Glossary
A - J
Adolescent psychiatric unit
The focus here is on health and units are often close to, or part of, hospitals. The staff are mostly nurses and doctors, but there are social workers and teachers too. Young people will have needs such as a psychiatric illness, eating disorders, suffering from post-traumatic stress, or complex conditions that may include learning difficulties and behavioural problems. Some have experienced abuse or have difficult family and social circumstances.
Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
ASD is a lifelong condition that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It also affects how they make sense of the world around them. Autistic Spectrum Disorder is the term that is used to describe a group of disorders, including autism and Asperger syndrome.
The word 'spectrum' is used because the characteristics of the condition vary from one person to another. Those with autism may also have a learning disability. Those who have Asperger syndrome tend to have average, or above average, intelligence, but still have difficulty making sense of the world.
BILD accredited training
The British Institute of Learning Disability (BILD) has developed a Code of Practice and Accreditation Scheme for training in managing challenging behaviour and physical interventions.
The Care Standards Act, 2000
This made provision for the registration and regulation of children's homes and to establish a set of National Minimum Standards (NMS), which define key expectations for the care of young people in residential care and against which homes are inspected. These differ in each of the countries that make up the UK.
You should now read the NMS for your country. A copy of the NMS should be in every children's home for staff and young people to access. Find out about the last inspection in your home, and think of how your home is meeting them. Read the last inspection about your home.
NOTE: you can access the full act in the Extra resources section.
The Children Act, 1989
The Children Act, 1989 states that any court making decisions about a child shall have the child's welfare as the paramount consideration. The court must have particular regard to the 'ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child'.
Section 64 sets out the duties of those looking after children in children's homes. These include the duties to:
safeguard and promote welfare advice
assist and befriend, ascertain his/her wishes and feelings regarding any decisions about him or her
take age, level of understanding and religious beliefs into account when making decisions.
Note: you can access the full act in the Extra resources section.
Children's homes for children with disabilities
Some children with disabilities have complex needs resulting from disability rather than a lack of parenting capacity. They require specialised long-term care that can provide care, education and health needs, often in one place.
Children's Rights Director for England
The Office of the Children's Rights Director for England (OCRD) carefully listens to what young people tell it about the way they are being looked after and the services they receive.
This office reports these views to Ofsted - the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills to take into account in the work it does on inspecting services.
Reports are also sent to government to consider when they are making decisions about things that affect young people.
Direct contact
This refers to meetings between the child/young person and birth family members and/or significant others, and includes phone calls, texting and emails.
Erik Erikson
Though his work was first published in the 1950s it continues to be applicable to an understanding of child development as it links emotional and chronological stages and ages. Influential in social work, Erikson's theory involves the idea of development through eight successive age-related stages from infancy to old age. It focuses on how we make sense of our lives and create identity as we move through the life course in our particular society.
Every Child Matters: Change for Children
This is a new approach to the well-being of children and young people from birth to age 19. The government's aim is for every child, whatever their background or their circumstances, to have the support they need to:
be healthy
stay safe
enjoy and achieve
make a positive contribution
achieve economic well-being
Fostering
Fostering is a way of providing a family life for children who cannot live with their parents. It is often used to provide temporary care while parents get help sorting out problems, take a break, or to help children or young people through a difficult period in their lives.
Often children will return home once the problems that caused them to come into foster care have been resolved and that it is clear that their parents are able to look after them safely. Others may stay in long-term foster care, some may be adopted or go on to residential care, while others will move on to live independently.
Human Rights Act, 1998
The Human Rights Act, 1998 offers 13 substantive rights and enables UK citizens to seek to protect them through domestic courts. Failing that, citizens can seek recourse to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
See the Extra resources section for the full text.
Inappropriate restraint
CRAE (the Children's Rights Alliance for England) campaigned long and hard against the use of two restraint methods used on children in custody, the nose 'distraction' (a controversial technique which involves placing brief, upward pressure on the nose to cause pain) and the double basket 'hold' (a type of physical restraint in which two people stand behind another, criss-crossing the child's arms over their chest and holding their hands to immobilise them). These techniques broke two CRC articles: the right to be protected from being hurt or mistreatment in body or mind the right not to be punished in a cruel or harmful way. In December 2008 the government announced the suspension of these methods, which are now recognised to be very painful, to cause emotional trauma and to be dangerous and sometimes life-threatening.
Indirect contact
This refers to letters and cards from members of the birth family and/or significant others, usually through a third person.
K - N
Long-term mainstream children's home
These homes provide care for a child for a substantial period of time, possibly until the child reaches adulthood. Most homes provide children with a key worker who will work with a child to ensure that their needs are being met in line with their Care Plan. This will include how a child's emotional, educational, social and health needs will be met.
There will also be consideration given to the contact a child will have with their family and friends. These homes tend to provide care for groups of children and a key task for workers within the home is balancing the needs of each individual child with the needs of the group.
O - T
One-bedded children's home
Some homes are specifically registered and designed to have just one child living in them. For some children, living with a group of other children is not the best way in which to meet their needs. They need to have the opportunity to have the specialist support that residential child care can provide, but without the complexities that group living might bring. Their placement will follow an assessment and be meeting a specific treatment or care need.
A key difference between foster care and a one-bedded home is that a team of staff is employed to work with the child in the children's home. The staff members do not live on site and go home at the end of their shift.
Prone restraints
These involve a young person being held stomach down on the ground.
Residential Special Schools
These provide an enriched educational experience but also address children's disability, and/or social, emotional, psychological and behavioural needs. Residential Special Schools can be children's homes too if young people live there more than just during term time. There will be specialist staffing and provision.
Secure children's homes
These are specialist residential resources offering a high quality of care, education, assessment and therapeutic work. These are the only children's homes that are allowed to lock doors to prevent children leaving. Such restriction of liberty is a serious matter and entry is only by having a legal order from a Court made to protect the child or the community.
Secure Training Centres (STCs)
These are purpose-built centres for young offenders up to the age of 17. They are run by private operators according to Home Office contracts, which set out detailed operational requirements.
Social networks
A social network can be regarded as a pattern of connections between people that has a particular meaning for those concerned. Social networks can be informal, where they are made up of friends, family or neighbours, or they can be formal, where they consist of links with professionals or organisations such as day centres or GP surgeries.
Short break children's home
Short breaks are often part of a wider package of care which can involve health and education services and other agencies and are for children with learning disabilities. They allow carers and families to 'take a break'. The children will have permanent and substantial physical and/or learning disabilities but will not be very challenging in their behaviour or require expert nursing care.
Short stay mainstream children's home
These provide time-limited care for children. They may serve different purposes: a child may need looking after because of unplanned or unforeseen events; or they may be waiting for a long-term place to become open; or it may be for assessment.
Small 'intensive care' residential setting
A children's home for one, or two maximum, young people. It will have high staff ratios to provide care for young people who require close attention to keep them safe, or others safe from them. The young people will have extreme social, emotional and behavioural needs that cannot be met in any other setting.
Statutory responsibilities
Those duties arising from legislation, and regulation, for those caring for young people.
Therapeutic community
Within a clear set of boundaries concerning time, place and roles there will be very close relationships between children and grown-ups with frequent sharing of information and open resolution of problems, tensions and conflicts. Daily life will be purposeful tasks - therapeutic, domestic, organisational, educational - and there will be a shared commitment to the goal of learning from the experience of living and/or working together.
U - Z
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
This was signed by the government in 1991, and was the first piece of international legislation to acknowledge that children do not simply need to be protected by adults; they also have rights which must be upheld. There are 54 'Articles' in the Convention, 40 of which concern children's rights; the remainder are to do with implementation and monitoring.
The Articles uphold children's rights in the following areas, which are relevant to their care in residential homes. These areas include the right to:
keep in contact with parents and family, as long as this is best for the child
participate fully
hold beliefs, including religious beliefs, to express themselves, and to be taken seriously
privacy
protection, including from abuse and violence, from cruelty and harm and extra protection for refugees and all children not living with parents
the best possible health, and children living away from home must have regular health checks
education, to be able to develop fully and to enjoy their own culture religion and language.
Also, all disabled children have equal rights.
The government has agreed to make all UK laws, policy and practice compatible with the UNCRC. The government must prepare a report for the committee on the state of children's rights in the UK every five years. The committee meets in Geneva, Switzerland.
See the Extra resources section for a full list of all 54 Articles.