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Learn the Child - Helping looked after chldren to learn: A good practice guide for social workers, carers and teachers

Star Rating: 4/5

Kate Cairns and Chris Stanaway, Baaf Adoption and Fostering

ISBN 190369938X

£25

This comprehensive practice guide to understanding the special psychological, emotional and physiological needs of traumatised children, is simply presented in both book and CD-Rom formats, writes Robert Glover.

It successfully presents the potential learning barriers that all looked-after children face and also includes in-depth information on how trauma and stress can affect functioning and development in children and young people. Cairns and Stanaway offer a "nine-point curriculum" for dealing with these issues while promoting learning needs, and some discussion-provoking case studies.

The pack provides excellent resource material and an essential reminder that many of the learning barriers for looked-after children come from within ("hypervigilance", "brain functioning", "dissociation" and so on) and need to be understood in the wider context of children’s lives for educational potential to be met.

Robert Glover, looked-after children education service, Calderdale Council