Glebe House features in Church Times
Glebe House, which works with teenage boys displaying 'harmful sexual behaviour' appeared in a feature at The Church Times
The Quaker trustee-governed Glebe House has been praised in a Church Times article for its work with teenage boys displaying ‘harmful sexual behaviour’.
Citing a ten-year piece of research which found that only sixteen per cent of forty-three young men at Glebe House reoffended after leaving – compared with forty-four per cent of a comparison group – freelance writer Sarah Woolley wrote: ‘Stories of children soaking up trauma in their early years are commonplace at Glebe House. Most of the boys there have survived neglect and abuse, and about half of them also contend with a learning disability.’
The article also asks Carole Thomas – a Quaker, like all the Glebe House trustees – about how working on harmful sexual behaviour connects with her faith. She said: ‘Well, I guess it’s about looking at God in everyone… And giving a chance to people who haven’t really had a chance, and challenging the response of society to reject them and lock them up. It’s also about avoiding and reducing the number of victims in the future.’
Glebe House was established after Quaker psychiatric social worker David Wills wrote to the Friend in 1935 calling for non-penal, non-custodial and therapeutic alternatives for young men who ‘were profoundly dissatisfied with themselves, saw themselves as failures, and hated themselves’.
The concern was picked up by Quaker probation officer Geoffrey Brogden and then later adopted by the wider Quaker community as a common vision until, in 1965, Glebe House opened.
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