ABSTRACT
David Dean reviews where the school is at, six weeks into the new arrangements involving different 'venues' and major new staffing arrangements. He likens it to a second adolescence for Raddery. Perhaps it is the vision shared with the children, the commitment of staff to work together, and the shared community experience which are Raddery's most generally transferable assets to other places. These events illustrate and perhaps express symbolically that there are neither simple conclusions no easy answers in working with emotionally damaged children at Raddery. Perhaps one or two of the children might have remained in 'ordinary school' if enough community support could have been mustered. The children that did come would have come alongside on-going plans for working with other family members. The idea of insisting on formally re-admitting children who have absconded re-inforces this point. The intention here was to individualize each child's needs, rather than to label children in terms of categories of disabilities.
