Growing up in residential care

This article examines how the healthy development of children and adolescents can take place in residential institutions. The article argues that at the heart of emotional development is the capacity to tolerate anxiety and to think about experiences. Drawing on the theories of the psychoanalysts Wilfred Bion and Isabel Menzies Lyth in particular, the article examines which factors in the lives of children and adolescents, in staff groups and in organisational structures facilitate or impede the emotional development of children. It is also argued that for certain children and adolescents residential care is the placement of choice.