Supporting Difficult Transitions: Children, Young People and their Carers

Description

The international contributors to Supporting Difficult Transitions discuss examples of transitions that are problematic for children, young people and their carers. Focusing on vulnerable children and young people, the transitions include: starting school, changing schools, starting work, entering a new culture or a culture that has been changed to focusing on vulnerable children and young people. The book will be useful to practitioners involved in supporting children and their carers as they make these moves; students and course tutors in the caring professions; researchers; and policy makers and those who implement policy for children and young people. The different case examples are given coherence by drawing on cultural-historical approaches to how people move between practices. Particular attention is paid to how practitioners can build shared understandings of what matters for children and young people and for the institutions they are entering. These understandings become a resource to strengthen collaborations between practitioners or between practitioners and the children and their carers, as they support entry into new practices.

Mariane Hedegaard is Professor Emerita of Developmental Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Anne Edwards is Professor Emerita in the Department of Education at Oxford University, UK, where she was Director of the department and co-founder of the Oxford University Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research (OSAT).

Attending to the topic of transitions through this relational approach offers a powerful lens that makes visible taken for granted experiences and enables ways to rethink the processes, practices, and structures we have built. This book reminds us all that we can change what we have built and that, with change, we are likely to see improvements in the experience of transitions. * Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur, Professor of Human Development, Learning, and Culture, The University of British Columbia, Canada * Essential reading for professionals working with children in times of transitions. Traditional psychological approaches to transitions have largely tended to focus interventions at changing individuals, without developing an understanding of a child's social situation of development. This book, written by experts in the field, addresses this gap in the literature by situating transitions socio-culturally and historically. * Joanne Hardman, Associate Professor in Education, University of Cape Town, South Africa *