Therapeutic Approaches To Social Work In Residential Child Care Settings

Geraldine Macdonald and others for the Social Care Institute for Excellence have published a new report looking at therapeutic approaches to social work in residential child care settings.

Compared to the looked-after population in general, children in residential child care have some of the highest levels of need, including increased emotional and behavioural difficulties. This report focuses on how residential child care staff in Northern Ireland trained in a variety of therapeutic approaches to enhance their practice and relationships with the young people in their care.

Staff reported that therapeutic approaches do have some limitations – for example in dealing with physical aggression – meaning that other models such as Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) were still an important part of practice. Young people in residential child care often noticed an improved ‘atmosphere’ and the use of fewer punishments to deal with poor behaviour, even if they did not notice that a new approach was being used.

Some factors that helped put these approaches into practice included training staff, offering follow-up supporting materials, and developing wider systems of working that support the approaches – for example careful planning when a young person is first admitted to a home. Therapeutic approaches can complement specialist therapeutic interventions – such as trauma-focused and cognitive-behavioural therapy, counselling and so on – but do not replace them. These specialist services are a vital part of the support that looked-after children and young people should have access to.

The report is available to read here: http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/reports/report58/files/report58.pdf