Residential Services

Resources

  • Improving Residential Care for Children and Youth in Out-of-Home Care
    This NRCPFC document collects available guidelines, models, research, articles, and state and local examples that deal with improving residential care for children and youth in the foster care system.

  • Licensing Standards for Residential Placement Facilities
    We have collected links to state licensing standards for residential placement facilities in this document.

  • Institutions vs. Foster Homes: The Empirical Base for a Century of Action
    This report from the Jordan Institute for Families, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that institutional care is not an essential component of the child welfare system for the majority of children. The review considers four outcome measures for children in institutional care, including child abuse and neglect rates, reunification, success of young adults leaving care, and financial costs of care.

  • Practicing Restraint
    This article from the Child Welfare League of America's "Children's Voice" discusses the use of restraint and seclusion in residential group homes.

  • Residential Group Care Quarterly
    This Child Welfare League of America publication is available online. Sign up to receive e-mail alerts when the newest issue of Residential Group Care Quarterly is available.

  • Update: Latest Findings in Children's Mental Health, Vol. 2, No. 1
    According to findings of a 1997 survey, conducted by the U.S. Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), many teenagers with severe and complex emotional disturbances are found in residential care programs rather than psychiatric hospitals. Often, these are "system kids" who are shuttled in and out of temporary placements in various child-serving agencies. This publication is the result of a collaboration among Rutgers University, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

  • Residential Treatment Programs: Concerns Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth
    Residential treatment programs provide a range of services, including drug and alcohol treatment, confidence building, military-style discipline, and psychological counseling for troubled boys and girls with a variety of addiction, behavioral, and emotional problems. This testimony from the Government Accountability Office concerns programs across the country referring to themselves as wilderness therapy programs, boot camps, and academies, among other names. GAO found thousands of allegations of abuse, some of which involved death, at residential treatment programs across the country and in American-owned and American-operated facilities abroad between the years 1990 and 2007.

  • Residential Facilities: State and Federal Oversight Gaps May Increase Risk to Youth Well-Being
    This Government Accountability Report discusses findings of a survey to examine youth well-being in residential facilities as well as the ability of states and the Federal government to provide oversight.

  • Residential Facilities: Improved Data and Enhanced Oversight Would Help Safeguard the Well-Being of Youth with Behavioral and Emotional Challenges
    This Government Accountability Report provides national information about (1) the nature of the incidents that adversely affect the well-being of youth in government and private residential facilities, (2) how state licensing and monitoring requirements address the well-being of youth in residential facilities, and (3) what factors affect federal agencies’ ability to hold states accountable for youth well-being in residential facilities. It also provides information on options that states, federal agencies, and Congress may use to better promote youth well-being in residential facilities.

  • Residential Transitions Project: Phase One Final Report
    This report from the Child Welfare League of America was undertaken to inform the development of a model for residential group care that reflects current research findings and the appropriate place of residential group services in the child welfare service continuum. The report includes: a review of data on the utilization of residential group placements in child welfare; a review of the literature on residential group care; a survey of state child welfare agencies; a survey of state child and family services provider associations; and asurvey of California DSS, Children, Youth, & Families county offices


Teleconference

  • Restraint and Seclusion
    This NRCPFC teleconference for state foster care and adoption managers provides an overview of legislation impacting restraint and seclusion, promising practices that successfully reduce the use of these techniques and a movement from use of restraint to trauma-informed care.

Bibliographies


Website

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Last updated 08/27/08