ABSTRACT
Our reconstruction of children’s services as children’s spaces entails some reconceptualisation of the work and workers in children’s spaces. We have already suggested the image of the worker needs to change: from technician to reflective practitioner, researcher, co-constructor of knowledge, culture and identity. But we need to go further, to find a theory and practice for working with children in children’s spaces and a type of worker conversant with this theory and practice. The work and worker need to be suited to working with groups of children of varying ages in many types of setting, to relating to the whole child, and to being able to pursue many possibilities. The worker needs to be comfortable in many fields-from ethics to children’s culture-and adopting various identities, including reflective practitioner, researcher and coconstructor.
