ABSTRACT
The hostel was called Reynolds House and accommodated twelve boys. This number was not hit upon just by chance. Our hope was that the staff might supplement the generally ameliorative influence of the hostel environment in two principal but very important ways: through personal one-to-one relationships between staff and boys on the one hand, and through the use of group dynamics on the other. To be successful with the former, small numbers were essential, as the kind of relationship aimed at was of the family type, and indeed it was hoped that at one level the community would live and operate very much as a family. For this kind of approach and relationship it was hardly practicable to try to cope with more than twelve at the most, and eight might have been ideal, though in the early stages of planning the proposal to restrict accommodation to eight was rejected. It was rejected because the other aspect of community life that was envisaged – the use of group influences or group dynamics through the medium of shared responsibility was hardly feasible with so small a number. For this purpose twenty-four or thirty might have been ideal, and the smallest practicable number was twelve. Twelve therefore as the maximum from one point of view and the minimum from the other, seemed to be the optimum, so twelve was the number decided upon. Experience brought no modification of our view on this subject, and did strongly confirm the view that twelve was something like a minimum for the satisfactory exercise of shared responsibility. During the rather long building-up period, when numbers were less than twelve, this aspect of the work was almost a total failure, but once twelve was reached it became a great success. The sceptic may be tempted to say ‘Naturally, you didn’t expect it to succeed with less than twelve, so you didn’t put into it what was necessary to make it succeed.’ He will be mistaken. I entirely forgot I had said that twelve was the fewest with which shared responsibility could be successful, and as I have always used this instrument I put it into operation as soon as the hostel opened. As the months went by I became more and more depressed at its failure and eventually expressed the opinion that shared responsibility was a splendid thing for full-time residential establishments 22but was not suitable for hostels, giving reasons. I had no sooner done so than things began to improve, the house-meeting becoming dynamic and purposeful, and this change came about as soon as the numbers reached twelve.
