ABSTRACT
This chapter explores children’s re-integration into contexts outside the family. Many children rejoining their families have to enter new schools, older adolescents will seek employment or join training schemes and all have to fashion friendships and social relationships in the local community. Returns may have to be made to several contexts; to school, and for older children to employment or to vocational training. A particularly important experience for many children is return to school. The importance of school for children looked after had not, until recently, received much attention in social work literature. There is less streaming by ability, more expressive and group activities, more play, music and drama, all of which encourage in children a sense of membership and group participation. However, it is interesting to discover that the number of children leaving and returning in this way was still low, about ten per year in the largest of the inner city schools visited.
