1.3 The Heritage Concerned and its Significance
The field of history and heritage to be covered was captured in the title of the project, and its significance was succinctly explained in the Second Round grant application of August 2009:
During the 20th Century a fundamental change began which is still unfolding. A key moment came in 1945, when the term "maladjusted" was used in "The Handicapped Pupils and School Health Service Regulations 1945" for "Pupils who show evidence of psychological disturbance or emotional instability and who require special educational treatment in order to affect their personal, social or emotional readjustment". This was the first official recognition of a group of children who required care rather than punishment, but the idea that difficult and disturbed children were in some sense 'handicapped' rather than naughty or bad had been growing steadily between the wars. Before and during the Second World War a handful of residential therapeutic schools, clinics, camps and hostels were set up to 'treat' rather than to punish or 'train' children we would now recognise as having severe emotional, social and behavioural difficulties. These early pioneers developed a therapeutic approach which had a major influence on legislation and practice, contributing significantly to the 1955 Underwood Report on Maladjusted Children, and helping to change professional and public attitudes towards children and child care in the post-war period.
And more specifically:
During the 1920s and 1930s the way that traumatised and abused children were viewed began to change. A small number of pioneering schools, camps, hostels and homes emerged as "laboratories" for "new ideas in education, citizenship and community" in which the children were involved in their own and others' educational, emotional and social growth. Now largely closed and many forgotten, these 'experimental' communities significantly influenced post-war child care legislation, and helped change understandings and expectations of distressed and distressing children, and the people and places who live and work with them.
The Trust's position in relation to this field of heritage was also briefly outlined:
The Archive and Study Centre holds the archives of, or significant archive and oral history material relating to thirty different therapeutic schools and communities. ... The rich range of material available includes case files, logbooks, and other confidential records; potentially sensitive correspondence, photographs, videos, films and recordings; art work and literary magazines produced by the children and young people; annual reports, prospectuses and other publications; unpublished talks; as well as objects, including a pair of National Health spectacles, trophies, and a handmade hessian wall-hanging.