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10 SEPTEMBER 2010

NO 1626

Group care

Many changes have occurred. In the U.S., for example, we have moved through an era in which many of the trends and policies described in the first two volumes have taken hold such as normalization, deinstitutionalization, use of less restrictive environments, mainstreaming, permanency planning, and accountability. Many group care organizations have been restructured into multifaceted agencies with continuums of services ranging from less restrictive family support and case management services to the more restrictive patterns of group care. Members of organizations and communities are now trying to collaborate and place children, young people, and families with the proper services in the continuum of care at the proper time and to be flexible in moving back and forth from least to most restrictive programs as required, based on need.

Within the continuum of services, group care has been asked to do more with less. Funds have been reduced, lengths of stay have been shortened, and only the most difficult children and young people are referred to group care with the emphasis on getting them back home or into foster care as soon as possible. Group care has also been asked to help prepare a large number of young people who do not have families or permanent placements to "make it on their own" when they reach the age of eighteen and achieve legal emancipation.

While the system in general and lengths of stay have changed, many of the major challenges facing group care remain the same: to create opportunities for children, young people, families, kin groups, and foster parents to strengthen relationships and to make the connections and discoveries considered essential to help them succeed and live fulfilling lives. Experience and research have taught us a great deal about how to address these challenges through reinforcing the developmental strengths and needs of children and young people. New methods for engaging and working with families have also been discovered. As part of a global group care cornmunity, we have increasingly leamed and been influenced by innovations in other countries. We have also learned how to speak across the spaces of our diverse cultures and design programs that take into consideration the unique stories that each child, young person and adult brings to group care.

Yet there is still a long way to go. We need new research, approaches and policies to ensure that children and young people living in out-of-home care receive the permanence and success we all wish for them. We also need innovative ways to support, educate and compensate the people who do group care work as well as strategies to convince our governments and communities that children and young people in group care are worthy of a larger investment of resources. For all these reasons, this is a crucial time for a new contribution that revisits organizational issues, conceptual models and best practices aimed at helping countries, communities, programs, managers and practitioners learn from each other; to garner public and political support; to improve practice; to promote staff development, to mitigate problems of misunderstanding; and to move the field forward in a positive policy direction.

MARK KRUEGER

Krueger, M. (2006). Preface. In Leon C. Fulcher and Frank Ainsworth (Eds.) Group Care Practice with Children and Young People Revisited. New York. The Haworth Press. pp. xxxi – xxxii.

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