ABSTRACT
For many years now, the tide of opinion has been against placing children and young people in residential care, and there has been a commensurate burgeoning of fostering and adoption services. There is a large number of children and young people who, when things go wrong at home, are placed almost as a matter of course in foster care. Very often these children are not suited to family life, and there is a tragic mismatch between foster carers who want to provide children with a substitute home and the children whose level of disturbance means they place an impossible burden on any family where they go to live. Working with children in the care system inevitably stirs up deep-seated anxieties, and many of the difficulties encountered in residential settings - and indeed in the wider social service field - often stem from insufficient attention being paid to the potentially corrosive effects of long-term anxiety within teams.
