The following Press Release was put out by the National Children’s Bureau; for the Webmag’s views of this welcome development, see the Editorial.

The National Children’s Bureau (NCB) has been granted £731,000 by the Department for Education and Skills to spearhead a major collaboration to drive up standards in residential child care in England over the next three years.

The grant will be used to establish a new National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care with four main objectives:

- Measurable improvements in outcomes for children in residential care. These include positive environments which promote children’s health and well-being, educational aspirations and involvement with their local communities, and active and meaningful participation of children in planning and reviewing their care arrangements.

- Significant increases in the level and quality of training of staff in residential children’s settings. The long-term aspiration for the sector is to have graduate level leadership and professionally qualified staff as in other children’s services.

- Significant improvement in the level of compliance with the set National Minimum Standards for children’s homes and residential schools.

- New partnerships between care providers and commissioners. In particular, the centre will look to establish clear links between the costs of services and the quality of care provided.

The announcement was made at the Residential Childcare 2005 conference in Birmingham. The event is the annual national conference of the Children’s Residential Network, which is also based at NCB.

Sheryl Burton, director of social inclusion at NCB who will be managing the project said: “Residential child care has been something of a Cinderella amongst social services in the past. However, now the sector is evolving rapidly. We hope this national centre will give renewed focus and energy to this process to improve outcomes for children living in residential care in England.”

The Centre will be a mixture of physical and virtual resources, with staff based at NCB, a network of residential care managers and practitioners across England and training and other materials online. A similar centre already exists in Scotland. The Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care is widely seen to have been successful in improving standards and uniting the sector.

Maria Eagle, parliamentary under secretary of state said: "I expect the Centre to help us to drive up quality in residential care, and make a real difference in terms of outcomes to the children who depend on children's homes and residential special schools for their care. I am, therefore, pleased to support its work with funding of over £730k up to March 2008."