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A 150 Years History of Child Care

in the Diocese of Westminster

Front cover Back Cover

CHANGING TIMES CHANGING NEEDS

I have just read a copy of the above book, just released, which is a factual and fascinating story. It is a wonderful compilation of the beginnings of child care in Westminster, from even before the creation of the Crusade of Rescue, right up to the present.

It covers all the Homes that were established by the various organisations, the child emigrations to Canada and Australia, and you will even find a photo of Blaisdon Hall on page 70.

Once I started to read it, I found it very difficult to put it down. I will now treasure this book and keep it for my children and grandchildren, as reflecting a part of my own childhood.

The author, Jim Hyland, has made a painstaking effort to include both the good, and even the bad, to ensure that it is a true record. He has included all the main parties, The Cardinals and Heads of the various Associations throughout history. Its is full of many photos and of stories of just how hard it was to fund the work for babies and children that these bodies were, and still are, determined to do.

I highly recommend it to you.

To obtain a copy, for £10.00, which includes postage and packing, send your cheque for £10.00, made payable to "Catholic Children's Society (Westminster)", to:

Catholic Children's Society (Westminster)

73 St Charles Square, London, W10 6EJ

John Ward, Web Manager, Blaisdon Old Boy & St. Joseph's Old Boy

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CHANGING TIMES CHANGING NEEDS

Review

As widely published failures in statutory childcare proliferate, those charged with devising modern practical solutions and students in training will, as a matter of course, continue to research the history of past practice. This new book - by Jim Hyland - will be a valuable aid to them. However, it will come as a disappointment to many who latterly directly experienced life in the care of The Crusade of Rescue (1889-1983) if they hope to find specific admissions of cruelty and documented misguided approaches of managing institutionalised children. At least they are spared a spurious and fatuous Apology. Expectations fuelled by contemporary child care scandals will not be met because Changing Times - Changing Needs A History of The Catholic Children’s Society Westminster is not intended to be anything other than what it was conceived to be.

This is a history, not an analysis of childcare. It achieves its purposes as summarized succinctly by the present Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster in his Introduction: an abiding deep commitment to delivering services of the highest possible standard for children and their families. Responding to the needs of this time through closure of barrack-like provision to small family units and adoption. Continuing to operate in response to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Vere dignum et justum est.. as befits the Catholic Children’s Society (Westminster) which replaced The Crusade of Rescue in 1983.

The weight of history (Changing Times) lies mainly with well researched and evocative images derived from many sources including archival material from the Religious Orders: The Christian Brothers, The Daughters of Charity and the governments of Australia and Canada. The work of the Salesian Fathers and their progressive work with boys in Blaisdon Hall, Gloucestershire, comes in for worthy mention and is pointed up by a former pupil and Crusade of Rescue child - Norman Taylor - who on page 71 recalls a moving incident.

The negative consequences of policies that drove child migration are addressed openly and honestly in Chapter 13 headed: Australian Child Migration - Positives and Concerns. There one reads: “It is only in the last decade that the stories of these now grown up children have come to light, including allegations of brutality and physical, emotional and sometimes sexual abuse. Many more children experienced the withholding of personal information and the dawning reality, as they grew into adulthood, that they were not, after all, orphans at the time of their placement, but did have a past and a history and sometimes living relatives.”

Much has been done by The Catholic Children’s Society (Westminster) to positively address these historical failings by, fostering with the relevant governments and related agencies, the availability of a Hardship Fund to assist the renewed family and historical connections of migrated individuals. Further work of the present Director CEO (Rosemary Keenan) in setting up a Data Base of all named migrated children, has ensured that people can come to terms with their history and can create a more positive future for themselves through their search for family in this country. Rosemary has many further challenges ahead most of which have been addressed in the area of (Changing Needs) by the recently retired Director.

Jim Richards MBE was CEO during almost 20 years and managed to heroically guide the Society in continuing its varied approaches to the modern demands of child care and protection as it faced a raft of social policy changes during the 1980/90s. He successfully led it through regulations that impacted on fostering policies in ways never envisaged by the early pioneers and their successors. Not least among these is the unforeseen and arguably perverse effect of equal opportunities extended to same-sex couples seeking to foster. It would seem that the best compromise in this area is for the local authority to assess, accommodate and manage same-sex fostering while faith-based organisations maintain their traditional approaches. This may well be a temporary contingency as insistence on personal family rights is increasingly advocated by minority groups. What is desirable is not necessarily valuable, as calls on childcare resources threaten to outstrip demand.

This book - soft-back perfect bound - contains 108 pages through 17 Chapters and deserves the widest distribution for the quality of its content and referenced related source material. It retails at £10.00 and is obtainable from The Catholic Children’s Society (Westminster) 73 St. Charles Square, London, W10 6EJ.

Tony Brady, Blaisdon President. January 2010

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Hi Tony!

I have just read your excellent review of Changing Times Changing Needs. I found the book difficult to put the book down once I had began to read it. The author has carefully refrained from making judgements on the decisions taken by the Administrators of the Society in the second half of the 19th century and the first 50 years of the twentieth, when the benchmark for orphaned and disadvantaged children was firmly rooted in the Victorian model, and whose adherents maintained that such children had no rights or recognition by anyone in the wider world..

The boys who spent their formative years in St. Joseph's, Enfield, and later with the Salesians at Blaisdon Hall were at least able to leave the care of these institutions with self discipline and an acceptance that we must work and become self sufficient. The decision by the Salesians and the Crusade of Rescue to buy Blaisdon Hall and provide training for orphaned and disadvantaged boys and to train these boys in the rudiments of agriculture and other trades was a far-sighted decision to have made in 1935. That was long before any government had even began to be aware of the need for child-care legislation to improve the lives of these disadvantaged and orphaned children.

I experienced the fear of being sent to Australia in 1938 and being separated from my bother and sister for ever. Thankfully I was spared this trauma. Well done Tony on your excellent review. Regards.

Norman Taylor - 30th January 2010

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CHANGING TIMES CHANGING NEEDS

Review

Child welfare is often in the news for all the wrong reasons and reading John Hyland’s history of the Catholic Children’s Society (Westminster) I became more and more aware of the debt that past generations and the country owe to the religious organisations that provided care for the thousands of children orphaned and abandoned by their parents before the creation of the Welfare State. I was in the care of the Crusade of Rescue as the Catholic Children’s Society was then known for eight years and I was therefore looking forward to the publication of "Changing Times Changing Needs"

The book details the many struggles and successes that the Society had prior to the intervention of the State after the second world war, when it was finally acknowledged by the government that securing the future of orphaned and disadvantaged children should not be left solely in the care of the many religious and secular charitable organisations.

The decision to concentrate on the history of the Society and not to retell the many stories that the children who were placed in the care of the Society was the correct one. It is the book’s strength and as such it makes the many economic and legal struggles that were encountered and overcome a tribute to the early administrators and their staff.

The establishment of the Curtis Committee in 1947, spelt the beginning of end of residential care for disadvantaged children and paved the way for the re entry of these children into main stream society. It also hastened a change in policy in the way the Society continued its work in the field of childcare. The Curtis Committee recognised the Catholic tradition of having the children in its care looked after by members of religious orders. However, although the Committee was not against this practice the absence of people qualified in good child care practice was a matter for concern, and recommended that in future only suitably qualified people should be involved in the care of children in Catholic residential institutions.

The Child Migration scheme although considered at the time to be in the best interest of the child the authorities responsible for administering it did not consider how these children being sent to Canada and Australia would be affected in the short and long term. If I may enter a personal comment. In 1938 when boys from St. Joseph’s Enfield were being sent to Australia I lived in constant fear of being separated for ever from my brother and sister . This was a fear I lived with until the Second World War put and end to any further forced migration.

The decision to purchase Blaisdon Hall in Gloucestershire by the Salesians and the Crusade of Rescue in 1935 was both farsighted and wise. They set up a trade school that taught boys the rudiments of a trade, and for two years sheltered them from the hardship of entering the world of work at the age of fourteen as would have been their fate had this not been available to them. The boys left the care of the Salesians better equipped to cope with the hardships that they were to encounter and taught them the value of self reliance and hard work.

John Hyland and the Society are to be congratulated on a work that is more than just a book. It is a record of child care in the second half of the 19th century and the first seventy years of the 20th century. It must be added to the social history of the evolution of child care in Britain.

Norman Taylor - February 2010 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________