Introduction

This book is intended as a companion volume to our earlier collection of essays, which appeared in this series as Admission to Residential Care (Brearley et al. 1980). We began that earlier work with an enthusiasm that was encouraged by the knowledge that there was relatively little substantial written material on the subject of admission to residential living, in spite of the fact that most social workers are frequently involved in the admission process. In developing the ideas and material we became aware of an even more striking gap in the general literature available about leaving residential care. What follows, therefore, is an attempt to draw together the existing writings about social work practice with a variety of different groups of people in care in the light of our own experiences. Much of the existing material is anecdotal, or in the form of exhortations or generalized prescriptions. Our intention is to develop common themes around which emerge approaches to good practice which we believe can be applied to the range of contexts presented.