Waiting to be found: papers on children in care

edited by Andrew Briggs, London, Tavistock Clinic Series, Karnac, 2012, 320 pp., £25.59 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-78049-066-3

It was with enthusiasm that I agreed to review this book both because of my interest in and experience with looked after children and also as it is a book dedicated to Hamish Canham, who was a dear friend and a highly esteemed colleague. Yet, when the book landed on my doorstep, it took me a long time before I was able to delve into it. It was only when I realised that the sadness re-evoked at the premature and heart-breaking loss of this remarkable man was preventing me from getting on with the task of reading, that I was able to start. When I eventually began to read my mood was gradually transformed to one of hopefulness, inspiration and curiosity. Perhaps the timing of the publication of this book, roughly 10 years after Hamish Canham’s death, is of significance as it has enabled his ideas to be disseminated and for further developments to take place.

The title of the book, succinct and poetic, tells us what the book is about: firstly and most poignantly, it is about children in care who are forever waiting to be found by foster carers. Secondly, the title brings immediately to mind the pain of uncertainty, rooted in ‘waiting’, which is at the heart of the sufferings of children in transition. Thirdly, there is the symbolic idea of the child being found, not only in terms of having an actual place to live in, but in terms of being helped to find a home for their troubled inner worlds. However, primarily it is taken from Canham’s writing about children’s homes which he likened to ‘station waiting rooms with children waiting to move on to their next placement and staff waiting for the next shift …’

The simple and somewhat open structure of the book enables the content to speak for itself, as it were, without the chapters being restricted to one theme or another. The book is divided into two main sections: Canham’s six chapters about children