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 in Care: Exploitation, Offending and the Denial of Victimhood in a Prosecution-led Culture of Practice

Julie Shaw, Sarah Greenhow - The British Journal of Social Work, 02 Dec 2019

The following article reports upon recent research that explored the perceptions of professionals of the issues that affect the sexual and criminal exploitation of children in care, along with a discussion of the effectiveness of current responses to these issues and the challenges that professionals face.

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A guide to looked after children statistics in England: December 2019

UK Department for Education, 01 Dec 2019

This document provides a guide to looked after children statistics published by the UK Department for Education.

Children Under Institutional Care: Ensuring Quality Care and Safety

Sibnath Deb, Aleena Maria Sunny, Bishakha Majumdar - Disadvantaged Children in India , 24 Nov 2019

The main focus of this chapter is to define institutions, their objectives and the nature of services rendered.

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The looked-after child in time: Creating and analysing longitudinal data on placement history and educational outcomes

Gillian Raab & Cecilia MacIntyre - The International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), 22 Nov 2019

Cross-sectional analysis by the Scottish Government show that the educational outcomes for looked after children are much poorer than for other children in Scotland. This presentation will discuss methods to create a longitudinal data set from these data and thus infer how a child’s lifetime history of care relates to their educational outcomes.

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Detection of behavioral and emotional disorders in residential child care: using a multi-informant approach

Eduardo Martín, Carla González-García, Jorge F. del Valle, Amaia Bravo - Children and Youth Services Review, 21 Nov 2019

The main objective of this study is to analyze the level of agreement between young people in residential care (RC) and their care workers (who, in Spain, are called social educators, and who have a specific university degree).

The United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty

Manfred Nowak, 20 Nov 2019

The aim of this study was to comprehend the magnitude of the situation of children deprived of liberty, its possible justifications and root causes, as well as conditions of detention and their harmful impact on the health and development of children.

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Predictors of the quality of the relationship with caregivers in residential care

Mónica Costa, Beatriz Melim, Semira Tagliabue, Catarina Pinheiro Motab, Paula Mena Matos - Children and Youth Services Review, 20 Nov 2019

This study aims to analyze different level predictors (sociodemographic and institutional history-related, emotional/relational and contextual level) of the quality of the relationship between adolescents and their caregivers, in a sample of 326 adolescent participants (228 female and 98 male) from 20 residential care institutions.

A Dead End for Children: Bulgaria’s Group Homes

Eric Rosenthal, Dragana Ciric Milovanovic, Laurie Ahern - Disability Rights International, 19 Nov 2019

The main finding of this report from Disability Rights International (DRI) is that Bulgaria has replaced a system of large, old orphanages with newer, smaller buildings that are still operating as institutions.

Improving Academic Accomplishments of Youth in Residential Education and Care in Israel: Implementing a Policy Change

Emmanuel Grupper & Yossef Zagury - Education in Out-of-Home Care, 09 Nov 2019

This chapter from the book Education in Out-of-Home Care examines a policy change to affect the overall ecology of youth villages (Israeli residential schools), aimed at emphasizing high school academic achievements as a key to future success.

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Different Perceptions Regarding the Education of Children in Care: The Perspectives of Teachers, Caregivers and Children in Residential Care

Carme Montserrat, Joan Llosada-Gistau, Ferran Casas, Rosa Sitjes - Education in Out-of-Home Care, 09 Nov 2019

This chapter from the book Education in Out-of-Home Care assesses a pilot project aimed at improving the school-based learning of children in residential care in Austria, Croatia, France, Germany and Spain.

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