Editorial

Abstract

While this collection of papers on family partnering was in development, life within children’s residential services was very different from the present reality. Arrival of the COVID19 pandemic has impacted residential programs for children, young people and their families around the globe in myriad ways. Anecdotally, we learn that virtual communication has improved regularity of contact and enhanced connectedness between some children and their families. However, for others, social distancing and isolation have proved challenging and re-triggered past trauma. Serious illness in family members, caregivers and teachers has been greatly distressing; too often this culminates in intense grief with the loss of loved ones. Such experiences can create even greater obstacles to repairing family disruption and healing trauma than those evident prior to the pandemic. Papers included in this special issue of Residential Treatment for Children and Youth address effective partnering with families in residential care programs operating within child welfare systems in Australia and the United States. Collectively, the approaches described appear consistent with the rationale underpinning the Family Engagement Inventory (FEI) Child Welfare theme (Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services, 2015): ‘ . . . meaningful family engagement contributes not only to the well-being of the child and the family, but also to the well-being of the community’. The FEI standpoint has much in common with privileging of family partnering within the International Consensus Statement on Therapeutic Residential Care (Whittaker et al., 2016); the essence of this is encapsulated in the following excerpts: ‘Our vision of therapeutic residential care is integrally linked with the spirit of partnership between the families we seek to serve and our total staff complement. . . . (that is) to strive constantly to forge and maintain strong and vital family linkages . . .. Effective and humane therapeutic residential care is best seen as a support to families who are struggling, rather than as a substitute for families who have failed (Geurts et al., 2012).’ The robust conviction manifest in these and similar contemporary sources, along with a burgeoning international literature, suggest that the sector is largely persuaded of the importance of family partnering to achievement of best practice and good outcomes from residential care. However, papers in this Special Issue reveal that important challenges remain in developing, resourcing and implementing effective family partnering in the field. True RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT FOR CHILDREN & YOUTH 2020, VOL. 37, NO. 4, 265–268 https://doi.org/10.1080/0886571X.2020.1805393