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

长期以来，儿童的社会照顾一直处于危机之中，有报告称虐待儿童，越来越多的儿童进入照顾，照顾者人数减少，照顾质量下降。2022年对英格兰和威尔士儿童社会关怀的调查呼吁采取截然不同的心态，同时进行重大投资，以“重置”护理系统，并确保其有效满足儿童的需求。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。如果不深入了解现代历史上儿童保育发展的复杂背景，不全面了解过去和现在的儿童对他们不同的保育经历的感受，就不可能对目前的保育制度进行有意义的转变。关爱社区提供了一个关键和及时的干预，这将是一个激进的方案，在未来十年的儿童社会护理系统的转型。这个项目提供了第一个重大的文化和情感研究之间的儿童的照顾1800-现在，这将有助于改变这种心态，想象新的和激进的可能性，为儿童的社会照顾在未来。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，以优先考虑有护理经验的人的主观性，声音和观点，并阐明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塑造了过去和现在的护理实践。该项目提请注意，当前的理解，政策和做法是文化，政治和社会变革的长期过程的结果，从而嵌入在过去的多种方式。它采用了一个历史的有利位置，同时与合作伙伴，包括主要的英国护理机构（科拉姆，儿童协会，谁关心？苏格兰）和护理经验的群体，强调护理的历史形式的相关性和意义，目前的政策和做法，提供了一个独特的机会，产生新的思考的价值，意义和独特的护理做法的影响。采取关注当前政策和实践的历史视角意味着该项目为政策制定者，从业者，护理人员和护理机构提供了接近儿童护理研究的重要和有意义的方法。未来领导者奖学金（FLF）将从根本上改变我们对社会关怀的看法：这项研究使用历史证据，并与护理专业人员和接受者合作，以面对关于护理是什么，它做什么，它的价值，以及至关重要的是，它可能是什么的想法。此外，它促进创新的创造性和参与性的技术，以发展的见解，这将塑造有关护理的未来，不能从传统的历史方法单独得出的辩论。该项目从一开始就嵌入合作和共同制作，为有护理经验的团体提供了一个平台，为开创性的研究做出重大贡献，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，FLF将更好地了解儿童护理的世界，为未来制定富有同情心和有效的做法提供情感和历史信息的框架。

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.