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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Mental health of children held at a United States immigration detention center

Sarah A. MacLean, Priscilla O. Agyeman, Joshua Walther, Elizabeth K. Singer, Kim A. Baranowski, Craig L. Katz - Social Science & Medicine, 29 Apr 2019

In this cross-sectional study, the authors assessed the mental health of children held at a US immigration detention center over two months in mid-2018.

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Assessing the Outcomes of Alternative Care and Treatment Responses

Amy Conley Wright and Melissa Kaltner - Child Maltreatment, 27 Apr 2019

This chapter from the book Re-Visioning Public Health Approaches for Protecting Children considers how the outcomes of alternative care and treatment in child protection can be assessed and the potential promise of public health approaches to child maltreatment.

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Understanding Trauma and Child Maltreatment Experienced in Indigenous Communities

Deb Duthie, Sharon Steinhauer, Catherine Twinn, Vincent Steinhauer, Bob Lonne - Re-Visioning Public Health Approaches for Protecting Children , 27 Apr 2019

This chapter from the book Re-Visioning Public Health Approaches for Protecting Children critiques historical and contemporary child protection approaches that are viewed as replicating the colonialist practices of child removal and destruction of families/parenting and communities. Using Australia and Canada as examples, it focuses upon three different sources of the disadvantage and distress that Indigenous communities typically experience: the impacts of Colonisation; intergenerational trauma; and the ongoing social, economic, legal and political inequalities that stem from deep-seated inequity.

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Approaches to realising the rights of young people leaving out of home care

Emily Munro - Leaving Care and the Transition to Adulthood, 25 Apr 2019

This chapter from the book Leaving Care and the Transition to Adulthood explores progress towards realizing the rights of young people in and leaving out of home care in Australia, Sweden and the UK.

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Position paper: The right to live and grow up in a family for all children

Eric Rosenthal - Disability Rights International, European Network on Independent Living, Validity Foundation, and TASH, 25 Apr 2019

This position paper outlines the position of Disability Rights International, European Network on Independent Living, and TASH on residential care and the right of all children to live and grow up in a family.

Lost and Found: Counter-Narratives of Dis/Located Children

Frank Golding & Jacqueline Z. Wilson - Children’s Voices from the Past, 24 Apr 2019

This chapter summarises a case that goes beyond traditional welfare archives to reveal a story of multi-generational welfare custody, exemplifying the historic ideology underpinning child welfare in Victoria, Australia.

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‘A Poor Prospect Indeed’: The State’s Disavowal of Child Abuse Victims in Youth Custody, 1960–1990

Ben Jarman and Caroline Lanskey - Societies, 18 Apr 2019

Drawing on original documentary research, this article aims to explain why and how state authorities in England and Wales failed to recognise the victimisation of children held in penal institutions between 1960 and 1990, and argues that this failure constitutes a disavowal of the state’s responsibility.

The consequences of foster care versus institutional care in early childhood on adolescent cardiometabolic and immune markers

Slopen, Natalie; Tang, Alva; Nelson, Charles A.; Zeanah, Charles H.; McDade, Thomas W.; McLaughlin, Katie A.; Fox, Nathan - Psychosomatic Medicine, 18 Apr 2019

This study, part of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, compared the consequences of long-term high-quality foster care versus standard institution-based care which began in early childhood on cardiometabolic and immune markers assessed at the time of adolescence.

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Children’s rights and residential care in Taiwan: An exploration of the tensions between global standards and culturally situated practices

Wan-Yu Chiu & Helen Charnley - International Social Work, 15 Apr 2019

This article examines the tension between the rhetoric of children’s rights and the realities of residential care for children in Taiwan.

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Parental availability of support and frequency of contact: The reports of youth in residential care

Shalhevet Attar-Schwartz - Children and Youth Services Review, 12 Apr 2019

This study was based on a random cluster sample of 1409 youth, aged 13 to 20, in Israeli educational residential care settings (RCSs) designed for youth from underprivileged backgrounds.

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