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The Army: it's a boy's life
Steven Walker
This article looks at how under 18s make up a third of those joining the British Armed Forces each year. The author discusses how this contradicts the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child vulnerable young people, and the Children Act 1989. The article also discusses how active service can effect these young people, many of whom will already be at risk of developing mental health problems. Plus, it also looks at how CAMHS services need to be aware of the needs of this group of young people.
A child's eye view
Eremina Bell-Gam
This article reports on a photographic project in Kent, called “Towards a Promised Land”. It works with the children of asylum seekers and migratory groups and encourages them through the medium of photography, to explore and understand their worlds, allowing them to express different experiences of relocation and their search for a better life.
A man for our times
Joop Berding
This article focuses on the work of the Polish born Dr. Janusz Korczak, whose forward thinking about children’s rights is still topical today. The author quotes from Korczak regarding his views on children’s rights to have a say in their education and school life, and compares that with current work. The author states that if we try to see education as a partnership and not as a power relationship, it appears in a different light. It can only proceed and succeed if children are seen as partners and participants, and not as objects.
Across the pond
Dr Patrick Lindesay
This author discusses some of the recent research that has been carried out in the USA on adolescent brain development. The author states that contrary to conventional teaching, teenagers’ brains are still developing, and that maturity isn’t until a person is about 25-years-old. The article goes on to discuss the implications for this in terms of parenting and on government policy.
Boost for services
Miranda Wolpert and Bob Foster
This article announces the NIMHE and NCSS Positive Practice Awards. This year will see seven categories for those providing services to children, young people and their families. The closing date for entries will be September 2005 and the awards will be announced in November 2005.
Downloading problems
Terry Philpot
This author discusses the Pupil Attitudes to Self and School (PASS) assessment system, and illustrates this with a case study. The PASS system is an interactive computerised system where the child or young person answers various questions connected to what they think about school and learning. The aim is to tease out issues that are impacting on the child’s ability to learn. The article states that children feel comfortable using this system and that it gives them a voice.
Getting at the truth
Jenny Crickmay
This article is based on a small study, which aimed to gather the views of young residents in a local authority secure unit. A majority of these young people have negative views about most of the professionals who are there to help them. The author asks them what changes they would make if they were in charge. One young person said that they would ‘give you an individual worker, one worker to relate to, see you through the system, instead of all different ones; that’s what made a difference here for me.’
In the nature of life
Tracey Maher
This article looks at the work of Prof. Richie Poulton and his team, whose research is based on data from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study. This is a longitudinal study that has followed a cohort of 1037 babies born in the remote town of Dunedin for the past 35 years. Their recent work has been looking at genes and how they interact with environmental factors. This work potentially makes the nature versus nurture debate redundant because their research shows that it is actually nature via nurture and never simply one or the other.
Something inside us
Julia Vellacott
This article looks at what constitutes resilience. It goes on to discuss a series of lectures that will be put on by the Maya Centre in October this year. The lectures are entitled ‘Resilience: a psychoanalytic exploration’ and will look at the roots of resilience at different times of life from infancy to death, and in situations of particular stress.
Such devoted sisters
Claire Collison
The author gives a summary of the family problems faced by both herself and her sister as children and how this has impacted on them and their relationship. She has based her first semi-autobiographical novel, Treading Water, on these experiences.
The trouble with girls
Reva Klein
This article looks at some of the issues that might be impact on today’s girls and young women. The author quotes various researchers and from research projects that have been looking at this issue. It particular it focuses on a book called ‘Problem Girls: Understanding and Supporting Troubled and Troublesome Girls and Young Women, which is edited by Dr Gwynedd Lloyd, from the University of Edinburgh.
What friends are for
Pauline Heslop, Val Williams, and Sally Hoadley
This article is based on a course called The Strong Link, which is aimed at young people with learning disabilities and is based in Somerset. The course arose from an action research project called Mind the Gap, which aimed to improve the emotional and mental health support for young people with learning disabilities as they move into adulthood. The article discusses the methodology of this study and how the study incorporated the views of young people with learning disabilities and mental health problems.
When parenting becomes therapy
Nina Rye
The author uses a case study to illustrate the principles of filial therapy and when she would use this technique. Filial therapy helps parents to become the therapeutic agent for change because it recognises that parents are experts on their children.
Review: Emerging adulthood
Debi Roker
This book deals with a fascinating and topical issue – how the different stages of life change and develop over time. The author proposes that a new state of life has appeared in many industrialised societies i.e. the 18-25 age group is described as ‘merging adulthood’. This is a well-written and accessible book, which draws on both theoretical concepts underpinning different life stages, reviews, past research, and details original and up-to-date research.
Review: I choose to live
Terry Philpot
This is not a book for the faint hearted: the story of one of the victims of Marc Dutroux, the Belgian multiple rapist and murders and kidnapper of young girls. The book, called I choose to Live by Sabine Dardenne with Marie-Therese Cuny is a story about the grossest depravity, but it is also one that merits that over-used phrase about human spirit. Better to say that it is the story of one remarkable, but very ordinary and very brave 12 year-old.
Review: My life as a child
Imogen Le Patourel
My Life as a Child is a new six-part series being shown on BBC2, beginning on the 5th July, 2005. The programme makers provided the children with video cameras and asked them to film their own lives from their own perspective. The programme needs little commentary. Each programme lets the children speak for themselves and succeeds in allowing the viewer to see modern family life from the child’s point of view. This is excellent and very entertaining television.
Review: Sleeping arrangements
Chris Hanvey
This book, Sleeping Arrangements by Laura Shaine Cunnigham, is an autobiographical account that focuses on the author’s childhood. She had a close relationship with her mother, and had a ‘bewildering one with a father she had never known’. Her mother dies and she eventually is looked after by her uncles and has a good enough, but far from ideal family life. This is a beautifully written book that deserves to be read for that quality alone. It is a sensitive and finely drawn account of the grief of a child for her mother and the difficulty of adults to understand the significance of such events for those who struggle to make sense of the world.
Review: The Icarus Girl
Yinka Sunmonu
Mystery, folklore and a precocious child’s mental well-being greet the reader of this first novel by Helen Oyeyemi. This story is about Jess Harrison, who is a young girl of mixed heritage i.e. mother is Nigerian and her father is English. The book contrasts the family and child-rearing patterns of the English and Nigerian families and the value placed on education. It may be a useful book for those working with black and minority ethnic teenagers, not just for its content but also as a source of inspiration.
Review: The Milltown Boys
Bob Holman
Howard Williamson the author of this book The Milltown Boys spent three year hanging around the youngsters who lived on a deprived estate in Wales. He revisited them, conducting interview and speaking with the same young men. The book looks at what happens to young men from disadvantaged estate. The reviewer also mentions a similar study that he had carried out with young people from the Southdown council estate in Bath. The Milltown Boys teaches more about the lives of disadvantaged young men than any books on theory.
Review: We need to talk about Kevin
Julia Tugendhat
This book is about a suburban American family whose teenage boy cold-bloodedly murders seven classmates and two adults with a crossbow during a routine school day. The mother of this child seeks an answer as to why her child killed his classmates. It seems that there were lots of reasons which might have contributed, i.e. insecure attachment, but she doesn’t believe that these are enough to create a mass murderer. She also questions the cult of violence in American society, lax gun laws etc. Finally she faces the fact that Kevin may have been born wicked. We do not get a clear answer and are left to make up our own minds.
Webwatch: Online for a neglected group
Paula Lavis
This column looks at websites that are specifically aimed at, or are about developing or delivering services to older adolescents or young adults.
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