The word “love” can feel risky in child protection, but we keep coming back to it because the best care is never just a checklist. I’m joined by Kate Brown, an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor, former therapeutic community practitioner, and editor-in-chief of the Attachment journal. Kate also completed a PhD on the Cotswold Community, asking a deceptively hard question: what was the “unspoken but unmistakable” presence of love that people wrote about, and how did it actually show up day to day?
We unpack “therapeutic love” as something you do, not something you declare. Kate draws on a grounded definition: care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. From the temperature of a cup of hot chocolate to taking responsibility for mistakes, we talk about how trauma-informed residential therapeutic childcare is built from hundreds of small, thoughtful acts that create containment, safety and the possibility of secure attachment. We also explore the intergenerational lens: what children receive now can shape the adults and parents they become later, even if the benefits are hard to measure in short-term outcomes and tidy KPIs.
Then we go to the hard edges of the work: violence, restraint, staff defensiveness, and the question of whether staff themselves feel held by management and systems. Kate shares why reflective practice, supervision, external consultancy and genuine care for staff are not “nice to have” extras, but protections against burnout and harmful cultures. We finish by challenging the idea that residential care should always be a last resort, and what it takes to do it well: the right staff, clear routines, strong assessment and real transparency.
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Transcript:
Vocation And Unspoken Love
Kate 0:00
Residential therapeutic childcare is very much a vocation. Um, but I think it it is so intense and awe-consuming that often people might not make it a um a vocation and a way of life kind of um for decades. It might become a rich experience to be drawn on and remembered and cherished. It was a beautiful environment but incredibly tough work. What drew me to the Cotswold community of beautiful farmer and a very clear ethos about what it was that we were doing there with the boys. David Wills um writes that the presence of love at the Cotswell community um was unspoken but unmistakable. Actually, love is about care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. Um and you know it’s it’s it’s a verb, it’s a doing word rather than a noun.
Welcome And Acknowledgement Of Country
Colby 1:21
Hello and welcome to the Secure Stun podcast. I’m Colby Pearce, and joining me for this episode is another distinguished alumni of the Cotswold community. Before I share our conversation, I’d just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I come to you from, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Kaurna people feel to land, waters, culture, and community. I’d also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
Meeting Kate Brown And Her Work
Colby 2:04
My guest this episode is Kate Brown, an active member of the attachment community who also completed a PhD on the topic of love in the Cotswold community. I do hope you enjoy our conversation. So welcome, Kate, to the Secure Start podcast. I’m very pleased to have you here.
Kate 2:31
I’m very pleased to be here, Kobe. Thank you for having me and inviting me.
Colby 2:36
You’re welcome. You’re more than welcome. And maybe if we could just start, if you just for our watchers and our listeners, if you could just tell us um a bit about yourself and what you do.
Kate 2:49
Yeah. So I am a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice in Dorset, near Bournemouth. Um, I’m an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist, so so that’s that’s my modality. Um I have got three roles currently at the Balby Centre as a course tutor, um, so supporting trainee psychotherapists from the beginning of their training, hopefully towards registration with the UKCP. I am also seminar leader and I’m also editor-in-chief of the attachment journal, um, which is produced um by the Balby Centre and published by Karnac. And I am a former therapeutic community um practitioner. So I’ve had five years working um for an organization called Community Housing and Therapy, um, and then two years at the Cotswold Community, which we’ll we’ll hear a lot more about. Um, I’ve also worked in mainstream psychiatric services and with mums and babies and former servicemen in psychiatric care, and I’m also a member of the International Attachment Network.
Colby 4:14
Awesome. So that that’s quite a varied um history of work in the field, and of course, um we got uh I approached you and um to come on the podcast um in particular because well I’m also interested in attachment, of course, but um uh but also the Cotswold community has been a recurring topic uh for this podcast. And not only did you did you work there, but you you wrote a PhD thesis about the Cotswold community. I
How Kate Found The Cotswold Community
Colby 4:52
wonder if you might first just let us know how you came to be at um at the Cotswold community in the first instance.
Kate 5:01
Oh, that’s a really good question. So I heard about these mythical places called therapeutic communities um as uh an undergrad um do my sociology degree. Um I didn’t think much more about therapeutic communities. Um I just thought, oh, they they sound really interesting, but I I’m not quite sure that I I understand. And then uh when I completed my degree, I was looking for work and I um came across an advertisement for um uh uh to to be an apprentice therapist at community housing and therapy. Um and that was quite a fortuitous kind of life-changing meeting and life-changing experience. And after three years working with adults um with a range of um emotional and mental distress, so um the the sort of people who were at community and housing um and therapies placement um often suffered from psychosis or personality disorders or OCD or DID, so quite high need adults. And so after three years there, where I did a lot of their in-house training and became very interested in in the world of psychotherapy, but still incredibly green at that time. Um I felt that actually each of the people that I was working with had really significant um issues in their attachment histories and significant trauma. And I had a feeling that I wanted to work with younger people, so I wanted to work with um, you know, children or adolescents, and so fortuitously I I found an advertisement for um to work in the Cotswold community. Um and I did kind of fall in love with the kind of the countryside, the the the environment there. Um it really was a beautiful place, a beautiful farm farmland. Um, and the buildings were quite um old and historic. They had been um built by the Bruderhof community that lived on the farmland where the the um the the approved school was was was built. Um it was a beautiful environment but incredibly tough work. And I remained there for for two years, and after the two years that I um was there, I felt that I wanted more training. And I guess what drew me to the Cotswold community of beautiful farmland, uh a very clear ethos about what it was that we were doing there with the boys, um, and the fact that it was also a working therapeutic farm you know was was lovely, but the rural isolation also was what meant that I had to leave to return to London to do my in-depth psychotherapy training at the Balby Centre because actually the the two things were incompatible, working as a a residential therapeutic childcare worker, where you’re doing 40 hours a week, you’re doing shift patterns, isn’t compatible with the requirements of a psychotherapy training of twice-weekly training therapy, observing an infant, um, doing all that read-in. Um, and so I felt that actually I could do more good by actually using that experience to um you know to build a career on, really. And I I think beginnings and endings are always incredibly hard. It’s part of the work of a therapeutic community. But maybe something that we’ll talk about later in our conversation is the fact that people doing residential therapeutic community work are really immersed in it. In particular, um, if you are a someone uh somewhere as kind of rural and isolated as the Cotswold community, there isn’t much space for life and relationships and you know hobbies outside um the community when you’re literally kind of living, sleeping, eating, breathing um, you know, your professional role as as a residential therapeutic childcare worker, um, which I think is is why um that there is an issue of maybe staff retainment in residential therapeutic community um places.
Colby 10:50
So quite quite an immersive experience um being there at the Cotswold community, but also um I’ve spoken I’ve had a number of guests on it who who were there, but then as you say, moved on to other roles, and perhaps part of that um from your perspective is that um there was a time in in in in I guess a person’s professional life to to be there, but then to also um and to grow there and then to um move on from there.
Kate 11:26
Yeah.
Colby 11:26
Yeah, and and you said a little bit earlier, and you’ve done uh a number of things since that time, including completing a PhD um about um the Cotswold community.
A PhD To Preserve A Place
Colby 11:41
And uh perhaps tell us a little bit about what your PhD is about, and um and I think what will prick uh people’s ears, um, especially as it did mine, was the was the uh notion of therapeutic love that um is part of your thesis.
Kate 11:59
Yeah. So um I I think when people start a doctorate, they they really need to be kind of clear about their subject and what it is that they want to do. And I guess I came from a point of view of well, write what you know, Kate, what write what you have lived, write what you uh uh experienced, because I think that would be a lot more meaningful um than um you know, maybe a very highly theoretical kind of um thesis. Yeah. Um so I kind of I knew that I had my subject, and the fact that I knew that I wanted to work about to write about the Cotswold community, and I think my motivation for that is that um I started my doctorate in actually 2014, and the Cotswold community, of course, closed in um 2011. So I had a sense of kind of wanting to preserve or study um, you know, something that had gone, uh something about learning from the past. So it was an archival piece of research, and what I didn’t know at the time um is when you do archival research, it’s really important to have a question. You know, you’ve got all these archives full of of interesting and wonderful things, um, but but you need to kind of have a sense of well, what is it that you’re looking for? What is it that you’re asking for? Um it’s almost like a conversation with people in the past. So I think one of my favorite expressions that I came across um in when I was um going through Balburney’s archive is the idea of Richard Balburney being, quote, a charismatic bastard. Um I I love that expression, and I I think I would argue that that that kind of hit hits the nail on the head, and there were reasons why you had to be so charismatic. But actually, back to what I was studying, um a lot of the conversations with my um supervisors went along the lines of, yeah, it’s great, Kate, you’ve discovered some interesting things, but what’s your question? And actually, I had a memory of um the boys at the Cotswell community being really into the rap group The Black Eyed Peas and their song Where is the Love? And and actually um you know, um David Wills um writes that the presence of love at the Cotswell community um was unspoken but unmistakable.
Defining Therapeutic Love In Practice
Kate 15:15
And so I thought, okay, so there’s my question. You know, what is this therapeutic love? And um I I took Eric from the Art of Loving notion that actually love is about care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. Um and you know it’s it’s it’s a verb, it’s a doing word rather than a noun, um, a noun for a sentiment. Um I think Paul Bernie would be absolutely horrified about the idea of kind of um kind of a woolly sentimental cloy kind of love. And I think that the unspokenness is important because people with a history of trauma, um you know, the word love might have all sorts of unknown connotations. Um you know, said there were tragic accounts um in Richard Balburney’s book of um a child being beaten because he didn’t tell his mother that he loved her, which just seems uh utterly mad. Um and so we wouldn’t go around kind of telling the the children that that we love them. It was it was something about how we interacted with them and that things like um taking responsibility for mistakes that went when they were made. And it was a r you know that people become really accountable, um, treating people with with respect um care. So um I think we might get on to how the Cotswold community made a transition from being an approved school, which was about incarceration, it was about punishment, it was about hierarchy, it was about warehousing and institutionalizing the boys that were in the approved school. And so actually what happened is that at four o’clock, hot chocolate would be made to be drunk at eight o’clock because the domestic staff were all going off duty and they would kind of leave this hot chocolate. But I personally you kind of imagine how disgusting kind of hot chocolate that had been left to to cool um you know would be. It’s that lack of kind of personal care. And so what um pioneers like Isabel Menzi’s life would do is she got rid of the very institutional kind of ways of meeting the boys’ physical needs and said no, that this needs to be done in-house in the the kind of the the units by the people actually doing the therapeutic care. So it’s very practical. So actually, how you care for someone is actually the thoughtfulness of making sure that you’re not serving them cold hot chocolate.
Colby 19:02
Yeah, it’s I mean therapeutic love uh I guess is a is something that um people may not be familiar with with it as a as a construct, as a way of um uh in being engaged in the role in a in a therapeutic residential care or in a residential childcare environment. Um I do wonder how how you you’ve interestingly you’ve talked about it as being a verb, it’s a doing thing, and um and in that way I’m thinking it’s probably different from affection, different from parental love, I guess, in a s as a sentiment, as you say, or being a caring professional, even in terms of how you you you go about the the doing of it. What how what how do you think you’ve you’ve hinted, you you you’ve mentioned some things like the the care that is um that is delivered to to the children or is is afforded to the children. Maybe if you can just tell us a little bit more about what it looks
How Love Shows Up Daily
Colby 20:10
like. What how would we recognise therapeutic love in a residential childcare um environment?
Kate 20:20
That’s a really good question, and I think that um it makes me think of John Whitwell’s work, um, and I know that you you’ve introduced um John Whitwell and had him on the Secure Start podcast, and this notion that the boy who is read a bedtime story will go on to become the man and father who reads his child a bedtime story and actually um it’s maybe more disturbing to see when a person hasn’t received any sort of love from from anyone because actually then that person you know might um act out or be unable to behave in a loving way in all sorts of of ways. And I think I really want to highlight the intergenerational nature of the work. So we um you know live in a society certainly in the UK, I don’t know how things are in Australia. Um we live in a society that uh likes to do things um where everything is measured, it’s almost like people. People knowing the the price of everything, but the value of nothing or kind of do a lot of randomized control trials or evidence-based practice. And actually, I think that we need practice-based evidence with regard to the value of therapeutic communities. But I think that the value of therapeutic communities, and in particular, this kind of quality of of therapeutic love will be shown in whether actually the people coming out of a therapeutic community institution are able to be um you know to to live in healthy positive ways in society. So it it actually makes me think of um the Pepper Harrow documentary, and Pepper Harrow was very similar to the Cotswell community, but it was in a large Georgian manner rather than farmland the way that the Cotswell community was. One went on to become a staff member, one went on um to talk about actually how that its experience had impacted his life. I think he was a teacher and was clearly an ordinarily devoted father. And it it’s it’s almost like um you might not notice um the presence of therapeutic love because it might just look like to people who are fortunate enough to have had good enough early experiences and to be part of the 50 to 60 percent of society that is fortunate enough to have secure attachments. It it kind of you don’t notice these things because there’s no fanfare about hey, I made you a hot hot chocolate, you know, no nobody needs that commenting on, but actually you you you only notice it when it isn’t there, yeah, yeah.
Colby 24:38
You um I was just writing some notes down kind of while I was listening. Um I think it’s I think that that um that reference to John Whitwell and and the the idea of that the boy who is read to becomes the father who reads to, and the the intergenerational uh you know uh angle to this work. What we what we provide to the children is is kind of like what we pass on to their children and and grandchildren and so on. And um that’s been a recurrent theme on this podcast, this building of social capital, what we do with the person in front of us, um, builds social capital.
Kate 25:26
And um it I think maybe something that isn’t ever really mentioned is the impact on the people doing the work that it then has on their later lives. So me as a very young, very green 24-year-old who had never, for example, cooked for a large group of people before, or who had never really um needed to take um care of an environment where um, you know, there were um 11 boys and I think six staff and all taking turns to make sure that the the food was okay, the cleanliness, the upkeep, and everything was okay. And I remember really small things like um the domestic worker, um, an amazing woman called Maureen, um, teaching me how to mop a floor with boiled water and exactly the right amount of detergent. And it’s really funny in the fact that that’s still how I mop my own kitchen floor, yes, and actually um things like um the songs that were sung at the Cotswold Community. Um, so I I worked with a boy who was from Wales, and so I learned to sing a traditional Welsh lullaby in English, because actually, kind of Welsh, I don’t speak Welsh, and Welsh is full of lottl stops that that I can’t do. Um, but it’s still a song that I sing most nights to my daughter, actually, and she will sing it back to me, and she will sing it with me. So actually, these these things carry on actually kind of in workers’ lives as well as I I hope the the boys’ lives.
What Staff Carry Into Later Life
Colby 27:34
Yeah, I think um I the most recent past podcast that that I just recorded and released only uh a couple of days ago um with Simon Benjamin, who had been he’s been to very worked in various places, including the mulberry bush. He’s in Australia here now. Um and and part of that conversation was was about was on the topic of you know, we expect the children or the young people to grow. You know, we the expectations that we have of them, we might we we need to also have of the adults who are caring for them. You know, if we expect children to grow and develop, then we then we should have a a a work environment in a residential therapeutic community where the adults can grow and develop as well. And I think that’s one of the beautiful things that that uh consistently comes, you know, I discover about the Cotswold community. There’s no end of well, there is an end, but there’s there’s lots of people that I can have on this podcast who have gone on to have very fulfilling and and significant uh lives in in various areas of endeavour, not just uh continue to be in therapeutic residential childcare. Um and so it really was a growing and nurturing environment. Um John John Whitwell referred to the role as being that of emotional gardeners, providing, you know, providing the emotional environment uh for growth there at the Cotswell community, but it but it it’s quite apparent that that existed for staff as well. And it’s quite a it’s quite a thing to consider that the that you in in the provision of residential childcare, which is often maligned, um and we’ll get to that a bit later, that that it can be a place of of growth and development and and the building of social capital amongst the staff that work there too.
Kate 29:48
Absolutely, and I I think that I I I hope that we’ll get on to talk about the qualities that are needed in staff because I think that actually as a staff member doing this work, you need to be ready for almost like a mirror to be um held up to all your quirks and foibles and you know things that that are more uncomfortable that you might not want to be um acknowledged. As as you know, um I think it was Barbara Docker Drysdale that that said kind of they will see you at your exhausted worst and potentially kind of uh at your best too. And and actually I think modelling that kind of mutual growth both in staff and in adults um and and and the the the boys that uh or children that are being worked with in residential care is really important.
Colby 31:01
Yeah. Um it kind of gets at the distinction between a job and a vocation, in in a sense. Um and uh and it it it what I think what I’m taking from what you’re saying is that there to work when it worked well as it did, when it works well as it did at the Cotswold community, there was an openness for staff to to develop themselves themselves as as individuals, not just through through um any training and supervision that was delivered at at the community, but in the in those ordinary interactions with um fellow fellow staff members and and the young people.
Kate 31:50
Yeah. Um I I I think it uh residential therapeutic childcare is very much a vocation. Um but I think it it is so intense and awe-consuming that often people might not make it a um a vocation and a way of life kind of um for decades. It might become a a rich experience to be drawn on and remembered and cherished, but also the the endings being managed really, really carefully because actually you’re talking about staff growth. In in my story at the Cotswold Community, part of my growth was knowing that actually I wanted to become a psychotherapist, and and that would mean actually being yeah, geographically close enough to meet all the other things that that entailed.
Colby 33:01
I think the other thing that I’m taking from what you’re saying is that and may and I I I think we don’t, not just in in residential child care, but in foster and kinship care um as well in in all aspects of um social care. We don’t there’s not enough perhaps not enough regard for um the experience of of um of the adults of so of efficacy in the role, of be of feeling a sense of self-efficacy. Um and that because I think that that um that’s very important and and I’m I’m I’m almost horrified to hear of the delivery of the role being a bad experience and people leaving, you know, having had a bad experience, or people leaving because they just find the whole thing too overwhelming or too, yeah, or or such a disempowering and and um um uh experience that you know that that they just um weren’t up to the job. They should be the the stories that you hear from the Codswell community is people used it almost, they didn’t use it as such, but it became a springboard into a very a rich professional life and personal life uh as well.
Agency Skills And Helping Boys Shine
Kate 34:32
I I think staff’s sense of agency and authority is so important. So, whereas within the approved school system it was very hierarchical, both in terms of um kind of subcultures amongst boys that bullying and abuse was was sadly and tragically rampant. Um, there were the kind of tobacco barons where um you know smoking was um was was really a thing um you know in in the 1970s. Um but also hierarchy in staff um uh would have potentially robbed people of their sense of agency. Whereas actually at the Cottsville community, um I I’ll give two examples of kind of moments where I felt that I could exercise my own agency. Um so there’s there was a swimming pool on site, um, and that the boys were permitted in the summer months um that to to swim with supervision, but they needed to be supervised by someone who was properly trained. And I happened to be really quite a strong swimmer, and so our team was kind of like, right, we’re gonna do lifeguard training so that you can supervise the boys. Um, many actually of the male colleagues that I worked with were were a bit kind of like, oh yeah, this this will be fine, you know, I I could do this, but they couldn’t complete the task that um needed to be done to be approved to be able to supervise the boys, um, which was to pick up a weighted dummy from the bottom of the of the pool, so dummy filled with water because of my you know, because I am you know a strong swimmer, I could do that, and it almost became a bit of a joke. I I was able to kind of do it, you know, several times, and actually the people who weren’t able to do that, um, you know, weren’t allowed to to do that. So there was a real sense of of people being able to to contribute um, you know, on their natural abilities, and kind of whereas um you know I could do that, but I would never facilitate a bike ride just because I’m really clumsy on a bike, I’m not naturally kind of good cycling. Um but I think that m my favorite thing was being able to do things like um bring music. Um so one of the boys that I worked with was very naturally gifted for music. So me being able to write um songs for for him to sing and perform um was really quite moving. I really enjoyed being able to do that and share the experience because actually finding someone’s kind of natural abilities and areas where they are able to shine is really important actually it in surviving the great adversity that that some of the the boys at the Cotswold community did. That there was a literal need to find a voice.
Colby 38:15
Yeah. I wonder if this this notion of therapeutic love and how it’s operationalized, how it’s put into practice, I think is is it’s something that is per perhaps distinguishable from regulation in the sense that um my job here is to regulate and um uh manage, so I mean regulation in a manage managing kind of a way. It is my job to to manage these young people in such a way that we keep a relatively peaceful and harmonious environment and we all get the clock off at the end of the day, you know, something other than being reduced to a puddle on the floor. Whereas um delivering th therapeutic love is is about actually genuinely parenting these children uh and in a sense and and and it and and I think one of the things that stands out is it it it’s probably a little bit different for different boys. There’s elements of it that are different for different children, um, but it’s it’s the small stuff like the temperature of the hot chocolate, you know, right through to the yeah, to to the um getting behind them in their particular talents and uh and supporting their their sense of mastery, yeah, as you would do with your own children.
Kate 39:54
Yeah, and that it it makes me think of um Beyond’s notion of maternal preoccupation and Winnicott’s notion of the ordinarily devoted parent.
Colby 40:10
Yeah, yeah.
Being Held As Staff Amid Violence
Colby 40:12
Something that also occurred to me while you were speaking, it occurred to me to ask you this, and this is something of a question without notice, but do you think that the staff felt therapeutically held or or loved in a sense by the management?
Kate 40:31
That is a really really good question, and I think that my honest answer to that is that it varied and I I think that areas where it varied was potentially around areas of um of managing violence, actually. Um you know, I I think we did try to support one another and we were aware when um, you know, certain members of the team were having particularly hard time but I also know that possibly the the sense of overwhelm meant that sometimes there was some quite defensive behaviour from everyone that maybe meant that actually for example um someone’s horror at at the violence that was sometimes necessary to to contain and and maybe um you know the fact that actually people had different valence for managing the the the violence um you know was was really difficult to navigate and I think it’s it’s natural that management and senior management um would you know um that that there was occasional defensiveness and I think you know defensiveness from um you know people managing things but I what I write about in um in my thesis is also about the gender relationships between staff and actually a thought that I had is I wonder whether actually it was particularly difficult maybe for some male members of staff when um female members of staff were occasionally hurt as in in incidents and there was a need for for physical restraint that that that might have been really hard um you know for for men to kind of feel we we haven’t somehow kind of protected female colleagues and maybe also potential rage from the women of kind of what what’s going on here? Why you know why am I coming to to work and being physically hurt? Um and and that is particularly kind of difficult, uh I think. Um and I think really it was only in the course of my own personal training therapy that I was able to kind of unpin. What those experiences had meant to me. And I think Barbara Docker Drysdale kind of said that workers go through the equivalent of a full training analysis when they do similar work. But I I think that there wasn’t maybe the the the focus or maybe the the the willingness to really kind of acknowledge this feels really hard. And I think that actually Bill Alkin, who I quote a lot in my thesis, is you know close to the kind of um psychological devastation and destruction. Um as you know, few few people are.
Colby 45:15
So I mean it was not without its challenges, clearly. And um and it yes, it wasn’t although it it it gets talked about the the Cotswold commun community gets talked about in in often in very glowing terms or very very positive terms, it was it was still nonetheless a a challenging place to work at times.
Kate 45:41
Absolutely.
Colby 45:42
And um I think sticking just sticking with this theme of um the the doing uh of of the work, you know, the the the the love as a verb as such. Um part of that is is um addressing responding therapeutically to the needs of the young people. And I wonder whether there what you would um what you saw and and what you would say about the extent to which the needs of staff were also being catered to in the roles that they were performing.
Kate 46:29
Sometimes the needs of staff were met, I think, it it extremely well. Um you know, um not perfectly, but actually kind of if we um you know living on site, you know, things like that. So literally the community put a roof over the stuff staff’s head, food on the table kind of um resources, and so I I think that in a way there wasn’t necessarily a tension between kind of needs of boys and needs of staff. Actually, you know, um I think the the consultants working knew that actually kind of um a staff group that feels uncontained and uncared for and maybe quite disturbed and traumatized would communicate that to the boys and that it would be quite a fear-based system. Um and and so it’s it’s it’s I would say it maybe isn’t such part of of the Cotsworld kind of culture that that there is a kind of a false dichotomy between kind of needs of staff and needs of of boys. Um but I I think that I guess one thing that the Cotswold community wasn’t able to do, I think effectively, is that actually because it was so all immersive and required such utter devotion from staff to the boys, such maternal preoccupation that actually needs of staff um beyond their work at the community was maybe um not not focused on. So I think it uh you know, I think a very obvious thing um that is touched upon but not gone into detail is kind of for example, um what it was like for staff who were of an age where they were thinking of their own family and wanting to start families themselves, what that experience was like for them. For on the one hand, being immersed and preoccupied with the boys that they were working with, but also maybe kind of um also wanting you know family in their pastoral lives, and things like maybe what it was like both for boys and say female members of staff when um if if uh you know a female member of staff became pregnant, um, but also kind of things like how to manage pregnancy where the risks are uh associated with with violence and things like that, it all sorts of really complicated issues.
Colby 50:05
Yeah, yeah. So there it had its it wasn’t a perfect uh system. Um what I did hear you say though was that there was um balance there was endeavor, it wasn’t competing endeavour, um, it wasn’t all one and not the other, but there was endeavour to ensure that um that the boys were contained in beyond sense, but also that there was containment for that the staff were contained uh as far as possible as well, and that happened in really high quality, good um consultancy um and reflective spaces that were just part of the process.
Kate 50:54
And I wish I had known about Una McCluskey’s work when I was working at the Courtswell community because Una McCluskey talks about compulsive caregiving. And I wonder whether unconsciously sometimes people attracted to residential therapeutic childcare might have their own life trajectory, their own attachment histories that they bring unconsciously until it’s made conscious of maybe things like compulsive caregiving, and actually maybe there isn’t so much um you know of maybe staff’s ability to to also look after themselves. Um, and so I think that we did create quite tight-knit teams. So for example, I remember going off shift maybe half past nine, ten, and um, you know, messaging friends and and colleagues in the communities kind of say, Do you want some toast and tea before I go to sleep? Um and actually that that being a part of how we supported one another. I think that probably there could have been maybe more work on staff self-care in such a difficult environment. But that happened kind of quite um organically just through the the network of relationships. You know, we maybe needed to think more about yeah, how how do we look after ourselves? But actually, there was a sense of looking after each other and the fact that there kind of would be that informal support network of, you know, on a Friday night you could go for a glass of wine with someone.
Care For Each Other And Containment
Colby 52:56
So, what would you describe, what would you call that? I mean, because it it’s strikingly similar to what you were saying about how the how love, therapeutic love is manifested towards the young people in the community.
Kate 53:12
I I think kind of care for each other, really. You know, um, and I I mention in my thesis that actually um because there is something quite shocking about violence shocking in the the kind of the population who haven’t lived with violence who aren’t really accustomed to that. So um I remember sadly having a black eye after an incident. I went to um a pub with a male colleague, and a a stranger took me aside and said, You don’t have to put up with that. And it was almost as if he she was she was accusing the man that I was with of being the cause of the black eye. Um, and I said, Well, it it’s not like that. You know, um, but in in in some ways it is, but not in the way that that that you know was was expect you know that that she was anticipating. And you know, I think that that there was a kind of a camaraderie there of being able to be known as people and be seen as people and to see your colleagues as people kind of with with all their quirks and voibles and and things that that make up our common human vulnerability, really.
Colby 55:02
That that reminds me very much of um something that Paul Van Hiswick uh said to me, who um he he’s also been on the podcast, and he would talk about when he um he was a consultant to the to the community, and um he would make a point of knowing about the lives of staff. And so when he had one-on-one interactions with the staff, he would often um begin with with talking about and acknowledging things that he knew about about their lives and showing uh you know that an interest um in that. And uh I thought that was just evidence, it was it was a sign that uh of of of as you talk about it that the care that we need to be extending to uh staff to um adults who work in these pressure cooker environments um they they they require um they they and deserve a lot of care.
Kate 56:15
Yeah. Because I I think that people who feel deprived can act out, and I wonder whether the the scandals and abuse that we sadly know have taken place in in childcare institutions happen when actually a staff group um you know isn’t properly contained and managed and cared and thought about.
Colby 56:49
I wonder if there’s a resentment that builds when if your if the whole focus of the endeavour is on the children and young people themselves and there is not that care extended to staff.
Kate 57:04
Yeah. Yeah. And I I think that that there is so that’s such an issue in institutions. I’m thinking of the COVID pandemic and doctors meant to be life-saving not being given the equipment that they needed to actually keep keep keep themselves safe.
Colby 57:32
Yeah, yeah.
Challenging Last Resort Thinking
Colby 57:34
I know um one of the things that that concerns me a lot is is the language that is used to uh w to reference uh residential childcare. Um it tends to be um pejorative a lot of the time, it tends to be very negative. Um even you know, in my own jurisdiction, um significant people have said things like um children need to be saved from from residential childcare. And in all of that, my my concern is is for the staff, I I’m concerned about the children obviously, but my concern is for the staff that work in residential childcare, how what how they metabolise those messages. Um how the the I’m very concerned about the lack of reflective spaces, the lack of supervision, lack of sort supports. We had the models there, or we have the models there, um still in some instances. And uh so there is from my perspective, there is a a concern about yeah, about uh um the staff experience for me a deep concern about the staff experience of the role and the support that they get or don’t get.
Kate 59:05
Yeah. Things like um, you know, the fact that residential therapeutic um childcare workers are often incredibly poorly paid. Um and and I think that that goes for the wider childhood um childcare workers, that actually people working with children in general, and in particular the the most traumatized children, um aren’t valued. Um you know, and and and even in my my own experiences as a mother, um you know, I’ve I’ve my in my daughter’s preschool, I’ve I’ve witnessed the manager of her preschool in tears because another member of staff has resigned because it was um more lucrative to stack shelves at Aldi’s.
Colby 1:00:06
Oh the the the issue of what we pay staff and the cost of residential care, I guess, is one of the things that is very much bound up in this notion of of residential childcare being an option of last resort for commissioners, funders. Um I I just wonder what you yeah, I mean, you’ve not only worked, had this vocation in this area, but you’ve you’ve you’ve written a V a PhD, uh conducted a PhD uh in this area. What’s your reaction to this idea of um residential child care being an option of last resort?
Kate 1:00:56
In a way, I can understand why a layperson would look on the scandals in childcare institutions and see that. I’m also thinking of the work of Balby and the understanding of that actually kind of um it is a very drastic thing for the state to intervene in a family’s life and disrupt attachments. However, as Balby would you know, say, um I think he said that there is such a thing as as a bad mother. What I would say is that there are there are such things as very traumatic circumstances and difficult circumstances that that do require the state to intervene. But I think that the example of the Cotswold community demonstrates that institutions can potentially meet um a child’s need for um for therapy, you know, and for continuity and containment and all of those things. And I think that in labelling residential childcare as an option of last resort might really disadvantage children who really need that because it might mean several broken down foster placements because the foster parents needed much more support than they could actually provide for that child. That child needed a team around them and needed kind of quite a village environment to kind of to contain and to treat and work with the disturbance, and so actually the the delay in the child getting that causes more trauma, more disrupted attachments means that the task is harder if that child actually eventually does reach residential therapeutic child care. So I do wonder whether actually I I think that it was in the the latest um government report by Josh McAllister as no longer seeing residential therapeutic childcare as an option of last resort, but an option that could be considered sooner for some people in order to prevent multiple more foster placements breaking down because they are getting specialist skills that are really needed. And I think that organizations like the Mulberry Bush are really good in um explaining you know the value of what they do so that actually that that can be understood. There’s a a conference um that’s gonna take place, I’ve forgotten when, about the kind of the cost and the benefit. But I wonder whether it’s convenient for politicians to kind of almost make residential therapeutic childcare a bit of um an option of last resort, almost like a bit of a bogeyman. Because it it stops them having to invest in that, because actually, um you know with budgets, you know, maybe actually there’s an unconscious thing of of it being seen as as too expensive, they don’t want to exhort um to endorse that, because actually the benefits that places like the Cotswell community will only be seen in society maybe generations and decades later, and are often kind of quite intangible and immeasurable. So I think that there is something about the short-termism and the projections involved in comp uh contemporary kind of political discourse that means it’s too it’s too convenient to to view residential therapeutic childcare as an option of last resort. Because that means well, you don’t have to fund it.
Colby 1:05:47
Yeah. And and I don’t think there’s any dispute that it is comparatively expensive compared to foster care. I think one of the things that you said in there that I I think is That people maybe don’t pay a lot enough attention to. There’s there is the well, certainly I think there’s not enough attention paid to the impact on the child of successive placement breakdowns, of there being a number of placement breakdowns. But there’s also a toll on the foster carers as well.
Kate 1:06:22
Yeah.
Colby 1:06:23
And we want to keep f if we want to keep foster carers in the system, one of one of the ways of doing that is being very um clever is the word that comes to mind, but is not the not the best word that I I think I could apply. But but to be very um clear about where a child uh is idea ideally cared for when they can’t be cared for at home, and if they and some children perhaps need to be cared for in a residential child care placement, particularly if they find because many of them there’s a particular group of children who find a family environment over what just too much for them. Um and you know, and we become more sophisticated, sophisticated is a better word, we about uh placement um options, placement planning. And in doing so, we look after not only the children, but we look after the adults who are in that role. So you’re saying children don’t end up in residential care with so much uh additional harm and complexity, which places gr increased uh strain on on residential childcare staff. And I’m saying um we’re not we’re not burdening foster carers with uh um with the with the pain and shame and guilt of of placement breakdowns. And that’s uh yeah, that’s that’s all part of just looking after the people who do the looking after.
Kate 1:08:12
Yeah.
What Quality Residential Care Requires
Kate 1:08:14
And I think that the example of the Cotswold community, there are are four elements that Chris Beadle um identifies. So getting the right sort of staff. So the Cotswell community was quite sophisticated. Um so it it it had um it used um the defence mechanism test um in in some of of the recruitment um that that really um helped identify um kind of whether the staff were of you know um up to the task emotionally. So on the one hand resilient enough not to be swept away by the the or the projections of of the the the boys and and and fellow staff, but not so defended that that they couldn’t build therapeutic relationships with the boys that there were the proper structures in place, the proper routines, um that there were proper diagnostic skills of okay, what what what is this child’s um you know um level of need. So Dr. Dreisdale developed a highly sophisticated kind of system of of ascertaining whether a child was kind of frozen, um, you know, and therefore how much pressure they would put on a staff team. And the kind of transparency of having an external consultant coming in and observing what was going on in the staff team. Um and being able to get advice so having that kind of level of of transparency. Yeah. You know, is I think it it still holds true, but that’s what it takes to have you know a a proper residential therapeutic childcare institution.
Colby 1:10:30
It’s more than a bed and and a room and three meals a day, uh, although all of those things are important. There’s yeah, there’s a a level of sophistication here, yeah. And uh that I think has broad we can you I mean you we can learn a lot, I think, about um how we deliver a foster care system, for example, based on you know how we deliver a good uh residential childcare system. And I think John Whitwell, who you mentioned would be a is a uh is a really good exemplar of that. And uh, but what we’re I think what we’re saying is that this is complex work and we need to be um we need to to there needs to be a level of sophistication here in the way we we approach and organise and manage but manage it, but we shouldn’t, we also shouldn’t um overlook the little things that are really important.
Kate 1:11:35
Yeah.
Colby 1:11:36
Yeah.
Kate 1:11:37
Yeah.
Colby 1:11:38
Kate,
How To Contact Kate And Closing
Colby 1:11:39
uh uh thank you again for coming on. I know you’ve um you’ve you’ve talked a little bit about those roles that you’re that you deliver in your work. Um if people are interested in following up with you and um um finding out a bit more about the work that you do, how how might they go about doing that?
Kate 1:12:02
Um not on the socials, um that people can email me at kb at talktherapy.net. Um so I’m always happy to receive emails that that that’s no problem. Um and yeah, I will be keeping on, keeping on, and my my journal role and my my clinical and supervisory and teaching roles um keep me happily fulfilled.
Colby 1:12:29
Yeah, I think I mean it’s great, it it’s it’s lovely to um um though to have those roles, I think, to be passing on um and be part of that process of um passing on knowledge and wisdom and uh and facilitating good practice uh and building social capital in doing so. So yeah, good luck with with those endeavors and thank you again for coming on and having a chat to me.
Kate 1:13:00
It’s been an absolute pleasure, Kobe. Um it really has. Um thank you, and um I look forward to hearing from you.
Colby 1:13:08
Yes, you will.
About Kate:
Kate Brown, PhD, is a Bowlby Centre-trained UKCP-registered attachment-basedpsychoanalytic psychotherapist who started her career in therapeutic communities working with adults and adolescents individually and in groups.
Kate has worked with young mothers and in community psychiatric services with patients’ families. She has also worked with former servicemen who had experienced complex trauma.
Kate is a course tutor at The Bowlby Centre, and has delivered freelance training. Kate completed an MSc in psychotherapeutic approaches in mental health in 2012, and completed her PhD at Middlesex University entitled “Where is the love? A psychoanalytic history of the Cotswold Community”.
Email: kb@talktherapy.net
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Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes, or have client consent to talk about in an educative context.
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