Category — Papers written since joining ISP

John Whitwell Managing Director, Integrated Services Programme and formerly of the Cotswold Community.

Paper presented at the conference, “Using high quality residential care to meet the real needs of children: from theory to practice”, on Monday 4th October 2010 at the Northern School of Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy, Leeds.

or “What did I learn from my 27 years working in a therapeutic community that I have found to be useful in other settings?”

GROUP DYNAMICS COURSE – Delivery Notes. ISP Training Course, John Whitwell and Mark Thomas, June 2005 Aims and Objectives Aim: To gain a greater understanding of how groups operate. Objectives: To look at our own experiences of groups. To understand the surface behaviour of groups. To consider what goes on beneath the surface of groups. [...]

Plato came up with the briefest and maybe the best formulation of play. He saw the model of true playfulness in the need of all young creatures, animal and human, to leap. To really leap you have to learn how to use the ground as a springboard and how to land safely. Whenever there is playfulness there is an element of surprise. It’s not predictable or repetitive.

ISP (Integrated Services Programme) was one of the first, if not the first Independent Fostering Provider (IFP) in the UK when it started in 1987. It was created by experienced foster carers who had been part of Kent County Council’s pioneering fostering scheme, for the most troubled and troublesome young people, which started in the 1970s. [Nancy Hazel, "A Bridge to Independence: The Kent Family Placement Project" Blackwells 1981]

Having been specially trained and provided with intensive support to work with young people with highly complex needs, who had previously been thought of as “unfosterable”, the carers who started ISP knew what was needed to make fostering work as an alternative to residential care.