No. 1967
Achieving a way of living
To 'achieve a way of living for a group of individuals': Clare Winnicott
(1964a) uses this simple phrase towards the end of a short but intensely
relevant discussion of the aims of residential care in small group homes.
She begins by stating the worker's responsibility to provide 'real
experiences of good care, comfort and control’, and says, in a haunting
phrase: 'These good experiences are not only the stuff of life, but the
stuff that dreams are made of, and have the power to become part of the
child's inner psychic reality, correcting the past and creating the future.'
She goes on to stress the therapeutic and educational importance of individualizing the treatment given 'so that it becomes a personal real experience for each child'. Then she faces the difficulty of doing this within the complex setting of a group and says that one of the essential skills of the residential worker is 'to achieve a way of living for a group of individuals'. In this I think she implies much that I have tried to spell out more extensively: the responsibility of the worker to, and for the unit; the inseparability of system maintenance, therapy and education and so on. But for the moment we can use this phrase to describe the need for a quality of relationships which must be reached for. Well-considered and sensitively contrived daily arrangements may provide a way of existing; they do not, in themselves, achieve a way of living. Adults and children have, minimally, to find ways to put up with one another.
For some children, and some staff, at certain times this is perhaps all that can be achieved. Yet, if a residential unit is to be more than a place in which one marks time, children and staff have to achieve some sort of relationship.
CHRISTOPHER BEEDELL
Beedell, C.(1970) Residential Life with Children. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. p.84
