Shunted from pillar to post all their young lives - sometimes in and out of 20 institutions before they're 16 - some children in trouble never recover, and may wind up spending much of the rest of their lives in prison. While some of them are thieves or tearaways others are kids who've had a raw deal from life and are in desperate need of help and stability. Harold Williamson looks at two alternatives to the current cry for short, sharp, shock treatment. Dolrhyd School in the Welsh mountains believes it has an answer. There cockney, scouse and geordie kids are made to face up to a life vastly different from their day-to-day, street urchin existence. The other alternative is an experimental home at Greenwich where a last-ditch struggle goes on to prepare broken apathetic teenagers for the outside world.

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