Presented in nontechnical language, this pocket-sized book should be read and reread before the first day of a residential child care worker's job placement. This orientation manual provides necessary, concrete information to help avoid mistakes with children, families, coworkers, and the community...mistakes that may be costly or impossible to repair. Subjects include the first day on the job, the primacy of guarding the safety and health of the children, and the basics of child management, paperwork, and teamwork. A handy, helpful tool to get beginners off to a sound start.

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.

The Residential Youth Care Worker in Action offers a comprehensive, collaborative, and competency-based approach to assist youth care workers with psychotropic medications, psychiatric labels, crisis, staffing, and assessments. Emphasizing ideas that focus on the strengths and abilities of youth from the assessment phase of treatment through discharge, this guidebook will also help you take the views and actions of youths into consideration from a change-oriented perspective.

Written by experienced practitioners and academics, this is a core text about the practice of residential child care. It takes as its starting point the fact that residential child care involves workers and children sharing a common lifespace, in which the quality of interpersonal relationships is key. Each chapter highlights relevant policy guidance and is developed around a practice scenario, discussing key knowledge skills and values relating to its theme. This highly practical book should, therefore, be of value to a range of students at different academic levels, from VQ to Masters, and to practitioners and managers in residential child care. The book draws on ideas from child and youth care and social pedagogic traditions and will appeal to a worldwide audience and provides a valuable addition to the emerging literature around social pedagogy.

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.

Residential child care is a crucial, though relatively neglected area of social work. And yet, revelations of abuse and questions of effectiveness have led to increasingly regulatory and procedural approaches to practice and heightened political and professional scrutiny. This book provides a broad and critical look at the ideas and policy developments that have shaped the direction of the sector. The book sets present-day policy and practice within historical, policy and organisational context. The author applies a critical gaze to attempts to improve practice through regulation and, fundamentally, challenges how residential child care is conceptualised. He argues that it needs to move beyond dominant discourses of protection, rights and outcomes to embrace those of care and upbringing. The importance of the personal relationship in helping children to grow and develop is highlighted. Other traditions of practice such as the European concept of social pedagogy are also explored to more accurately reflect the task of residential child care. The book will be of interest to practitioners in residential child care, social workers and students on social work and social care courses. It should be required reading for social work managers and will also be of interest to policy makers and students of social policy, education and childhood studies.

`This excellent book faces the difficulties of residential child care with integrity. The emphasis on collaboration is both timely and important since it is a major theme in the training of social workers in the UK, where this book will be a valuable resource′ - Andrew Hill, University of York Residential Child Care is an innovative book which addresses the specific context of modern residential child care whilst promoting collaborative practice within a wider social work setting. The book analyses the collaborative role of organisations, field workers, parents, teachers, and children, and stresses how these interprofessional relationships are crucial to ensuring children′s wellbeing. Residential Child Care: Collaborative Practice: " is founded on fundamental social work principles, values and ethics; " encourages collaborative practice by identifying how each professions′ roles differ; " seeks to dispel ′barriers′ that inhibit effective collaboration; " draws upon examples of good practice; " includes views and experiences of children and young people; " integrates relevant aspects of the social work Benchmark statement. Comprehensive and accessible, the book includes learning outcomes, activities, and case studies to help aid students′ understanding. The book successfully balances its theoretical context with a focus on practice, making it an invaluable resource for students and practitioners. It is useful for social work and social care students, trainee residential workers, and professionals who have an interest in working with looked after children.

From open and straightforward accounts of residential care workers, The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers shows you how care is handled, not how it should be handled. This book introduces you to a social reality, a sometimes very difficult and challenging social reality, as it is viewed by its participants. If you want to know more about what is actually going on in residential care and the discontent that workers frequently experience, this is the book that lays out the facts, the problems, and the nature of residential youth centers. The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers broaches the problem of tension between workers and residents and hopes that bringing the problem out into the open will be a first step toward a solution. You learn that the very arrangement of residential care automatically sets up antagonism between the sole group care worker and his/her wards; residents tend to resist the inherently coercive efforts of the worker who tries to bring them through processes of change and socialization. The Occupational Experience of Residential Child and Youth Care Workers will make you think about: residential care and conflicts group interaction career satisfaction and dissatisfaction interpretive sociology of education and its methodology social control Interviews with Israeli residential care workers are presented to help you understand the circumstances under which residential care providers experience discontent, or job dissatisfaction. You learn which workers are most likely to feel discontented and how staff members cope with the stress and discontent they experience. Youth care workers, policymakers, child-care staff recruiters, supervisors, and trainers will find this book sheds much light on the problem of discontent and the need to make child and youth care facilities more humane for residents and staff alike. It will also help social work educators and researchers in sociology, social work, and the social psychology of education get in touch with what goes on inside the walls of residential care centers.