Confidence and Self-Confidence
It looks as if a corner may have been turned.
The Minister’s spokesman announced at the National Children’s Bureau conference on 9 November that the Government had decided to set up a National Centre for Excellence in Residential Care for England. This decision may be a few years late, in the wake of Scotland’s action in setting up the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care, but it is nonetheless very welcome.
The Centre will be based at the National Children’s Bureau, which makes excellent sense. The Bureau has national and international standing. It is well thought of in Government circles and will be listened to. It is independent of service commissioners, service providers, trades unions and any other special interest, so it can speak its mind. And the NCB Residential Care Unit has already done useful work and developed a large network of almost all the agencies working in residential child care in England.
The Centre will be able to act as a focus for good practice, initiating research, producing publications, offering consultation, developing existing networks, providing support, lobbying, running conferences and perhaps providing some training. The NCB RCU has already been doing many of these things, but not on the scale which is needed.
While the Centre will be able to act as a focus for residential child care, its creation is not the only sign that things may be changing. The General Social Care Council is now going to register residential child care workers, among others, providing greater protection to children in their care and adding some cachet to the work.
The Children’s Workforce Development Council will be focusing on residential child care workers, among others. This will be the first time that serious attention has been paid to the problems of recruitment and retention of child care workers by a body set up specifically for this purpose.
The research undertaken across the United Kingdom by the NCB at the behest of the Social Education Trust indicates a higher level of job satisfaction and morale than had been expected, and figures provided by the GCSC show that year-on-year the numbers of staff who are qualified are going up.
All these factors spell out good news for the residential sector. There is also a sense that Children’s Trusts will be making a more realistic use of residential care than Social Services Departments used to. Taking the broad view, the last thirty years have been characterised by reductions in the numbers of homes and the use of residential care as a last resort. Now, it appears that some authorities are choosing to build or rebuild homes and use them selectively for the children and young people who require and want residential care. Residential care is being seen as a positive choice.
All this suggests that people are developing confidence in the service. If so, this means that residential child care workers are being told – whether explicitly or implicitly – that their work is important and their contributions are significant. This in turn should breed self-confidence in staff, and high morale and enthusiasm are good predictors of success. Let’s hope that a corner has been turned.
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