Strengthening Residential Practice

Child, Youth and Family Services currently operate five residential centres. They are located in: Auckland (Northern Residential Centre), Palmerston North (Lower North Youth Justice Centre), Wellington (Epuni Care & Protection Unit), Christchurch (Kingslea Residential Centre) and Dunedin (Puketai Care & Protection Unit). The Department also contracts through Barnardos the provision of a residential treatment programme for young sexual abusers (Te Poutama Arahi Rangatahi) in Christchurch.

In 1996 the Department set in motion a Residential Services Strategy. A key aim of the strategy was to increase the number of available care and protection and youth justice beds across the country from 100 to 166. The strategy is to be achieved through the development of purpose built Youth Justice & Care & Protection residences.

When the strategy is complete the Department will manage three contracted specialist residential services as well as three Youth Justice and four Care & Protection residential services. The increase in bed capacity will obviously necessitate an increase in the numbers of residential social workers.

In addition to increasing bed numbers, Residential Services have been working with the Department’s Learning & Development Unit on a strategy to provide a professional development framework to both attract and retain appropriately qualified, skilled and experienced residential staff.

In the course of their work residential staff face many unique challenges. By way of illustration: residential workers have their clients in close proximity each day with no or little chance for respite; they increasingly work with children and young people with high and complex needs; residential staff work with a client group that is behaviourally difficult, willing to use violence and who are involuntarily contained. This can lead to a climate of negativity and confrontation. Added to this are other complexities such as the disproportionate numbers of Maori and Pacific Island young people referred to Residential Services and a high prevalence of mental health issues for children and young people in both the Care & Protection and Youth Justice areas.

Given these factors it is no surprise that high-quality professional development has been identified as an important component in contributing to the ability of residential staff to provide the best quality of care for its clients.

A comprehensive TNA was commenced with all residential social work and youth work staff in May/June 2002. The results of the TNA were used to prioritise the development of six residential training modules. A tender process for the development of the training modules was undertaken mid-2002, with two Christchurch based training consultancy agencies, Community Care Consultancy (C.C.C.) and Hall McMaster & Associates (HMA), contracted to jointly work on the project.

To guide the construction of the training programme the first step taken was to accurately assess what staff and key stakeholders saw as the essential training in order to meet the requirements of effective residential care. All residential social work and youth work staff were invited to participate in a comprehensive training needs analysis.

The methodology employed in the TNA included:

• reviewing the existing Generic Induction Programme material.
• reviewing existing job descriptions.
• meeting with a representative group of residential staff from the five residences for a one-day discussion.
• surveying all residential social work and youth work staff through a questionnaire.

In early June 2002 eighteen staff were invited to participate in a “focus group”. They were asked to analyse the role of a residential social worker and the duties that workers undertook in their daily work. This was completed by reviewing job descriptions to see how the reality of day to day tasks was congruent with the job expectations. Staff were also asked to identify the knowledge and skills that are required to effectively perform the responsibilities and duties that residential social workers are charged with. In addition a questionnaire was give to all staff asking many of the same questions of the focus group. The focus group and questionnaire material was combined with the following components of a training programme emerge. These are sequenced so that some form the pre-requisites for subsequent training.

Workshop 1: Working in Teams.

Workshop 2: Understanding and Working with Adolescents.

Workshop 3: Managing Individual Adolescent Behaviour

Workshop 4: Individual Programme Planning

Workshop 5: Managing Group Behaviour.

Workshop 6: Group Programme Planning

HMA have been involved in designing the training programmes and workbooks and then piloting the design prior to handing over to L&D for the roll-out of the material.