The launch of the Level 4 NVQ by City & Guilds comes two weeks after Channel 4's Dispatches programme revealed serious failings in the system.
It is the highest qualification of its kind for managers in children's residential care and is expected to take at least a year to complete.
It will be available in early January 2005.
The launch of the new qualification has been seen as timely because it comes after the programme revealed shocking examples of bad practice in private children's homes (Children Now, 1-7 December).
Jennifer Bernard, consulting director for care, community and health at City & Guilds, said: "We all despair of poor practice in residential care and we believe that anything we can do to give people that extra confidence in their knowledge and learning, and to support the managers who manage those staff, is absolutely the right thing to do. This should change things for the better."
She said the NVQ would teach a range of skills and expected a high level of interest. "For the first time candidates have to be able to demonstrate their management skills as well as their professional skills in terms of looking after children and securing better outcomes for children.
"Up to now, people have had to do that separately, so we are confident that this will be a useful qualification both for new and existing managers in residential childcare.
"We believe there should be enough places but we can't put a number on it yet because we're just at the stage of launching it. What I can say is there will be a good spread across Eng-land and Wales."
Children's minister Margaret Hodge also gave her backing to the new qualification.
"This award is significant in strengthening standards across the sector," she said.
"Everyone involved in delivery of services, including local leaders and managers, must work together to transform services for children, young people and families."
Janet Rich, a director at the Bryn Melyn Group, a private provider of care homes, said the new qualification was long overdue. "There has historically been a lack of training directed toward residential childcare so anything that recognises both the specialism and the important contribution that residential childcare makes has got to be welcomed by the sector."
