Consultation: Regulations and minimum standards for residential family centres

What is it all about? Residential family centres are centres where parents undergo a residential assessment of their ability to care effectively for their children.

The consultation is looking for views on amended regulations and national minimum standards that govern the centres, which have not been reviewed or amended since they were first published in 2002.

The Department for Education wants to increase focus on the quality and effectiveness of the service provided to families.

What are the main points? In line with the government’s response to Eileen Munro’s recommendations for reforming the child protection system, the aim of the changes is to shift the focus of standards onto the views and experiences of children and their parents.

There is a new regulation that requires providers of centres to ensure assessments of parenting capacity are evidence-based, and a regulation on “surveillance and privacy”, that covers the use of CCTV and other electronic surveillance methods, both for the purpose of parenting assessments and for safeguarding.

There is an additional requirement in the amended regulations, requiring providers to produce a risk assessment as part of a placement plan for any new family, to ensure centres are aware of the risks involved when admitting new residents to the centre, both to the new residents and to the other families already living in the centre. Meanwhile, a new standard covering financial viability has been included, requiring a written development plan for the centre, to be updated annually.

There is less detail in the standards relating to the fitness of premises, in order to focus on the service provided.

Who can have their say? The consultation is open to representations from all parties.

When does it close? Tuesday 3 July 2012

When will the results be published? The results of the consultation and the department’s response will be published on the Department for Education e-consultation website in the autumn. Amended regulations and standards will subsequently come into force in April 2013, in parallel with Ofsted’s new inspection framework for residential family centres.

www.education.gov.uk/consultations