THE BLESSINGS:
Just the same, any institution which often had hot chocolate and cheese and Ryvita for breakfast, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding frequently on Sundays and the best assortment of English puddings, probably in the British Isles, clearly had something special to commend it.
It also held two interesting Chapel Services in its own attractive Chapel every Sunday and a Meeting at the beginning and end of every term which everyone attended and at which the Community's 1932 Charter was read.
Moreover the familiar relationships between adult and child, right across the board, were impressive indeed for someone like me coming from the wicked world of business. We had one day off a week, which started at 9am and finished at midnight. In my early days I found it difficult to believe that what I was doing was actually called work; swimming, going to the Cinema, eating a meal even were inextricably part of what I considered was leisure. No one could pretend that anything very special was happening in the way of treatment for the children, but the quality of the care - clothes, shoes, food, the culture, standard of cleanliness - was outstanding; the environment was pretty special too and, vitally so, the children felt safe. Many children flourished in this stimulating atmosphere, but none of us, except Leila Rendel, had any real knowledge. In the Eighties, knowledge was to replace care. In the nineties I just hope that care is given equal attention.
I drove for an hour to Westgate on one occasion to hear the already legendary Mrs. Dockar Drysdale speak, only to find out on arrival that she had been switched and had already spoken in the morning. But there were her writings and I had had two boys from the Mulberry Bush in the first group I looked after, and I just knew something beneficial had happened to them. And there were of course, Bowlby, Winnicott, and Bettelheim as well as practitioners like Neill, Lyward and Balbernie, but they were shadowy figures to the people on the coal face.
When you start out and are completely ignorant, as we were, you seek the Holy Grail so earnestly for immediate answers as to why John wets his bed, Peter soils, Michael has 10 tempers a day, Judy destroys everything that belongs to her, Patrick disrupts and Edward steals.
We sought to have trained staff and failing that we wanted to have training ourselves. Leila Rendel agreed (she had already drawn up plans to introduce on site training for Residential Social Workers in the 50's, some 35 years ahead of the Warner Report's recommendations). But she never liked to be pinned down on her philosophy. "I have always believed in sitting on the wall and soaking up the best that is around." Her eclecticism included more than a passing flirtation with Kurt Hahn and the ideals of Gordonstoun. Caldecott boys rose early, ran a mile to the woods and back, and immersed themselves in a cold shower daily before breakfast. Individual punishment runs were supervised by senior boys on bicycles and a system of earned privileges for older children was maintained. About 10 boys, one at a time over the years, moved from the Community on special scholarships to Gordonstoun and many of these blossomed in later life. Leila Rendel was a governor there and definitely liked the blending of the Gordonstoun and the Caldecott principles of progressive education.
Men, or House-fathers as they were then known, were still fairly thin on the ground in residential work. And women at the Community were expected to dress like women (so as not to confuse the children perhaps). Trousers were banned. Skirts and dresses were de rigueur. Without being unkind to the Caldecott ladies, dressing in skirts hardly made them more feminine. One morning the boys at my breakfast table were more than fascinated by a female visitor from the Mulberry Bush. Her hair was beautifully coiffured, she was elegantly dressed, adorned with jewellery and was wearing an intoxicating scent. I knew then what Leila Rendel meant.