Residential Child Care Community

Residential child care communities are part of the foster care system and combine several aspects of ways and means to raise a child.

It is a type of residential care, which refers to long-term care given to children who cannot stay in their birth family home. There are two different approaches towards residential care: The family model (using married couples who live with a certain number of children) and the shift care model.

A community (origin: Latin communis, "shared in common") is a social unit of people who share e.g. norms, religion, values or identity. It is often tied to a specific geographic or virtual area. Residential child care communities operate on one or more than one campus, which connects the different units within the program. House parents/ social workers, therapists, caseworkers, teachers, management staff members as well as other staff members that contribute to the program of the specific organization cooperate to ensure a positive environment for every single child. By sharing a campus, additional aspects such as work programs, leisure activities, therapy and tutoring can be offered, which is not possible for foster parents due to a lack of resources. These communities are also well connected with their environment, their donors and other residential child care communities and keep in touch with and support their alumni.

A residential child care community might also be referred to as a group home or a form of congregate care. When using these terms one has to be careful not to confuse this concept with that of a residential treatment center (which is highly restrictive and established for children with severe behavioral issues) or an orphanage.

In the United States, residential child care communities originate from almshouses and orphanages. These institutions were established due to increasing poverty by Dutch and British churches around 1500, and taken to North America when emigration began. The Dutch opened their first almshouses on American soil in the 1650s, in what is known today as New York City and Albany.

By the early 1900s, about 150,000 American children were accommodated by 1,150 child care institutions, which fulfilled their purpose at that time, but were not always the best and safest environments for a child to grow up in. Still it has to be considered that a child’s life back than was, even when living with their biological family, dominated by poor health conditions, child labor, delinquency, poverty and failed families. However, the 20th century brought a stop to these developments. As industrialization proceeded, children were suddenly seen as what they are instead of “short adults”, reformers started to participate in “child saving movements”, education was recognized to be the key to social change and policies regarding the welfare of Americans were established. In 1909 the first white house conference dealing with “The Care of Dependent Children” took place under President Theodore Roosevelt, throughout which the government came up with the solution of establishing a foster care and adoption program as well as creating a federal Children's Bureau. It was not until 1990 that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child came into effect.

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