Residential Care

Residential care refers to any group living arrangement where children are looked after by paid staff in a specially designated facility. It covers a wide variety of settings ranging from emergency shelters and small group homes, to larger-scale institutions such as orphanages or children’s homes. As a general rule, residential care should only be provided on a temporary basis, for example while efforts are made to promote family reintegration or to identify family based care options for children. In some cases however, certain forms of residential care can operate as a longer-term care solution for children.

Residential care can be a positive alternative for some girls and boys when it is used appropriately and meets certain standards. For example, small group home living arrangements or supported independent living can work well in cases where children (often older teenagers) don’t feel comfortable in a family setting, or where large groups of siblings want to stay together. Similarly in cases where children have suffered trauma, severe abuse or neglect, have a severe disability or require specialised support, small group settings where trained staff can provide therapeutic care may be an appropriate care option. As much as possible, residential facilities should be small, community-based, organised to resemble a family-type or small-group situation and allow for sufficient staff to provide individualised attention to children.

It is important to distinguish between residential care and institutional care, which should only be used as a last and temporary resort for children. Institutional care refers to large-scale group care within big institutional facilities and has been associated with a wide range of problems for children including physical, social and emotional under-development - with babies and infants under the age of three especially vulnerable to lasting harm. Long periods in an institution can deprive children of positive individual attention from consistent caregivers, make it difficult for them to assimilate back into a family and community, and are often linked to increased risk of sexual and physical abuse, a lack of stimulation, and harsh discipline.

In recent years, deinstitutionalisation has been at the heart of national care reform efforts, which seek to reduce reliance on institutional care and to promote family and community based care options for children instead. This includes efforts to promote ethical volunteerism within residential care centres, educate donors and to avoid proliferation of orphanages and children’s homes after humanitarian emergencies.

The documents in this section outline residential care options for children, examine the damaging impact of institutions, explore family and community-based care alternatives and describe care reform efforts including initiatives around ethical volunteerism.

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Children on Their Own in Cambodia: Mailman School Study Looks at Youth Living in Orphanages and on the Streets

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, 16 Feb 2016

A new video describes a Mailman School-led study to assess the size of the problem. Interspersed with footage of children in informal settlements and orphanages, researchers and officials describe the growth of residential care facilities in Cambodia, many which are operated or funded by foreign charities, including religious groups.

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Video: Reuniting families with Care 4 Kids

Child's i Foundation, 04 Feb 2016

In this video Child's i Foundation works with Care 4 Kids, an orphanage for 53 children, which wants to reintegrate children back into families but had challenges convincing the families that they could provide better care. Child's i Foundation organised an open day for families and invited parents who had taken their children back from Rafiki to explain the benefits of children growing up in families.

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Modelo para la Prevención del Abandono y la Institucionalización de Niños Pequeños: Factsheet #1/2016

RELAF, 01 Feb 2016

Este informe presenta información sobre el problema de institucionalización de niños en América Latina y el Caribe.

Changing mind-sets and Pioneering family social work in Tajikistan: An evaluation of a pilot fostering project and its relation to wider family support services

Dr. Ian Milligan - CELCIS/HealthProm, 01 Feb 2016

This report provides an evaluation of the Keeping and Finding Families Project, a pilot foster care project in Tajikistan.

Policy transfer, social pedagogy and children's residential care in England

David Berridge - Child and Family Social Work, 01 Feb 2016

This paper builds on a recent evaluation of the piloting of the continental European model of social pedagogy (SP) in English residential care. It does three things: it considers the theoretical social policy literature on policy transfer and its implications; discusses European residential care for children and the discipline of SP; and reflects on these debates and the situation of children's residential care in England.

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Video: Praise's story

Child's i Foundation, 31 Jan 2016

This video by Child's i Foundation in Uganda document's the journey of a little girl, Praise, from being abandoned to being placed into to a permanent family. The video shows the tracing process and temporary placement with a foster car

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Changing Mindsets and Practice: Engaging Christian faith based actors in deinstitutionalisation and child welfare systems reforms

Rebecca Nhep, ACCI , 29 Jan 2016

This tool was designed to help those seeking to assist Christian faith-based actors involved in long-term residential care programs make the transition from institutional to non-institutional (family and community-based) child welfare programs.

Video: 5 years later and we don't need an orphanage

Child's i Foundation, 29 Jan 2016

Five years ago, Child's i Foundation founder Lucy Buck set up a 25-bed 'transitional facility' to prove it was possible to place children in need of care into permanent families. Childs' i Foundation piloted an 'emergency care pilot' to see i

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FairStart Foundation Invites You to Join its First Free International Online Education Class for NGO Caregiver Trainers

Fairstart Foundation, 16 Jan 2016

To meet the demand for high quality trainer's training programs in the group care sector, Fairstart Foundation designed an online education program for training groups of caregivers.

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Self-representation questionnaire for youths in residential care

Joana Nunes Patrício, Maria Manuela Calheiros, Ana Catarina Martins - Children and Youth Services Review, 11 Jan 2016

The objective of this study was to develop and test an instrument to measure self-representation of youths in residential care in Portugal.

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