Tillie Curran

Disabled children’s childhood studies: a distinct approach?

This paper suggests that the emergence of disabled children’s childhood studies as an area of study offers a distinct approach to inquiry; it represents a significant shift away from the long-standing deficit discourses of disabled childhoods that have dominated western culture and its reaches. On the one hand, contemporary childhood studies contest normative, Eurocentric mantras around the ‘standard child’; while on the other, disability studies critique the medical discourses and the scope of its authority. However, while drawing on these two approaches, disabled children’s childhood studies provide more than this combined critique. In disabled children’s childhood studies, disabled children are not viewed as necessarily having problems or being problems, but as having childhoods.

A critical analysis of workforce development research use in the transformation of children’s services

Summary This article is based on a study commissioned to find out how agencies providing children’s services in England used workforce development research in the transformation of children’s services. Workforce development research is primarily about how new organisational practices are learnt, embedded and developed. Survey and case study methods provided broad and in-depth data that was mapped against a typology developed to capture a diverse range of research activities. Findings Three cross-cutting themes were identified from the analysis: the involvement of children and young people in workforce development research; the development of reflective practice; and the significance of inter-organisational learning cultures. Workforce development research can contribute to a creative culture of inquiry shaping change processes especially where both practitioners and children and young people are involved. In some specialist areas a lack of engagement was attributed to the demands of complex practice and bureaucracy, but in other similar contexts, learning cultures were evident. Application Accounts of learning cultures producing active concepts of childhood link with ‘new’ childhood studies and contrast with accounts of crisis management informed by individualised models of ‘problem families’ highlighted in critiques of neo-liberal forms of government. The study shows that this opposition is not an inevitable consequence of complex practice or service configuration per se, but is contingent on a range of supporting factors such as partnerships with universities. To strengthen the exponential impact of research use illustrated, a participatory approach to organisational research strategy is advanced.

Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

In this concluding chapter, we revisit aims of the book and touch on some of the key messages and themes highlighted throughout the text. We draw out the authors’ agenda for future directions, we revisit the aims of the book and touch on some of the key messages and themes highlighted throughout.

Disabled children’s childhood studies and leadership as experts by experience: learning activism in health and social care education

People involved in disabled children’s childhood studies, and others who contribute their experience of using health and social care services, strongly object to being seen by professionals as ‘the problem’. In contrast Experts by Experience involved in a leadership project used strategies of mutual support towards change. We see learning activism as core to a professional practice that is also about change and explore critical pedagogy for students to directly experience such collaborative ways of working. The chapter begins and ends with reflections by the authors on sharing their personal and political concerns as part of collaborative learning encouraged by the opportunities to join and support the voices of disabled children and their families.

Foucault and the government of disability

In this second edition of Foucault and the Government of Disability there are four new chap- ters in Part v, ‘Disability and Governmentality in the Present’, but it is a book worth reading from the start for the rst time and for the second time. This review cannot cover Foucault’s work but aims to convey something of its value and impact that the authors o er in their highly engaging chapters.

The PMLD ambiguity: articulating the life-worlds of children with profound and multiple learning disabilities

The PMLD Ambiguity questions the passive construction of children and adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) viewing PMLD people as having complex, dynamic and varied forms of shared and personal experience. It is based on Ben’s PhD study of Sam, a nine-year-old boy.