Introduction

This chapter describes the situation in residential care in the case study local authority at the time of the field research, reflecting on the changes observed since research was undertaken in the same local authority in the mid-1990s. Comments made by care staff during the course of the current field research are included in this account, as is documentary evidence and observation. Other research has tracked the changes in the residential care environment by revisiting children's care homes (see Berridge and Brodie, 1998). This can be a useful way of identifying how policy and practice influences the everyday living environment of children in residential care. Having explained the nature and context of children's residential care in this local authority; the chapter goes on to outline the approach taken in the research and the range of data collected in the research.

Residential care in the case study local authority

The case study local authority is a large county authority with a wide range of social circumstances, including large areas of social housing and forces accommodation, as well as leafy suburbs and affluent areas. At the time of the field research, the total population in care over a year was over 1,000 children, of whom less than 60 were in residential care (for children without disabilities) at any one time in local authority homes, although over 100 were resident over a year (near to the national average for the proportion of children in residential care at the time of the research). The population of this local authority is overwhelmingly White British (93%), so any comparison by ethnicity in this study is limited. For example, one of the 16 case studies reported in Chapter Seven raises some very specific issues. Also, the implementation of a restorative justice (RJ) approach focused wholly on children without disabilities. The local authority is similar in many key outcomes indicators to counties in the same area of England and is generally around the national average in terms of the rate of offending recorded among children in care.

At the time of the field research, the local authority had an established residential care strategy based on a split between short-term and long-term homes. Five of the ten homes in the research were locally based, short-term homes. ‘Short-term’ was defined as a stay of ‘up to six months’.