Boys’ Stories of Their Time in a Residential School

Mark Smith is Professor of Social Work at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Prior to that he worked at the University of Strathclyde, where he set up the first Master's programme in Residential Child Care in the UK, and at the University of Edinburgh, where, latterly, he served as Head of Social Work. Before entering academia, he worked in and managed residential care establishments for almost 20 years. He has published widely on residential child care and on social work more generally. He and his family maintain direct involvement in child care through fostering.

• 1. Introduction, 2. The List D Schools and St Roch’s, 3. The role of the De La Salle Brothers in the approved and List D Schools, 4. Positioning myself in St Roch’s, 5. The backgrounds of the St Roch’s boys, 6. Education in its widest sense, 7. A sense of care, 8. Discipline and abuse, 9. Moving on and looking back, 10. The age of mistrust: Changing patterns of care and upbringing in neoliberalism, 11. Making sense of the narrative gap, 12. Epilogue: Looking back with sadness and not a little anger

This is a wonderful book. It is so important, not only because it provides a fresh perspective on the unremitting abuse narratives that have come to characterise public understanding of residential child care, but also because it is a good exemplar of how detailed case-studies can serve to challenge received narratives that do not tell the full story.Dr Ros BurnettResearch Associate, formerly Reader in Criminology, at the Centre for Criminology, University of OxfordA brave, powerful and essential corrective to the singular story that has dominated accounts of residential care in recent decades. This book champions the many positive experiences of care in which joy, pain, laughs, and friendships capture the complexity and relational closeness of personal narratives that too often go unheard.Sebastian MonteuxFormer residential care worker, registered mental health nurse and lecturer in mental health nursing at Abertay University