Caring Communities 1800-present: Rethinking Children's Social Care

长期以来，儿童的社会关怀一直处于危机之中，有虐待的报道，越来越多的儿童进入托儿所，照顾者数量减少，护理质量下降。2022年对英格兰和威尔士儿童社会护理的调查呼吁一种完全不同的心态，同时投入大量资金来“重置”护理系统，确保它有效地满足儿童的需求。目前的护理状况部分是由于长期缺乏对儿童和家庭从长远角度看待福利需求和经验的关注和理解。如果没有对儿童保育在现代历史上发展的复杂背景的深刻理解，以及对过去和现在的儿童对其不同的护理经历的感受的全面了解，就不可能对当前的护理系统进行有意义的变革。关怀社区提供了一个关键和及时的干预，这将是未来十年儿童社会关怀系统的根本转型计划。该项目提供了1800年至今儿童护理的第一个主要文化和情感研究，将有助于改变这种思维方式，为未来儿童的社会护理想象新的和激进的可能性。它开发了一个创新的跨学科框架，将历史研究与创造性和参与性方法相结合，赋予有护理经验的人的主观性、声音和观点以特权，并阐明了对护理实践和经验的新理解。至关重要的是，这项研究揭示了情感、护理和政治之间复杂的相互作用，并探讨了这些因素如何影响过去和现在的护理实践。该项目让人们注意到，当前的理解、政策和实践是文化、政治和社会变革长期过程的结果，因此植根于过去。它在与包括英国主要护理机构（Coram, The Children's Society, Who Cares?）（苏格兰）和护理经验丰富的小组，强调护理的历史形式对当前政策和实践的相关性和重要性，提供了一个独特的机会，产生关于独特护理实践的价值，意义和影响的新思维。从历史的角度关注当前的政策和实践，意味着该项目为政策制定者、从业人员、护理人员和护理机构的利益提供了重要而有意义的方法来研究儿童护理。未来领袖奖学金（FLF）将从根本上改变我们对社会关怀的看法：这项研究利用历史证据，与护理专业人员和接受者合作，探讨什么是护理，它能做什么，它的价值，最重要的是，它可以是什么。此外，它还促进创新的、创造性的和参与性的技术，以形成见解，这些见解将影响仅从传统的历史方法中无法得出的关于护理未来的辩论。该项目从一开始就嵌入协作和共同制作，为有护理经验的团体提供了一个平台，为突破性研究做出重大贡献，并有机会证明，儿童护理的历史实际上是所有儿童护理的故事。随着时间的推移，为了更好地了解儿童护理的世界，FLF将产生一个情感和历史信息的框架，为未来发展富有同情心和有效的实践。

Children's social care has long been in crisis with reports of abuse, growing numbers of children entering care, declining numbers of carers and diminishing quality of care. The 2022 inquiry into children's social care in England and Wales called for a radically different mindset alongside significant investment to 'reset' the care system and ensure it effectively meets children's needs. The state of care in the present day has in part resulted from an enduring lack of attention to and understanding of child and family perspectives about welfare needs and experiences from the long view. Meaningful transformations to current care systems cannot happen without a deep understanding of the complex contexts in which children's care has developed over modern history, and a comprehensive knowledge of how children in both the past and present have felt about their diverse experiences of care. Caring Communities offers a critical and timely intervention into what will be a radical programme of transformation for the children's social care system over the next decade. This project provides the first major cultural and affective study of children's care between 1800-present that will help shift this mindset to imagine new and radical possibilities for children's social care in the future. It develops an innovative, interdisciplinary framework that combines historical research with creative and participatory approaches to privilege the subjectivities, voices, and views of Care-Experienced people and to elucidate new understandings about care practices and experiences across time. Crucially, the research sheds important light on the complex interplay of emotions, care, and politics and explores how these have shaped care practices in the past and present. The project draws attention to the multiple ways in which current understandings, policies, and practices are the result of long-term processes of cultural, political, and social change and thus embedded in the past. It adopts a historical vantage point while collaborating creatively with partners including major UK care agencies (Coram, The Children's Society, Who Cares? Scotland) and Care-Experienced groups to emphasise the relevance and significance of historical forms of care to current policy and practice, offering a unique opportunity to generate new thinking about the value, meaning and impact of distinct care practices. Taking a historical perspective that is attentive to current policy and practice means that the project offers significant and meaningful ways of approaching the study of children's care for the benefit of policymakers, practitioners, carers, and care agencies. The Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) will fundamentally change the way we think about social care: this research uses historical evidence and collaborates with care professionals and recipients to confront ideas about what care is, what it does, its value, and crucially, what it could be. In addition, it fosters innovative creative and participatory techniques to develop insights that will shape debates about the future of care that cannot be derived from conventional historical methods alone. Embedding collaboration and co-production from the start, the project offers Care-Experienced groups a platform to make a significant contribution to ground-breaking research and the opportunity to demonstrate that the history of children in care is really the story of all children's care. In creating a better understanding about the world of children's care over time, the FLF will generate an emotionally- and historically-informed framework for developing compassionate and effective practices for the future.