From: Smith College Studies in Social Work, March 1996, 66(2).
Joel Kanter, M.S.W., L.C.S.W.*
Introduction to
"Communicating with Children"
by Clare
Winnicott
Largely unknown
in the United States, Clare Winnicott was one of the postwar leaders in
Britain's child welfare field. After gaining recognition for her wartime
work with evacuated children (where she met her husband, Donald Winnicott),
she
developed Britain's first social work training program for child welfare
workers, integrating a psychodynamic understanding of the child's inner world
with an understanding of social and political realities. While teaching,
she pursued psychoanalytic training and was one of the last analysands of
Melanie
Klein. She then assumed a prominent position with the British government,
directing the nation's training initiatives in the child welfare field.
These initiatives trained thousands of workers in Great Britain and she was
awarded
the Order of the British Empire in 1971 for her leadership in child welfare.
After retiring from government service, she pursued a psychoanalytic practice
and worked at editing and disseminating her husband's
writings.
Throughout her career, Clare Winnicott wrote dozens of
professional papers, most on child welfare work. Although some of her writings
were well-known by British social workers, only one paper was published in
the United States. In her writings, she consistently attempted to integrate
the
child's inner experience with the social reality of family life, the child
welfare system and the larger society. For example, she noted that neglected
and abused children still maintain a deep psychological loyalty and attachment
to their parents; unless the attachment is acknowledged, foster home or
residential placements often disintegrated. Similarly, she described the
child's need for familiar physical possessions several years before husband's
classic paper on "transitional objects". Using these and other observations,
she outlined practical methods that child welfare workers could use to help
their young clients survive, and even thrive, in the face of family and societal
adversity. Similarly, she applied this understanding of children to the
development of child welfare programs and policies.
Unfortunately,
in both the United States and Great Britain, social work has often had
difficulty sustaining an integration of the psychological and social worlds.
Professionals interested in the inner world become psychotherapists and
professionals interested in the outer world move into administration and policy
development. In her work in the field, the classroom, the government
bureaucracy and the consulting room, Clare Winnicott repeatedly reminded social
workers and policy makers that both sides of this understanding are necessary
and possible. In this paper, one of her final contributions before her death in
1984, she draws on both her social work experience with children and her
psychoanalytic work with adults to eloquently discuss how social workers can
more effectively service children in need.
(
* Mr. Kanter is a Senior
Case Manager at Mount Vernon Center for Community Mental Health, Fairfax
County, Virginia, and also has a private practice in Silver Spring, Maryland.
His
edited collection “Face to Face with Children: The Life and Legacy of
Clare Winnicott” will be published by Karnac Books in January,
2004.)