Implementing therapeutic approaches to residential child care in Northern Ireland: report of interviews with children and young people

Providing more effective care to children and young people is at the heart of the rationale for introducing therapeutic approaches within the residential care setting. These children and young people are among the most vulnerable in the care system and in society more generally. It was important, therefore, to explore their experiences of what staff regarded as a major change and improvement in their lives in care. This document reports the findings of 29 interviews with young people in residential child care across the five health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland. At the outset of the study, we had hoped to interview young people who had lived through the introduction of a therapeutic approach, and to explore what differences they had seen, for example in the way the home was run, how staff behaved and so on. However, by the time the interviews took place in the first half of 2011, most young people would only have known the home under its new regime, so there were few opportunities to compare young people's experiences before and after the introduction of a therapeutic model. We did ask young people about their awareness of any particular model or approach being used within the home, but the main focus of the interview was on their experiences of living in the home more generally. We asked about their perceptions of staff, what they liked and didn't like about the home and what they would like to change. The rationale for this approach was to explore the extent to which young people's experiences in these areas were in keeping with a therapeutic approach and with how staff described the changes this had brought about.