Incorporating Natural Family Members into Residential Programmes for Children and Youth

Most agencies that provide residential services for children and youth make some attempt to work with natural family members; e.g. mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, sister, or brother of those placed within these programmes. Some common approaches to this include the employment of social workers or involvement of other social agencies to undertake this work. Alternatively, a member of the direct care staff in a residential programme may be designated as a family worker and required to make extra effort to maintain links between the child in the programme and the natural family. Under all of these arrangements, direct care practitioners in residential programmes are expected to be responsive to natural family members visiting a child in the programme. They are also expected to support a child planning to return home for a family visit or returning to the programme from such an event.