The Care Vortex

24 hours in a residential school for teenage girls in need of care, or - being old beyond their years and out of control - in need of restraint. Situation always volatile, staff always on nerve's edge, life is mostly down to survival. Just. Perceived histories, coping strategies, profit-driven 'care'...

Gillian Davies

If you want to read a book that will lull you to sleep at night, this book is not for you. It is no Little Orphan Annie with pretty pig-tailed children and fairy tale endings. The people in this book are damaged, the details harrowing. But for all that it is a story of heroism, of people reaching out to each other and trying to overcome what has been done.

Now living in Maryport, Cumbria, and working as a freelance writer/editor, Sam Smith has been a psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter & decorator ... working at anything, in fact, which has paid the rent, enabled him to raise his three daughters and which didn't get too much in the way of his writing. With poetry and articles widely published, especially in Britain, he already has 5 poetry collections, 9 novels and a history/biography to his name (see his own website for more details) . He was born in 1946.