A body of professionals involved in the residential care of children and young people. We are a young association, originating from a partnership of seven organisations from four different European countries and are looking to build on our network of contacts throughout the world who share our objectives.
The EUROARC organisers of the “Rhythms and Routines” symposium held in Scotland in June 2001, would like to say a big thank you to all the delegates who took part in this unique event. From Argentina to Zimbabwe you all came along and shared your experiences and insight. A great deal of knowledge and information has been harnessed which will help make things better for children and young people in residential care. The theme of the symposium was to identify “What Works” in residential child and youth care, and together we discovered a great deal which is working across the world.
This innovative three day international symposium brought together over 150 delegates, from over 20 countries. There were special presentations on 4 key themes, from a variety of International contributors from Finland, Ireland, Scotland and Spain.
The uniqueness of this event was that it was not “problem” but “solution” focused. We hoped that we would unearth examples of positive practice which delegates could take back to their own organisations and use in their day to day work. We gambled on the format by ensuring that over 50% of the delegates were practising residential workers. We selectively placed the delegates into ten workgroups, ensuring that we maintained the balance of governmental and non-governmental organisations, as well as geographical representation. Each workgroup had a designated facilitator chairing the workgroup, and a designated recorder who was responsible for recording the discussions. Within the workgroups, delegates were encouraged to participate, debate, talk and share their own experiences of “what works” for them. The gamble paid off and at the end of the symposium we had harvested more knowledge than we could have dreamed of. Full summaries and findings of the workgroups are now published on the website. Our challenge now, is to use the information gathered to produce a practical, factual workbook and to circulate this to child and youth care establishments. The workbook will also be published on the website and copyright will not apply. Further details will be made available once the workbook is published.
