This is an interesting thread, but one to which I can add little of any theoretical value. I do though enjoy the apposite suggestions John makes from so many unexpected quarters.

When thinking of the child-headed households, however, I am reminded of a couple of scenarios that I think have relevance.

The first relates to a young man I used to supervise in the mid 1970s, when working as a probation officer in Nottingham (I'll call the young man "Len"). On the surface, he was all that was ever intended by the phrase "feckless youth": 18 years old, permanently unemployed when not committing petty burglaries, without true friends and without any ambition and hope. I had supervised Len for for almost two years and we got on pretty well, largely because in his very large, fatherless family it was the 14-16 year old boys who were the principal reprobates and his younger brothers (one of whom I also supervised) had already taken over his mantle in the family as the burglars-in-chief.

I had almost got Len to consider seriously making a fresh start away from his family when, after months of non-arrest, he was accused of stealing a wallet from one of my colleagues when he came to report to see me at my office. I was always very sceptical about the case against him. The wallet was stolen from an office in a corridor he could not easily have visited in the time available and the wallet and its contents were not recovered. The police said Len has incriminated himself by saying somthing about the expiry date of one of the credit cards but that seemed pretty vague and might have been said by Len in the hope that if he cooperated a bit, he might be freed on bail.

Well, he was released on bail and remained out of custody even though he was committed for trial to the Crown Court, since the alleged offence, if proved, would trigger several other matters for which 18 months before he had been given suspended sentences.

On the assumption that he would be found not guilty, I made progress in arranging for Len to go to a Probation Home (with its own farm) in Kent (150 miles away) where I had spent two happy weeks during my own probation officer training. We drove down there together and I left him happily settling in. He liked the idea of working with animals and was vowing to actually try to make a success of this job. He even wrote to me to confirm that he really getting stuck into his new job - despite the early mornings.

A week before his trial I was contacted by the Probation Home with a less sanguine assessment. Len hadn't done anything wrong, but they didn't feel he was suited to the experience they were offering. They'd put him on a train home.

I was called as a prosecution witness - against my will, because I always thought it unlikely that he stole the wallet. Apart from any real evidence against him, he denied the offence, and if there one positive thing I could say about Len, it was that was usually truthful! When he was found guilty, the only non-custodial option that might have saved him from imprisonment had just broken down and he was given a three year sentence: 15 months for the theft of the wallet and 21 months activation of previous suspended sentences.

So what's the relevance of this tale? I think it says much about personal investment in a community. While Len thought he'd like to join this new community, it probably had more to do with his desire to please me, my own "haloed" memories of the happy time I'd spent there, and the pressure of the impending court case in getting Len to commit himself to an uncharacteristically positive decision.

In the end, a city kid with no history of work (or success) failed to succeed in working on a farm where he knew no-one and could turn to no-one for support. He'd acquiesced in a decision, but the decision hadn't really been taken by him.

The second scenario is one related by AS Neill in his book about progressive teaching methods at Summerhill school, where he was the head teacher. Here, he had just caught up with a disturbed and unhappy young pupil who was throwing stones at the glass windows. Instead of falling into a censoring, discipling mode, AS Neal picked up some stones and starting throwing them at the window as well. That proved to be a decisive moment in getting that young person to feel that their point of view was being taken seriously. The cost in terms of broken school windows was nothing when compared with the benefit of beginning to engage positively with the young person concerned.

Sorry about the length of this post. What I'm trying to point to is the isolation of child-headed households and the need for them to be more than simply consulted about the community. They need a greater stake. This might be provided by letting them decide to a large extent who the older membes of the community are to be. These older members will need to be chosen with a view to their fulfilling almost a family role in relation to the children. After all, the children don't have the depth of relationship normally found in more extended family groups.

The children need to be listened to even when they may be asking for something older people might be reluctant to grant them, and if it thought necessary to deny their requests, the fullest of explanations over the longest of times may be required to retain their commitment to a project that will certainly fail if it does not command their eventual support.

edit to correct Neill and Summerhill