Currently in Portugal 8025 children and youngsters are growing up in 433 different Residential Care (RC) facilities, accounting for more than 90% of all the children in out-of-home care. Most children stay in RC for 2 years or more. Over 60% of these children still grow up in large sized centres and more than 50% are raised in institutions segregated by gender. In Portugal, almost 99% of babies under three in out-of-home care are placed in an institution, which is against all international recommendations.
An analysis of the historical and current context of RC in Portugal shows some ignorance regarding the way these centres work. RC for children and young people in Portugal has developed and changed without a service quality evaluation.
In order to accommodate subjective, contextual and plural aspects of the quality concept it is mandatory to include the assessment made by everyone involved (including the children) and the collection of information from different sources and types in order to benefit from a multiplicity of perspectives and understandings.
An ongoing research on Portuguese RC System care quality evaluation (EQAR), using the ARQUA-P methodology will be present. Based on an ecological theoretical model and using an adapted Portuguese version of the Spanish ARQUA evaluation system for RC with reference to international standards, the research team have visited the centres and interviewed children, caregivers, directors, teachers and tutelary entity articulation professionals (welfare services).
The goals of this research project are the assessment of the needs and psychological adjustment of institutionalized children, the evaluation of the centres’ services and how they are matching each other.
Data was collected using demographic information direct observation, documental analysis, interviews and questionnaires.
Fourteen RC centres for children and young people were visited within an exploratory study of this nationwide assessment on the quality of the Portuguese RC system. By means of multi-informant analysis, this study considers the perspective of children, caregivers, directors, Social Security professionals and researchers. Two hundred and eleven children and youngsters, 146 caregivers, 12 welfare services’ professionals and 6 directors participated in this study.
Results have shown significant differences between the scores of the quality assessment of the different groups. Children/youngsters in care were the group with the highest scores, followed by caregivers, directors and lastly welfare services’ professionals. The evaluations made by the different groups were crossed with that of the researchers. There were no significant correlations regarding the overall quality between the groups. However, there were significant correlations between the different groups, in relation to the specific dimensions of the evaluation of RC.
These results highlight the relevance of an approach that listens to the different voices in achieving a wide, comprehensive and accurate assessment of RC quality. Furthermore data from this nationwide evaluation of the RC system in Portugal may support country level policy decisions about structures, methods, mechanisms and resources, contributing to a higher degree of specialization. Moreover, it will allow for the comparison of the RC state of the art in Portugal and the international reality.
Implications are drawn from these results for further research in RC in general and some guidelines are highlighted in relation to interventions aiming for the improvement of RC quality in Portugal.
