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One of the businesses (AA) in the UK was making losses and staff motivation was poor. If only its management realised it; however, its circumstances could offer it potential salvation.

Late in 2010 the Social Emotional and Behavioural Association (SEBDA), based in the United Kingdom, held an international conference at Keble College, Oxford. The theme was ‘Transforming Troubled Lives’ and 160 delegates arrived from countries around the globe. Around 50 per cent of those attending presented papers. Some of the presentations were short, others longer, some very practically based and others more theoretically focused. A range of papers has already been published in SEBDA's international journal Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (volume 16, issue 3). The chapters in this volume draw upon other presentations given at the conference, which we, as editors, felt were representative of the good practice, provision and policy to be found amongst professionals working both to transform the sometimes troubled lives of children and young people and to ensure that these students are included in educational settings.

This chapter explores issues around children's voice, physical education and social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) in England. Research has previously highlighted the physical, social, effective and cognitive benefits of participation in physical education (PE) (Bailey, 2006). Furthermore, practical, physical and expressive creative experiences in education have been cited as being an important constituent when educating children with SEBD (Cole & Visser, 1998). However, research has yet to address the experiences of the child with SEBD alongside the ideological benefits of their participation in PE. After a period of sensitisation to the field, in a number of pilot schools, a total of 24 weeks were spent immersed in the cultures of two mainstream schools in the West of England. After six weeks of local familiarisation, during which field notes and research diaries were kept, weekly interviews with each of six case study participants commenced. This process resulted in an intensely interactive and personal process of engagement (Sparkes, 1994) which was at times magnified when working in a PE environment. In this research, a PE environment afforded opportunities to spend time and build trust through co-participation in the negotiation of socially constructed roles in the subject. The six case study participants whose experiences have been studied make reference to, amongst others, their affinity towards the physical nature of PE, the perception of it being a subject allowing for freedoms not found elsewhere in the curriculum and one which cemented both the positive and negative social systems in relation to their relationships with peers. Inductive processes of analysis utilising constant comparison methods between data sources have generated data which shows signs of both the idiosyncratic nature of multiple truths and some common ground in their experiences.