MEDIA RELEASE | NCERCC returns with Residentialism and the Children’s Residential Network.
With new thinking in a publication with the title ‘Residentialism’ the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care (NCERCC) has launched its new website and networks.
“Residentialism is concerned with a children’s care system where children are in the right place at the right time. A child is living residentially because it is the right decision, taken after assessment, for this child right now; a residential environment is a good, therapeutic, practical and pragmatic place to be”.
The publication includes a definition of Residentialism that includes ‘an informed and conscientious positive regard and relationship for residential options and good practice for and with children’; (being) active in creating resilience, materially, psychologically, organisationally, culturally, for residential opportunities; acting to ensure there is enough availability of residential options, that there is capacity of number and models of care beyond sufficiency to enable choice.
The focus for NCERCC is positive practice and practitioners and positive policy. Their aim is to connect everyone concerned with positive Residential Child Care with evidence informed practice and policy, theory and research.”
The website includes two minisites Re:thinking Residential Child Care and Re:thinking Children’s Commissioning. NCERCC sees these as spaces to engage and facilitate thinking, discussion and development, to enable continuous reflection and to improve practice. Over the recent years NCERCC sees there has been a focus on delivery but ‘there is the need to find the space to think together, to think deeper and wider as to ‘why’, connecting theory and practice’.
Jonathan Stanley, NCERCC Principal Partner, has been involved in and with residential care for 45 years. “ My career so far has equal time working for local authority, voluntary organisations and private organisations across care, education and health as well as involvement in policy and research. NCERCC associates have a wealth of knowledge and experience, and we appreciate that these exist across the entire sector, so the work of NCERCC is to enable communication and connection constructing the Residential Child Care community”.
NCERCC will be working to support and development Residential Child Care by people involved in and with it, that is national and local government, regulators, children’s organisations, providers, researchers, social workers, parents, and most importantly young people. “ NCERCC has always been at the centre of knowledge, practice and policy and we plan to bring that expertise to every home across England. We aim o be where we are needed – supporting a practitioner or manager, a home, a provider, or a government. NCERCC has plans for newsletters, analysis, commentary, websites, blogs, vlogs, regional groups/meetings, national conferences.
“People in Residential Child Care we’ve been meeting are excited to have the return of the Children’s Residential Network (CRN) once again connecting every children’s home across England. People have been recalling the “vibrant network and conferences” NCERCC organised, “Someone called the CRN a community, another called it a movement, and our conferences festivals. That’s something we’ve aimed to communicate in the Residentialism ” The CRN is about practitioners connecting, communicating and contributing to their own active community. The plans are to support the development of a professional association, initially with a focus on Registered Managers
Contact Jonathan Stanley
07734484134