s going to be the key worker, how we’re going to welcome the child into the home, how we’re going to bridge them in. What um because I I think what works really well is when there is an individual who bridges the child into the home and becomes their gateway to the relationships in the home. And uh a process called cleaning, where you literally go out and claim the child. You’re you’re coming with me, I’m going to look after you. And I think it works particularly well if that person is the key worker. So the key worker goes out into the world, meets the child, brings them into this new world, and then becomes their um kind of parent. It’s not quite a parent, but it’s it’s not far off, you know. They become their kind of parent and the link to the other relationships. Because where you don’t do that, and I I I I I did some work with the team where they didn’t agree with that, and they thought, no, no, no, no, we we let the child come in and and choose. And I said, Well, what do you think on the first night in the home when the door closes, what do you think the child’s thinking about? And they’d say, Oh, well, they’re scared and they’re anxious. And I said, You know, I think they’re probably trying to remember everybody’s names because they’ve been introduced to half a dozen people or a dozen people, and they’re trying to work out who of this lot is actually gonna keep me alive, and and potentially who’s who’s the threatening one. And so that you know, in the world of because I think what we’re doing in this conversation is we’re making building blocks and we’re saying, okay, well, structure and boundary and routines in the children. Well, primary task, what are we here for? Are we clear about it? Have we got a structure? How do we set the scene? What are the structure and routines? And you all that stuff gets worked out before you’ve done it recently. All that stuff gets worked out before you ever admit a child. There’s lots of conversations. There should be lots of conversations about what our structure, boundaries, and routines are, and then moving up a level that okay, how do children come into the home? Well, it should be a process of being claimed, it they should feel like somebody uh went into their world and claimed them and brought them into this new world where you know the promise is you’re gonna be surrounded by a bunch of thoughtful adults who are going to nurture and care for you.

Colby: 54:28

Yeah, it wouldn’t it just sorry, just quickly, it just puts me in mind of one of the key themes that comes out of research with with alumni of children’s residential care is that feeling of belonging somewhere and to someone. And um uh Jenna, who’s Jenna B, whose last name I I’m um struggling with at the moment, but um yeah, Jenna, she talked about um the the research that she did with her in her PhD thesis, highlighted exactly what you’re talking about, is that the the carelivers who’d been through residential care really appreciated the fact that they belonged somewhere, the the experience of belonging somewhere and to someone.

Tom: 55:16

Well, all all of these things contribute to belonging because I think belonging is one of the things that you would want to achieve. So uh so so the and and they’re they’re all things that accelerate relationship. Because I mean, I quite often, you know, in uh a residential placement might not last that long. Um I might not long, you know, two years is not long in a lifetime, and so these are things that accelerate the the development of relationships. So um, if a team, if you’re starting from scratch and you really thought about what you were there for in your primary task, and you spent some time thinking about structures and routines, and you developed a philosophy about, well, we really want to understand our children, and we’re gonna have key workers, and the key workers are going to have particular relationships with the children that would be more parental than the other relationships in the home. And the key workers are gonna go out into the world and claim these children and bring them in, and then we’re gonna use our structure and routines and our rituals and our understanding of the child. All of these things contribute to a sense of belonging, you know. Eventually, we’ll um, you know, six months on, maybe a bit longer, but the child has a sense of okay, I know where I am here, I know the structure and routines and rituals, I know the people, I know that they know me, I know that they can tolerate the things that I do and say, and all of that stuff, it’s not it’s not um it’s not a straight line formula, but the but all of that stuff contributes to a greater sense of belonging. And um and then and then it also creates the space where you can do some work that that that you that could be broadly described as therapeutic. Because I think that stuff’s just good practice. I don’t I I wouldn’t say, oh, that’s you know, that that I think it’s good practice, but it it creates the space and the relationships and the safety to do some therapeutic work and to um you consciously use relationships to give rise to transformation, which is that that my definition of therapeutic is it’s the conscious use of relationships to deliver transformation.

Colby: 57:50

I I hear I I hear what you’re saying, and I hear what you mean and I acknowledge that it is good practice, you know, to set up these these very fundamental building blocks. But I do wonder whether identifying with them as good practice diminishes their importance a little bit. And uh the my reason for saying that is that there can be an inordinate focus on the therapeutic intervention as the change agent. But the therapeutic intervention, and Patrick Tomlinson and I talk about this, and we talked about it as recently as um only a few days ago. You can’t a therapeutic intervention won’t is unlikely to be successful if it’s done, if the we haven’t taken care of the environment first, that we haven’t created an environment around the young people for in which this therapeutic um intervention can um make a difference. So the reality is a th a therapeutic intervention may have no impact at all if the environment is not set up appropriately to um facilitate that. But the environment will always be therapeutic if if done according or if if established according to the principles that we’ve been talking about. So yeah, it’s good practice. I but I wonder about whether the just good practice diminishes the importance of it. I think it’s vital.

Tom: 59:32

I think you might be right. I’ve struggled um over, I don’t know, the last decade with the therapeutic as applied to uh children’s homes. Not not because I think it’s been misused a lot, and I think it turned into a marketing term. And um the you know, I have in my own mind a notion of what the threshold is for a therapeutic service. And I was repeatedly being introduced to services that were described as therapeutic, and I just didn’t think they were. It didn’t mean they were terrible, I don’t think they were bad. I just I just don’t think I think as I said earlier, there’s levels to this game. Yeah, and some a colleague of mine challenged me recently about this and said, well, you know, um if we’re creating therapeutic services, we should call them therapeutic services. And and I think she had a point because I think it is my own hack up, because I got I got quite uh resistant to using the word therapeutic because not because you know, for someone who’s kind of spent his career at that part of children’s residential care, um, I think it was because I felt it was being misused. And so I kind of stepped away from it a bit. But you you’re right to notice actually, what I’m describing is how do you set the stage such that you know relationship-based transformation can take place, and that it that that claiming process, I would say there’s so much about a placement can be set up in the way the admission takes place. You can you can you you can um cover a lot of ground in the admission process, and I think people underestimate what it means for the child to move from one world on Tuesday to another world on Wednesday. And and you you know, I I I’m uh loosely in touch with some people who were kids, they’re not kids now. They were children when I worked with them, they’re in the 40s now. Um, but they they can each tell me in absolute clarity about the day they moved into the uh it was a it was a service that I was working in. But they they can tell me with clarity about, you know, 30 odd years later, 35 years later, they can tell me with absolute clarity about what happened that day, because it’s a very significant intervention. And and and like I say, I think I think the there is a lot a lot of work that can be done in that uh admission process that sets the tone for uh a greater chance of a successful uh experience in in a children’s home or in a therapeutic service.

Colby: 1:02:31

Um I think you if I can jump in there, I just think that um it it is it is good practice to be reflective about our use of the term therapeutic and even our application of principles of therapeutic practice. Um I’m mindful Simon Benjamin was on the podcast uh some in the first within the first 10. I can’t remember, I think it might have been podcast number eight. Simon’s a social care consultant here in Australia, but he um he’s worked for a number of organisations. He was the CEO of the Lighthouse Foundation, um, and he worked at the Mulberry Bush School as well. And Simon talks about therapeutic from understanding where that that term comes from, and uh he talks about it coming from the medical profession or or medical science, and that therapy the the idea of what is therapeutic is not just um you can’t you have a set of principles or practices that you you just apply. Yeah. In in in medicine, therapeutic is the dose at which what you apply makes a difference. So where that then the crossover with that is that is that in our work there is probably a lot, if not most, services are applying therapeutic principles, therapeutic ideas, and therapeutic techniques. But are they getting the dose right? That’s that’s the lesson of what what Simon’s saying is that from medicine is that it’s only therapeutic in the right dose. And children, different children require different doses. Yeah, for that, for that therapeutic um effect. So that all that by way of it is a bit, um it’s not as simple as just setting, you know, implementing a set of principles, a send of uh a set of ideas and a set of practices. They have to be in the right dose. And that’s that’s part of the nuance of this work, it’s part of the complexity of it and the complexity of our children. I think it’s aided by by what you’re you were saying earlier about getting to know individual children.

Tom: 1:05:05

Well, I think I think and knowing what you’re there for, and knowing what you’re there for so so you you know that that you know you you’re getting to know the children in service of developing a greater understanding that is in service of those children experiencing connection and belonging, yeah. You know, I think one of the other things that that um I I as a younger man, I was very intense and very, you know, kind of looked at the work as kind of wanted to be good at the work. Um, but you have to remind yourself sometimes and your custodians of childhoods, you know. So so in as much as there’s work that needs to be done, and there is work that needs to be done, and there’s lots of um you know, the depending on the nature of the survey. There’s there can quite often be external pressures on what work are you doing, you know, the regular meetings to ask what work are you doing and what progress is being made, and can you show me your outcomes? But I think sometimes you need to be reminded, and your custodians of childhood. So you part of your job is to give these children a childhood that that they will remember fondly, you know. And so, you know, um such an important role finding opportunities to have fun and enjoyment along the way are quite important, you know. And um, and I think so, you know, for some people in the work that comes quite natural to them, they’ll they’ll just go and have fun with the kids, and for others, you need a reminder, actually, you know, this child is um not a project. Then yeah, it’s it’s all well and good that you’re being an amateur psychologist trying to help this child recover from their trauma, but sometimes they need a day off to just go and have some fun.

Colby: 1:06:56

Yeah, more than one day, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, you said I’m coming back to something that you said earlier, which is um fundamentally I would I would refer to it in the these terms, that the the experience of being heard and understood and acknowledged in your experience, and of being understood not just in the words, but in the actions and in the outward presentation and expressed emotion of an adult, of another person, I think is is probably our most powerful intervention. Um, I don’t know of a more powerful one. I often say there are things that you can’t change for young people. Like, you know, it’s the law that they have to go to school as much as the hate it, as much as we are unhappy with how the school are managing them. Um, but but you can still empathize deeply with you can still acknowledge with deep understanding the child’s experience with the fact that they have to go to school and they don’t like it. Yeah. Like something sometimes the only thing we can do is acknowledge the child’s experience with deep understanding. And I I think that that’s our most powerful intervention. And why I think it’s the most powerful intervention, which you’ve hinted at, well you’ve mentioned uh as we’ve been going along, it has to do with the child’s experience. That the child’s experience of being heard and acknowledged, validated in their experience is that my experience is real. I I am a person of worth. I am this person cares about me, this person understands me, I can trust this person, I can trust this space around me a little bit more and more over time. What a relief. What a relief that I’m now somewhere with someone or some people who get me.

Tom: 1:09:22

On the journey, because I was thinking back to okay, building up in layers from what are we here for, what’s our structure and routines, how do we bring children into this, what what’s the nature of the relationships we’re aiming to have? Because it the the the thing I think understanding is very important, but I also think that the nature of the relationships it might not be quite the same in a therapeutic community at times, but it but I’ll I’ll I’ll restrict myself to children’s homes. But in in children’s homes, the nature of the relationship is a parental relationship, and and I and again, I think there are um, particularly if you’re working with teenagers, teenagers will invite you not to be their parent. They will, they will, you know, um friends to be some kind of friend or you know, something else. And I think again, in the world of well, what what actually what actually works is to assume the position of a parent. And and you know, there’s a number of reasons for that. I think one of one of the reasons I would put forward is the idea of, well, if children are in care, it’s because in some way, shape, or form they’ve experienced a failure of parenting. And therefore, if the thing that has led you to being where you are is a failure of parenting, the solution should be some kind of parenting. Now it’s not you know, to your point about foster care and have you got a spare bedroom and love to give. The inference there is that all these kids need is a regular is is a is a parent figure. But actually, over time you find that well, no, they need a bit more than that. That that it and I and the the they need something beyond ordinary parenting. So um, you know, and sometimes it’s called therapeutic parenting, or but but ordinary parenting won’t work for these kids because ordinary parenting doesn’t factor in um the effects of trauma and the effects of neglect on development. So um, if not ordinary parenting, then something like extraordinary parenting. So so something that is parental but that goes beyond regular parenting, where there’s um, you know, the thing that would now be called trauma-informed, but an understanding of actually these um experiences in early childhood affect the development of the child’s brain to the extent there are things that they can and can’t do, and that might change at different times. So we go back to the example I gave earlier of the 12-year-old, he could function like a regular 12-year-old most of the time, but then when he was stressed by the routines in the home, um he could not cope with that, and that led to aggressive acting out and people getting hurt. And so understanding that’s partially about the way his brain’s developed, that’s partially about his ability to um or inability to problem solve and articulate himself, and um that the I don’t want to get too neurological, but the that there are different brain states that you know that the uh there are different brain states that are exaggerated by adverse early childhood experiences. And so that’s the additional knowledge you would need to be an extraordinary parent, but you’re still a parent, and so that the parent bit should still crop up in there, and then that starts getting complicated because uh parents hold authority, you know, and parents uh you know, going back to the beginning where we said, okay, you’re gonna need structure, routine, and boundary. Well, the boundary bit can be a bit complicated with our children because uh they push against boundaries and test boundaries, and the testing about whether you’re a safe adult or not, some of the time.

Colby: 1:13:59

And you look after me.

Tom: 1:14:01

Yeah, yeah. And so, and and how will you respond? You know, how if I do this, you know, um you can almost see sometimes I I can remember you know when I work directly with children, you you you’d almost see them like the test thresholds. Well, what are you gonna do if I stand here? What you’re gonna do, what if I pick this up and drop it? What are you gonna do? And then then looking, okay, what are you gonna do now? What you’re gonna do now, what you’re gonna do now. But the the I think the complicated bit for residential workers is you hold authority, but as a residential worker, it’s hard to work out how much authority do you hold and how can you express that authority safely in the interests of the child? Yeah, and that that’s you know, about if if if um if one member of staff says no to something, will the member of the other members of staff hold that same line? Will the management hold that line? Will other stakeholders from outside the system step in and say that’s not a reasonable line to hold? You know, whether it’s things like uh in the modern world, things like mobile phones, really good example. So um what are the thresholds around mobile phones? What age can you have a mobile phone? If you’ve got a mobile phone, should you have it all the time? Should you be able to take your mobile phone to bed with you? Should you, you know, do there’s you know, and to be fair, that’s something that you know regular parents battle with. But in in a children’s home, it gets really complicated because you go, okay, that’s a boundary, it’s got a threshold, and people may differ on what they think that threshold is, and that can be sorted out with a meeting and a discussion, and you can agree a threshold, but then people will vary on their ability to hold that threshold, and that’s where it starts to get really complicated, and um I think that’s uh people are not fond about talking about that stuff. It’s much easier to talk about curiosity and empathy and playfulness and uh things like that. It’s much harder to talk about sometimes we need to say no to the children because that’s what good parents do, and and that’s where it starts getting complicated, and that’s been particularly complicated in the UK um over the last since well, certainly since 2014. Um, so in 2014 there was a a case, there was a court case in I’m sitting in Cheshire, it was in Cheshire, Cheshire West, and it was about um it was actually about about an adult, it wasn’t about a child, but it was an adult in a caring situation. And were the question that the court was addressing was are these adults, carers, depriving uh this person of their liberty by saying you can’t go out whenever you want to, and by supervising them. And I think there was a two to one supervision ratio or something like that. But the this person was heavily supervised and there were restrictions on where they could come and go. And the court found that that was a breach of um Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. And the fallout of that, and that gradually, it wasn’t an overnight thing, but that’s gradually found its way into children’s services, and there’s been various cases over the last, you know, since 2014, like 10 years. And so increasingly, what you’ll see, particularly in referral paperwork, is referrals of children who and it will say they have a doll. And a doll is a deprivation of liberty order issued by a court, and that’s where the court decides what the boundary is. And so the court will decide. You you it can be about things like it can be about things like mobile phones, it can be things about supervision, it can be about um whether they, you know, what to do if this uh child attempts to abscond. And uh that’s a well-intentioned um the court made a well-intentioned decision, and whenever deprivation of liberty orders are produced, they’re well-intentioned because their intention is to protect the rights of a of a in our case, a child in care. The problem with it is it makes it it’s caused a lot of muddles around who has authority. So if you and when local authorities are in doubt about what a threshold should be, they’ll apply for a doll. If they’re not sure, they’ll apply. And so since 2014, there’s been a gradual increase year on year in the number of dolls, and it’s kind of crept down for younger and younger children. So there are there are dolls you know uh being issued for children under 12. And so the the difficulty with that is is it creates it essentially says that a judge and a court decide the boundaries or some of the boundaries um that are issued in a children’s home. And I think that makes it really complicated for the staff. I think one of one of the other things, an unintended consequence of that um ruling, is it’s made residential child care much more expensive. Because where there is a deprivation of liberty order, it’s a court order, and the local authority has to be assured that whoever’s providing that care will adhere to the order because it’s a court order. So you can’t say, well, you know, we tried, but it didn’t work out. And so what that’s led to is higher and higher levels of supervision of children and an increase in the number of solo placements, and solo placements just by the nature tend to be more expensive. So it’s put a real strain on local authorities and it’s kind of shaping to I don’t want to overstate it, but to some extent, it’s shaping the market. Uh um that, and it’s certainly shaping um the confidence with which residential staff can take up that parental role and and and and issue a parental boundary um about whether a child, what what should happen if a child walks out of the door, for example? And you and you might have different responses. You’d you know, you could look at okay, what what do we do if this child runs away? You know, and there’s lots of different things you could do if you could go with them, for example. You know, but there’s an even an argument that, well, if you’re going with them and you’re constantly supervising that in of itself, even if you’re not preventing them from leaving or bringing them back, the fact that you are going with them is in itself a deprivation of liberty. So you you end up with, I think it’s created, um, like I say, I think it’s well intentioned and it’s there to protect children’s rights, but there are unintended consequences. The unintended consequence is the authority of the staff who are in the day-to-day parental role is undermined. Diminished. And there is confusion in the system about what you can do and what can’t you do. And a notion that’s relatively new of, well, we’ll need a court to decide that. Which, which again, you know, certainly when I was working directly with the children, uh, yeah, there were children on there were care orders and there was different different kinds of care orders. But it you certainly in um, if I thought a child was gonna run out of the building and put themselves at risk, I didn’t give too much thought to what are the legal consequences of me saying I’m not gonna let you do that.

Colby: 1:22:29

Yeah. Sounds like the subject of another podcast, Tom.

Tom: 1:22:36

Yeah, and I’m not I’m I’m not an expert on this stuff, you know. This is the the I it’s we’ll make it one. Yeah, it’s I’m I’m sure there’ll be people listening to the podcast that say, Oh, he’s not quite right about that. Uh um, but it but it’s certainly you know, and I’m making a connection between local authorities requesting it, almost seems universal that when when there’s a doll, they they they they will immediately interpret that in this child needs a two-to-one solo, which I don’t think needs to be the case. You know, I I’ve been responsible for you know, not in the non-too distant past for you know, a six-bedded service that had more than one child in it who was on a doll, and it was fine. We we we we just worked through it, but I think what it’s doing is it it over time it these things nudge practices, and practices get nudged towards um if if it if there’s a deprivation of liberty, it’s probably going to be a two-to-one solo placement that we’re looking for, and that you know that that trend, um that trend has increased. There’s and there’s certainly a place for two-to-one solo placements, but I would regard them as an intervention in order to allow something else to happen later rather than an end in themselves.

Colby: 1:23:59

Well, like I said, it it we could probably talk a lot more about using the parental role, I guess, and understanding the important aspects of the parental role that um is it’s it’s important to operationalise in children’s homes and therapeutic communities. You were using um the word enhanced, I think. I I use enriched, um and I think it’s the richness of it that you can adjust from child to child with the the dose that I was talking about a little bit earlier. Um, but before I let you go, because you need to go, because you’ve got a busy day tomorrow, early start. Um I I just wondered what you thinking about the children, what what do you think we would like for the children to say as graduates, as alumni, as as adults, say about the experience that they had in a children’s home, in a children’s residential care home?

Tom: 1:25:09

I think you’d want them to say they felt loved and cared for. You know, I think that love’s another difficult word um in residential. Um there’s a resurgence in the UK of of people using um the word love within practice. But you know, going back to that, a sense of belonging, you know, that the the that they feel or felt that they belonged, they didn’t feel that they were guests or or placements, they didn’t feel like a placement, they felt like no, this is a place where I belong and where I’m connected, and um, I think I’ve I’ve I’ve I’ve heard different in someone wrote to me a few years ago, wrote me a really long letter about um someone I worked with really early on in my career, and I I thought he he he’d had really positive experience, he had nothing bad to say about it at all. Now, whereas my reflection on it was, well, it was in the old days where actually staff ratios were really low. And um, you know, I think the I it was one of those situations where I was looking back and thinking we could have been way more sophisticated there. Yeah, he’d written to me saying, you know, he thought this was transformational and it set him up for life, and like really um got a lot from being there and the relationships, and he was, you know, and he was and and he was sharing memories. He was um, yeah, there was a there was a uh a game show on TV that we used to watch together, and it turned into a but we’d have like a little competition between us about answering the questions in the game show, and that was one of the memories I’d kind of forgotten about that, but he he talked at length about this experience of watching this game show and how fun it was, and we kept it like we had an informal scoring system, and um so it’s that you know, I’m I’m uh reminiscing on his reminiscence and smiling, and I think you know, you’d want that. You you’d want, yeah, I felt belonging, you know, and I’ve had other children talk about you reflecting on when they were difficult to look after and appreciating that the staff stuck with them through the difficulty. Um so I think it’s different for different children, but but his recollection was it made me smile because he was reminding me of things that were not that significant to me. I would, I would, I we did that thing, I don’t know, for however long. That quiz show ran for we had this little game on a Wednesday night where we’d all sit and watch this quiz show together and keep score and joke about who’d answered the most questions and so on. And it didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. I didn’t see it as particularly significant. But then, you know, 25 years later, he writes to me, and that’s his one of the bits that he presents and says, Look, this was this was really good fun, and I’ve thought about it a lot.

Colby: 1:28:25

I think there’s a message in that, uh, Tom, that um for for people who are just starting out in their in their practice in children’s homes, in being a a um a care worker for our children and young people, is that not to underestimate. Yes, years bring experience and knowledge and sophistication, but don’t underestimate the little things that you can bring to the life of a young person. Um notwithstanding that you’re you’re uh you’re an early career practitioner in this space.

Tom: 1:29:04

Yeah, I agree. I think um one of the things you know, we could have a long conversation about when placements break down. But you know, I I worked in a situation, I’m going back a long time now, where I a placement didn’t last long at all. It lasted like days, and then broke down that that home, uh, the location, and various things about the actual setup didn’t work. And the and I was I was a manager at the time, and I remember the staff being feeling like they’d failed. And the the thing that I kind of reminded them of is you you you you can’t judge that, you can’t judge that now, because what everything we do has the potential to be something that that child makes use of later, as an adult, that that that they might think back to a moment in time, like like the you know, like the quiz game, but um I’m I’m thinking about in more where it’s rockier, where it’s where it’s much more um much less fun. That there is always you you can’t judge what that child will think is relevant in five or ten years’ time when they look back, and and I think there’s a value to um our kids have a really good way of making us confused and lost, and and quite often what we’re doing is we’re struggling to find a way through, and I think that that struggle in of itself is worth something, you know. I think children have a sense of people trying even when they’re getting it wrong, yeah.

Colby: 1:30:57

Thank you, Tom. That was uh again a really thought-provoking and enjoyable conversation, and uh um I better let you wind up your day because as I mentioned a little bit earlier, I know that you’ve got a busy one tomorrow, so thanks again. And uh we might have to do round three at some stage.

Tom:

My pleasure, thank you.

Tom’s Bio:

Tom is an accomplished Consultant and leadership trainer with over 30 years in children’s residential care, specialising in innovative leadership and mental health support for young people. Through Elevate Professional Development, launched in 2025, he delivers UK-wide workshops to strengthen care leadership. With 20 years of boardroom experience, Tom has consistently driven strategic leadership and service transformation. Holding a BPS-approved Psychology degree, a Master’s in Psychoanalytic Observational Studies, and postgraduate qualifications in Management and Strategic Management, he blends academic and practical expertise. Currently, he serves as Non-Executive Chair at AMMA Childcare Ltd, Non-Executive Director at Cedars Childcare Ltd and Empathy CIC, and advises the leadership teams of a number of organisations in the third and independent
sectors.

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Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce.