Leadership in Residential Child Care. Evaluating Qualification Training

Dione Hills and Camilla Child, John Wiley & Sons, £16.99

ISBN 0 471 98477 9

Staff training for residential child care is an emotive issue. Scandals have revealed a situation where troubled children have been looked after by untrained carers whose credentials have gone unchecked.

This is clearly unsatisfactory but attempts to increase the numbers of qualified staff have had limited success and plans for improvement are confounded by the perennial question of what staff should be trained to do.

This study evaluates a residential child care initiative in which 452 senior staff attended diploma in social work programmes specially designed for students from residential backgrounds.

The initiative enjoyed varied degrees of success. There were problems of making residential issues relevant to all of the students on the course without patronising those with residential experience.

Coverage of residential work was patchy, often reflecting the interests of tutors. Students from residential settings liked the sections on law and management but were less content with the teaching on corporate parenting and adolescence.

It is well known that rather than increasing the competence of residential workers, training can provide access to more lucrative and comfortable jobs. So the findings on students' return to work are critical. Most went back to their previous employment but 82 per cent were not promoted and a quarter went back to a different unit.

The transition proved universally difficult. The service had often changed during students' absence and few returned to do exactly the same job, despite the fact that most went back to the same employers.

Nevertheless, the students felt more confident, informed and, in some cases, skilled. The disappointments were that agencies did not use their newly trained staff to improve services and encourage others to study.

In a final chapter, the authors discuss future training for residential child care. They stress that formal training has to be linked to work-based learning but DipSW can make a special contribution by virtue of its theoretical component and the confidence that students derive from greater clarity about their methods of work.

This is an important addition to a scant research literature. It is clear that the content and method of training cannot be considered in isolation, and that expectations about residential work reflect aspirations for the welfare of looked-after children. That requires assessments of their needs and decisions about the services necessary to meet them. Only then can we be clear about who should do what in residential care and the training they need.

Roger Bullock is director, Dartington Social Research Unit