Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care Vol 1(1) August/September 2002

Contents

Editorial  Andrew Kendrick
What Works in Residential Care: Making it Work  Lesley Archer

What works in residential care is complex. The quality of practice does not just depend on how care workers operate with, and on behalf of, the young people they look after. Quality of care depends also on how residential care and its staff are regarded and worked with by the parent organisation and the networks that surround each young person and each residential establishment. In order to understand what works and how to make it work, residential workers, field social workers and managers have to work together with young people, their families, and members of other networks such as schools and health services.

Catching Children as They Fall:  Mental Health Promotion in Residential Child Care in East Dunbartonshire  Michael van Beinum, Andy Martin and Chris Bonnett

This article will outline the first years of a joint project to develop a dedicated mental health service for looked after and accommodated children, which was developed between residential child care managers in East Dunbartonshire and the North Glasgow Community Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) team. It will start by describing the events that led up to the setting of the project, and go on to outline the project itself. It will conclude with a discussion of some of the philosophical underpinnings of the project and suggestions for future developments.

Looking After Health: A Joint Working Approach to Improving the Health Outcomes of Looked After and Accommodated Children and Young People Anne Grant, John Ennis and Fiona Stuart

Looked after and accommodated children and young people represent one of the most vulnerable groups within our society. Inequality and disadvantage impact upon every aspect of their lives, but the health inequalities which they suffer are particularly disturbing. If we are to improve the health outcomes of these young people, then all agencies must commit themselves to working together. Only if we foster a joint working approach can we hope to make a positive impact upon what are wholly unacceptable health outcomes. This paper examines current factors contributing to these poor outcomes, and goes on to describe one project, the Residential Care Health Project (RCHP), which has been encouraging and developing a multi-agency approach to improving the situation for one group of children and young people. The RCHP has been working collaboratively with social work, health and other support agencies to address these issues as they affect local authority residential units for young people in Edinburgh, East Lothian and Midlothian.

Understanding the Resident Group Ruth Emond

Residential care has long been considered the poor cousin of case work . The low morale of residential workers and their sense of isolation from child care policy and practice developments have been well documented. Over recent times there has been a move to raise the profile of such practitioners and to identify the complex and skilled role that they perform in the lives of the young people in their care. In many ways this has focused on the work undertaken with the individual young person. Both the inspection process (in terms of identifying care plans, work with individuals and families) and the research approach taken have compounded such a perspective. As a result there has been a lack of information about how staff work with young people as a group, living together and sharing day to day experiences. More noticeably, there is a general lack of understanding as to the way in which the group functions and the meanings such groups may have for young people living in residential care. It is the aim of this paper to highlight the ways in which young people manage their groups and to identify the functions that such groups serve. It argues that residential staff need to assess not only the individual young person in their care but also the residents as a group. From this assessment of group functioning, practitioners can tap into the resource of the group and strengthen its positive influence as well as discourage and address the negative impact of fellow residents on the individual.

Two and a Half Cheers for the National Care Standards Kirstie Maclean

Nineteen volumes of National Care Standards were issued by the Scottish Executive in the Spring of 2002. The two volumes which are most relevant and important for residential child care owners, staff, children and young people and their parents, are the Standards relating to 'Care Homes for Children and Young People' and 'School Care Accommodation Services' . It is extremely important that units and schools familiarise themselves with the standards and audit their services against them; they are the tool that will be used by the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care (the Care Commission) when it registers and inspects services. It is therefore vital that we celebrate the major step forward which the Standards represent for looked after and accommodated children and other children living away from home.

A Children’s Champion for Scotland Susan Elsley

with children and young people now see light at the end of the proverbial tunnel with the recent positive steps towards the establishment of a Commissioner's Office in Scotland. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee of the Scottish Parliament completed their inquiry into a Children's Commissioner earlier this year and published their report (Scottish Patliament, 2002). This endorsed the Committee's support for the establishment of a Commissioner in Scotland. The Scottish Executive, in its response to the report, stated that there was, in principle, a good case for a Commissioner for Children and Young People. The next step will be to introduce a non-executive bill, led by the Education, Culture and Sport Committee into the Scottish Parliament. This is hoped to be in the autumn of 2002 to meet the demands of the legislative timetable in advance of the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2003.

Close Enough? Professional Closeness and Safe Caring Andrew Kendrick and Mark Smith

In countries around the world, residential child care has been rocked by scandals of abuse of children and young people by the people who were supposed to be caring for them. In the UK, in particular, the reaction to these revelations has been to implement a raft of measures that seek to ensure that nothing of the same nature or scale might happen again. However, there can be tensions between the implementation of such measures and the developmental and emotional needs of children and young people in residential care. In this paper, we outline recent policy and legislative developments and address some of the issues which we see as important in attempting to strike a balance between safe caring and quality caring, between professional closeness and abusive practice.

Back to the Future: Review of ‘Positive Residential Practice: Learning the Lessons of the 1990s’ and ‘Champions for Children: The Lives of Modern Child Care Pioneers’ Ian Milligan

Two recent books have much to say about child care today because, in contrasting ways, they set recent developments in residential care in the context of history and development of child welfare services more generally.