Understanding, Nurturing and Working Effectively with Vulnerable Children in Schools by Angela Green

Review by Helen Porter

As a tutor on our Area Meeting’s ‘Peaceful Schools’ project I found a lot of parallels with the work of Quaker Angela Greenwood. We Friends have been talking a lot about the need to really hear what others are saying, rather than just reacting to attitudes and behaviour we find difficult. And as the subtitle of this book (‘Why can’t you hear me?’) suggests, this is nowhere more important than in the case of ‘difficult’ children, who are often pushed to react by their own trauma triggers. Although our work in Peaceful Schools is group work, and Angela’s emphasis is on responding to the individual child, both depend upon creating and fostering a compassionate and peaceful culture within a school (as the final chapter in the book illustrates so vividly). Every child in a group benefits from support given to the most vulnerable among them, because it develops their empathy and capacity to work as a whole group.

The book begins with some useful neuroscience and an introduction to attachment theory; it proceeds with heart-wrenching examples of the effects of childhood trauma. The encouraging content recounts the enormous potential in acknowledging, allowing expression of, and healing that trauma, and the book is packed with practical approaches. There is also a chapter on working with vulnerable parents.

Recognising the defence mechanisms that vulnerable children develop – as well as developing emotional ‘containment’ and wellbeing in both children and teachers, and establishing secure relationships for the child – is a challenging and complex process. The book does not minimise this but focuses on how to respond to a child. For example, when looking at the containment of a child who has been triggered into an emotional response, the suggestions include ‘presence, silent attention, waiting patiently – not intruding, not helping until asked – tuning in and bearing frustrations… quietly attuning’ and so on.

Those who work with children on this level are making an enormous contribution to peace in our schools and hence to a peaceful society. The process demands that school staff recognise and work with their own insecurities and instinctive responses, and above all are open to learning. In the six years that we have worked on the Peaceful Schools programmes what has made the most profound impact on me has been the capacity of children to express their own wisdom, given the means, environment and confidence to do so. To pull a child out of trauma-induced behaviour and enable their expression of their own potential seems to me to be one (shining) version of being open to new light, from wherever it may come.

All of this sounds very serious. Greenwood makes the point that joy, interest and excitement, poems, songs and dance are as vital as intellectual and verbal skills in the progress of the damaged child. In all, the book is a powerful example of the need for, and potential in, seeing that of God in every individual – never more essential than in the case of vulnerable children.

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