SCIE media releases 2008

New SCIE resources support professional development of residential child care staff

22 September 2008

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) has launched two new resources. An Introduction to residential childcare is a new e-learning resource. It will be of interest to people working in residential childcare and can be used for both individual and group learning. It has been developed from SCIE’s new knowledge review: Working with challenging and disruptive situations in residential child care: Sharing effective practice.

Around 11–12 per cent of children and young people in public care in England and in Northern Ireland are cared for in children’s homes. These are mostly teenagers. Most of them will have experienced considerable difficulties prior to becoming resident. Providing a caring and nurturing environment that meets the needs of young people presents a considerable challenge to both commissioners and providers of residential child care services. High quality care is dependent on a staff group who have the skills, experience and motivation to work with troubled young people in an environment that is likely to be very stressful.

“The aim of our residential child care resources is to support the professional development of residential child care workers,” says Julie Jones, Chief Executive of SCIE. “Young people interviewed for this project say that they value staff who listen to them and understand and respect them. They also appreciate staff who have the ability to build strong relationships so that they can manage challenging situations and effectively defuse potentially disruptive behaviour. Our resources will help residential child care workers to ensure that they are providing a supportive and nurturing environment for the children in their care.”

Media contacts

Annie Goss | Media and PR Manager | T: 020 7089 7117 | M: 07739 458 192 | Email: media@scie.org.uk