Residential Care – Pilots To Test Pedagogue Approach

The National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care is to advise on pilots of social pedagogy proposed in the Care Matters white paper. The centre is to work with the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Thomas Coram Research Institute to develop the programme.

Jonathan Stanley, manager of the centre, said advice will be based on two current pilot projects. These are being carried out in the North West and in Southampton, with funding from the Social Education Trust.

Social pedagogy is a way of working, common in Europe, that puts an emphasis on building relationships with young people through practical engagement. This can involve working with a young person to produce a programme that they work through and can include aspects of health, education and social care.

In a residential setting, the pedagogues look at working in groups and using the group for support. The centre’s project in the North West has seen a group of social workers from the residential sector attend a series of seminars where they have shared practice, identified goals and then taken these back to their own residential setting to put them in place.

In Southampton the project has seen professionals with experience of a pedagogic approach working in residential child care settings to show staff how to use it. They have been providing hands-on support, setting goals and helping the staff put theory into practice.

David Crimmens, a trustee of the Social Education Trust, said the projects had been well received: “Some people are responding very positively, they are eager to do things differently and helpfully, but in the same sample, some people are sceptical.”

Stanley said: “Participants on the courses are enthusiastic and they are telling us that the content and delivery are just right. This is the start of training they wish they’d had when they first started residential child care. It’s talking about the things that brought people into looking after children in the first place. They see it as absolutely applicable to their work.”

He added the centre now has an idea of what will be important in implementing any pilots, including developing a practical delivery method. “Many providers are reporting that they have to deploy all of their finances and all their staff to meet the needs of children, so we have to find a way of connecting with staff in ways they can easily access and we’re optimistic of doing that,” he said.

The timetable set out by Care Matters included the launch of a pilot programme that will be funded by the end of 2008.