Therapeutic Residential Care for Children and Youth:

In many developed countries around the world, ‘group care’ interventions for children and adolescents have come under increasing scrutiny from central government, private philanthropic and child advocacy agencies desirous of (1) achieving better outcomes for vulnerable children and youth; (2) doing so in closer collaboration with their families and in closer proximity to their home communities; and, (3) with the hope of reducing the high costs often associated with group residential provision. In some jurisdictions, efforts to reduce residential care resources in the absence of sufficient alternatives to serve high-resource needing youth has had unintended and negative consequences. It is within this context that a working group international experts representing research, policy, service delivery and families (International Work Group for Therapeutic Residential Care) convened at the Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University in the U.K. for a Summit meeting on therapeutic residential care for children and youth funded by the Sir Halley Stewart Trust (UK). The focus centered on what is known about therapeutic residential care and what key questions should inform a priority list for future research.