Children And Residential Experiences

The CARE practice model provides a framework for residential care based on a theory of how children develop, motivating both children and staff to adhere to routines, structures, and processes, minimizing the potential for interpersonal conflict. The core principles of the model have a strong relationship to positive child outcomes, and can be incorporated into a wide variety of programs and treatment models.

This highly practical book, written by experienced practitioners and academics, is a core text about the practice of residential childcare, where workers and children share a common lifespace.

Children and young people in care who have been traumatized need a therapeutic environment where they can heal and which meets their emotional and developmental needs. This book provides a model of care for traumatized children and young people, based on theory and practice experience pioneered at the Lighthouse Foundation, Australia. The authors explain the impact of trauma on child development, drawing on psychodynamic, attachment and neurobiological trauma theories. The practical aspects of undertaking therapeutic care are then outlined, covering everything from forming therapeutic relationships to the importance of the home environment and daily routines. The book considers the totality of the child's experience at the individual, group, organization and community levels and argues that attention to all of these is essential if the child is to achieve wellness. Case material from both children and carers are used throughout to illustrate both the impact of trauma and how children have been helped to recovery through therapeutic care. This book will provide anyone caring for traumatized children and young people in a residential setting with both the understanding and the practical knowledge to help children recover. It will be essential reading for managers and decision-makers responsible for looked after children, child care workers such as residential and foster carers, youth workers, social workers, mental health workers and child welfare academics.

Now more than ever there is a need to ensure that best practices are being used in residential programs. As the focus on costs and outcomes increase, residential programs must clearly demonstrate that the interventions provided are efficient and effective. Readers will learn how to: Create strength-based, empowering and healing environments; Better engage and partner with children, adolescents and families, in meaningful ways; Support those who have experienced trauma and loss, and to prevent and eliminate the use of restraint and seclusion; Respect and include cultural indices in practices; Train, mentor, supervise, support and empower staff about how to deliver promising and best practices, and evidence-informed and evidence-based interventions; and Track long-term outcomes, and create funding strategies to better support sustained positive outcomes. This book encourages readers to think strategically about how agencies, communities and systems can identify and implement actions that lead to positive change and how to work more collaboratively to improve the lives of children and adolescents who have experienced emotional and behavioral life challenges and their families.

The Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, was established by the Canadian government in 1929 to provide residential education to orphan, destitute, neglected, and other Mi'kmaw Indian children aged 7-16. Since many Indian parents were poor and unable to provide for their children, they felt the school was a chance for their children to have adequate clothing and food as well as an education. The parents did not understand that when they signed school registration papers, they were transferring guardianship of their children to the school principal. The school's staff of 10 nuns and a priest (principal) provided room and board and education to an annual population of about 200 until the school closed in 1967. The 5-year-old author and her brother and sister were sent to the school in 1936. She was a resident at the school for 11 years. This book relates her memories, and other students' memories, of their life at the school: physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by the nuns and priest; inadequate food and clothing; lack of care when ill or injured; enforced labor in the kitchen, laundry, barn, and fields; and beatings for speaking their native language. Even though some children were allowed to go home for summer vacation and parents were allowed to visit on Sunday, no student was allowed to permanently leave the school. The school's suppression of the children's Indian language, culture, and heritage caused severe social and personal adjustment problems, which are related through quotations from former students. Rumored to have been built on an old Indian burial ground, and haunted, the remnants of the school mysteriously burned down in 1986. Government officials and the Catholic church apologized to Native people for treatment at the school in 1991. Chapters are: "Origins" (nonformal Native education and child rearing); "Everyday Life at the School"; "Work and Play"; "Rewards and Punishments"; "Ghosts and Hauntings"; "Resistance"; "The End of the School"; "The Official Story"; and "Out of the Depths." Includes photographs. (SAS) -- from ERIC dbase.

Therapeutic Residential Care For Children and Youth takes a fresh look at therapeutic residential care as a powerful intervention in working with the most troubled children who need intensive support. Featuring contributions from distinguished international contributors, it critically examines current research and innovative practice and addresses the key questions: how does it work, what are its critical “active ingredients” and does it represent value for money? The book covers a broad spectrum of established and emerging approaches pioneered around with world, with contributors from the USA, Canada, Scandinavia, Spain, Australia, Israel and the UK offering a mix of practice and research exemplars. The book also looks at the research relating to critical issues for child welfare service providers: the best time to refer children to residential care, how children can be helped to make the transition into care, the characteristics of children entering and exiting care, strategies for engaging families as partners, how the substantial cost of providing intensive is best measured against outcomes, and what research and development challenges will allow therapeutic residential care to be rigorously compared with its evidence-based community-centered alternatives. Importantly, the volume also outlines how to set up and implement intensive child welfare services, considering how transferable they are, how to measure success and value for money, and the training protocols and staffing needed to ensure that a programme is effective. This comprehensive volume will enable child welfare professionals, researchers and policymakers to develop a refined understanding of the potential of therapeutic residential care, and to identify the highest and best uses of this intensive and specialized intervention.

Transforming Residential Interventions: Practical Strategies and Future Directions captures the emerging changes, exciting innovations, and creative policies and practices informing ground-breaking residential programs. Building on the successful 2014 publication Residential Interventions for Children, Adolescents, and Families, this follow-up volume provides a contemporary framework to address the needs of young people and their families, alongside practical strategies that can be implemented at the program, community, system, and policy levels. Using the Building Bridges Initiative as a foundation, the book serves as a "how-to manual" for making bold changes to residential interventions. The reader will learn from a range of inspired leaders who, rather than riding the wave of change, jumped in and created the wave by truly listening to and partnering with their youth, families, advocates, and staff. Chapters provide real-time practice examples and specific strategies that are transformational and consider critical areas, such as family and youth voice, choice and roles, partnerships, permanency and equity, diversity, and inclusion. These methods benefit youth with behavioral and/or emotional challenges and their families and will improve an organization’s long-term outcomes and fiscal bottom line. This book is for oversight agencies, managed care companies, providers of service, advocates, and youth/family leaders looking for an exemplar guide to the new frontier of residential intervention. In this era of accountability and measurement, it will become a trusted companion in leading residential interventions to improved practices and outcomes.

Adopt a more effective approach to temporary and long-term residential care! Presenting the voices of staff, parents, and residents, Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment: New Approaches for Group Care examines the changes and challenges of residential care from the old-fashioned orphanage to the modern group-care home. These thoughtful essays offer suggestions and methods to provide more effective services in temporary and long-term settings. Containing case studies, personal experiences, and professional insights about the potentials and limitations of residential care, this reliable resource will help you develop improved services for youths and their families. Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment presents fresh evaluations of new and old techniques as well as ideas for meeting individual needs. By building connections among parents, youths, and staff, you can develop more successful treatment programs and encourage stronger family ties even when children are best served by long-term residential care.Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment addresses the crucial questions of residential care, including: how can staff ease children's transitions into and out of residential care? what do parents of emotionally disturbed youth need from the staff and professionals in a residential care setting? what was right--and wrong--about the old-fashioned orphanage? Could such an institution work today? how does the transition to the teamwork approach affect staff members? when is residential care most beneficial to children? what kind of care is appropriate for AIDS orphans?Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment will help psychologists, therapists, and social workers unite theory and practice to create a family-oriented environment for troubled clients.

Residential treatment for children and youth (RTCY) programs not only need to be explored for the efficacy of the programs, but also in the actual assessment of various aspects of those programs. Assessment in Residential Care for Children and Youth provides practical information on the placement of children in residential care programs, the efficacy of those programs, staff issues, and outcomes for youths in the programs. Respected authorities examine issues on assessment upon entering residential care, treatment issues during care, and programmatic concerns from a larger systems perspective. Unlike other resources on this topic, this book uniquely focuses solely on assessment. The book comprehensively offers strategies and practical assessment tools addressing the full spectrum of issues from the child’s or youth’s entrance in residential care to their exit, such as placement, treatment, and outcomes. This valuable text is extensively referenced and includes helpful figures and tables to clearly present data. Topics discussed include: assessment processes and tools to enhance therapeutic childcare interventions the unique needs of GBL youth in residential care settings a strengths-based assessment tool developed specifically for use in juvenile justice programs staff satisfaction rates as compared to client satisfaction development of the Staff Implementation Observation Form that assesses staff competence delivering an intervention to youth in group home care with behavioral disorders differences in two residential care giving models in providing continuity of care for youth in residential placement an assessment technique that uses the point of view of children. This book is a valuable resource for Residential Administrators, program directors and coordinators, counselors, and staff who have a role in assessing residential treatment programs for children and youth at any level. This book was published as a special issue of Residential Treatment for Children and Youth.