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

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