**1. Introduction**

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the role played by residential care (hereafter, RC) within the childhood welfare systems, acknowledging its strengths, but also its weaknesses. The historical evolution and the changes made in the model to adapt it to current legislation are briefly analyzed. The model is currently set in Spain, where it is still more relevant than in other European countries, where other alternatives—such as placement with foster families—are more developed for children and adolescents who must be separated from their biological families. This resource attends a large number of children. According to the data of Save the Children (2011), worldwide, 8 million children are living in some RC modality, of whom 15000 live in Spain (Observatorio de la Infancia [Children's Observatory], 2011).

Throughout the long history of this resource, research on RC has mainly focused on the negative effects it may have on children. The results of the investigations conducted from a clinical and psychopathological approach are critically reviewed and analyzed, because research usually employs normalized comparison groups. Further, no pre-post measures are taken in order to reliably appraise the effects that living in RC has on these children, and, in many cases, a lot of the developmental problems detected may be due to the prior situation of maltreatment that led to separating the child from the family. The results of some studies with pre-post measures performed in Spain are presented, and they show that living in RC can be beneficial, although not in all cases, but only for certain profiles. Moreover, they belie the idea that the more time children spend in these resources, the worse effect they have on them. It is shown that very short stays can be as harmful as long stays, and that the most important aspect is to adjust the time to the characteristics of each case.

© 2012 Martín, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Subsequently, the research currently carried out in Spain on the integration in school of children and adolescents who live in RC is analyzed. The results reveal that they have many difficulties to integrate at school and their academic achievements are far below average, and a considerable percentage of these residential children do not even finish compulsory education, and only a token number of them continue post-compulsory education. As will be discussed, education for these children is important for several reasons: 1) Family and school are the two most important contexts for children's development. When one of them is lacking, such as the case of the family for these children, the school should reinforce its compensating role. 2) The school is the main normalized context that allows these children to establish relations of friendship and to enrich their social support networks, both with peers and with adults. 3) Finishing their studies and achieving adequate formation and qualification will allow for better socio-work insertion, once they come of age. This, in turn, will allow them to break out of the vicious circle of social exclusion, because most of the youngsters who drop out of the welfare system when they come of age return to the family from which they had to be separated for their own protection.

Residential Care as a Resource

of the Childhood Welfare System: Current Strengths and Future Challenges 139

The children were often collected directly from the parents, and cases of maltreatment, abandonment, or simply of poverty were indiscriminately mixed together. The treatment received by the children did not respond to their peculiarities, but instead all were treated equally.

All the children's needs were met within the institution: medical care, feeding, hygiene, education, leisure, etc., so the children did not need to leave the enclosure and could not relate to other people except for the staff and the other children who lived in the institution. Thus, they were deprived of basic aspects for their development, such as the establishment of social networks and physical

their most basic needs, without attending the possible problems they had due to their prior experiences of maltreatment or poverty and social margination.

have any kind of training. Most of these institutions were of a religious nature, and the way they dealt with the children was based more on doctrinal aspects than on

time, children were admitted so that their basic needs would be taken care of within the residences, because they even studied and received medical care without leaving the enclosure. Most of the boys and girls who entered these residences did not leave them until they were of age and, in many cases, they were all alone in a society they were unfamiliar with, because they had grown up within the walls of the institution. Until the first half of the 20th century, the socially constructed image of these children was that of victims of a traumatic situation, and it was thought that they would not be able to develop normally because they had no family, so most of them were predestined to poverty, delinquency, or prostitution. The future granted to these children was social margination. Therefore, there was no social pressure to change the care and opportunities provided to these children, because most of the population had ambivalent feelings towards them, a mixture of compassion and fear. A famous refrain says *"ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente"* [out of sight, out of mind], so it was considered appropriate for these children to be practically locked up in these large residences, concealing them from the public opinion, which did not accept any responsibility for this population other than some beneficial gesture. Thus, there was at this time no kind of external control or supervision of what went on within these institutions, and over time, too many cases of maltreatment and even indiscriminate adoptions, under the suspicion of commercial transactions, have come to light. The characteristics of these large

institutions, according to Del Valle and Fuertes (2000), are shown in Table 1.

and social experiences. Basic care The care provided to the children was essentially meeting

Lack of staff training The staff that attended the children was not required to

scientific knowledge.

**Table 1.** Common characteristics of the charity-model institutions for children

Indiscriminate admittance

Self-sufficiency and institutionalization

criterion

I will conclude by underlining the strengths and future challenges of RC as one more resource within the childhood welfare system. With regard to the strengths, I underscore its modernization, the professionalized care provided to the children, the positive effects it has in many cases and with certain profiles, being able to work with the families so as not to break the family bonds, as well as its flexibility to combine with other resources.

The challenges of the future involve the capacity to improve these children's academic adjustment—which is usually already impaired when they reach the residential homes and their socio-work insertion when they come of age. One of the topics in RC research that has recently awakened much interest is the transition to adult life, where not all the results of the investigations carried out are positive. Some reflections are made about how to improve these processes. Among other aspects, other administrations, such as the educational administration, should take on a more active role within the childhood welfare system. Only by means of inter-administrative coordination can we provide effective solutions to these future challenges to RC. We shall also address the topic of care for the mental health problems of this population. The studies carried out on this aspect indicate that the prevalence of mental health problems in this collective is much higher than that of the population of children and adolescents who live with their families.
