In this book a plurality of voices return to one consistent theme — the importance of psychosocial context, which has become increasingly dismissed as irrelevant in the rush to label and prescribe.The final chapters describe inspiring examples of how services and communities can be developed to give children and their families a chance to prosper — evidence that there is nothing inevitable about the breaking of children’s lives.

 

 

Part One: Constructing Childhood

1. Gerrilyn Smith: Constructions of childhood

2. Jonathan Calder: Histories of child abuse

3. Elina Baker and Craig Newnes: The discourse of responsibility

4. Freddy Jackson Brown: ADHD amd the philosophy of science

5. Geraldine Brady: ADHD, diagnosis and identity

 

Part Two: Problematising Children

6. Sami Timimi and Nick Radcliffe: The rise and rise of ADHD

7. Dorothy Rowe: ADHD – Adults’ fear of frightened children

8. Arlene Vetere and Jan Cooper: The effects of domestic violence: Trauma, relisience and breaking the cycle of violence

9. Grace Jackson: Cybernetic children: How technologies change and constrain the developing mind

 

Part Three: Appreciating Children

10. Helen Rostill and Helen Myatt: Constructing meaning in the lives of looked after children

11. Katherine Weare: Taking a positive, holistic approach to the mental health and well-being of children and young people.

12. Raj Bandak: Empowering vulnerable children and families

13. Carl Harris: The Family Well-being Project: Providing psychology services for children and families in a community regeneration context

14. Bliss W. Browne: Imagine Chicago: Cultivating hope and imagination

 

Foreword — Oliver James

It is not easy for professionals to find the time and energy to set out on paper what they do and how it helps to counter the toxins filling the emotional environment in which most children are now raised. I have the greatest admiration for such people. Donald Winnicott once argued that sanity is preserved in any society by the 10 per cent of the population who are emotionally mature; the ones who are not ‘me, me, me’ attention-seekers but who quietly get on with providing the sensible yet playful support which is so life-saving. There are many such here. This book is chock-a-block with accounts of practical ideas and mindsets for neutralising the toxins in our social environment, as well as scientific evidence that there is nothing remotely inevitable about the breaking of children. Government ministers: Read, Learn and Inwardly Digest.