Self-harm incidents in custody in England and Wales recently reached a record high, increasing particularly in women’s establishments. This article explores experiences of self-harm by drawing on interviews with care-experienced women in prison in England. Using prior care experience as the underlying thread enables us to explore this topic through a different lens. Considering the functions of self-harm that women described, including the communication, alleviation and ending of pain, highlights the painful lives of those experiencing both state care and control institutions. This reveals that women have often been failed across different systems, sometimes with devastating consequences. Urgent attention must be paid to the system failures affecting those previously deemed by the state to require welfare and protection.

This paper considers the importance of material objects for looked after and adopted children integrated as part of life story work practices. Conducting life story work is believed to be good practice within direct work with looked after children in England and there are a range of diverse practices, including life story books, later life letters and memory boxes. Through a creative design project developing a playful memory product for looked after children, we have had the opportunity to capture sector perspectives on life story work approaches and these are interspersed throughout this commentary. Combining multi-disciplinary theoretical perspectives and these sector insights, we explore how special material objects are important for children’s identity and continuity of sense of self. The paper highlights the importance of children telling their own stories of these objects, giving them agency and control over their life story narratives. In a context of austerity, life story work may not be prioritised by social workers who have many other competing demands and limited resources. We emphasise the need for professionals to recognise the value children give to objects and to provide them with opportunities to both keep these safe during placement moves and to tell their own story through their objects alongside more traditional, formal life story work. The recommendations have implications for children in out of home care in many country contexts, not just England where the research has been conducted.

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I wish someone would explain why I am in care": the impact of children and young people's lack of understanding of why they are in out-of-home care on their well-being and felt security. Child and Family Social Work, 25(51),[97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106]

This paper draws on an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Nurturing Attachments groupwork programme provided by AdoptionPlus for adoptive families in England. Twenty-nine adoptive families participated in a longitudinal quantitative study, completing questionnaires and validated measures before and after group attendance. The Nurturing Attachments programme, informed by Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (Hughes, Golding & Hudson, 2015), was developed to help foster and adoptive parents strengthen their relationships with the child and support children who had experienced developmental traumas. Most parents were caring for children who were late placed and who had complex and overlapping difficulties. Post training, parents reported increased confidence in their own parenting and statistically significant positive changes in self-efficacy and in their capacity for reflective functioning. However, unexpectedly, adoptive parents identified more children as having greater emotional and peer difficulties and fewer with symptoms of conduct disorders. This paper focuses on the relationship between perceptions of adopted children's behaviour and parental reflective functioning and self-efficacy. It explores whether improved reflective functioning, particularly curiosity, led to a better understanding of their child's behaviours and thus an increased recognition of emotional distress. Recommendations for supporting adoptive parents, including the importance of supporting parental reflective functioning, within a wraparound package of support during childhood and adolescence are made.