The role and task of Residential Child Care today – starting a discussion and consultation
The RCC sector needs to be understood as a series of responses to highest levels of social, emotional, psychological unmet need.
Residential Child Care provides a diversity of services for children. It is commonly known under the one title, Residential Child Care, however there are many differentiated provisions for differentiated needs. It is one sector with many sub-sectors. A range of types of homes is required offering targeted interventions.
Residential Child Care is a plurality not a singularity.
It can be said there is no such thing as a children’s home as a singular concept to be repeated as a formula, rather each home is to be created and is unique, there is a multiplicity of forms.
The following graphic show the differentiation with each sub-sector being different shapes and sizes. Within each will be many settings each unique in their provision. It is a necessity that each home is appreciated as unique and not subsumed into a single generic descriptor.
To do so, as in the use of the approach with the focus on sufficiency is to seek numbers of generic provision, rather than to seek specificity, provision that meets co-occurring needs.
Positive Residential Child Care is found in positive children’s services. It is important that Residential Child Care is given a supportive facilitating environment in which to work.
The role and task of Residential Child Care is bound by the definitions made about its resources, recipients, partners, co-producers and communities.
For example, if we look at today’s children’s homes with the average age of 14+ and an average stay of only around 6 months then this is very different to that even up to 5 years ago, and extremely different to a European experience or account. The orientation for an ‘upbringing’, as in Europe, is different to that for an intervention, as in England. Clearly, we have more of the latter today, though our tradition is of the former.
A European valuing and definition of the role and task brings a different situation. Two telling examples are the length of stay across Europe allowing an ‘upbringing, and that the European is a mostly a graduate not vocational workforce. If we wish to achieve these ambitions we are in need of a strategy that can make the structural rearrangements necessary within Children’s Services.
An agreed set of Values and Principles can act to align, contain and connect, signalling a new direction and vision for Residential Child Care being seen a positive provision for young people; children’s homes as they need to be and can be.
