Nurture Groups in School: Principles and Practice. By Marjorie Boxall (Paul Chapman Publishing, 16.99, 020 7330 1234)
Reviewed by Jennie Lindon, early years consultant.
This powerful and immensely positive book describes the rationale and practice of nurture groups for children who cannot cope with the demands of mainstream primary school.
The author has a wealth of expertise dating from the 1970s in developing a supportive, carefully structured experience for children whose emotional and social age is seriously awry from their chronological age. Marjorie Boxall explains and shows clearly through examples how disruptive early experiences can mean that children have not acquired any understanding of a predictable social world. They need the rhythm of caring routines, physical contact and adults who show consistent affection for them as individuals.
They need safe time and space to be the two-and three-year-olds that their previous experiences blocked.
The book shows very effectively how nurturing can support primary school-age children as they fill in the gaps of their emotional experience, to a point where careful re-entry into mainstream schooling is possible.
Marjorie Boxall is writing about the school years, but her moving descriptions of what can go wrong has an equally crucial message for good practice in early years settings. Young children need to have developed a sense of emotional security and a trust in adults. This book is a very timely reminder that early years practice must hold on to and value the nurturing underpinning of children's experience. Care and a caring approach are in no way optional extras!
