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We love neat metrics in children’s social care because they fit on dashboards: placement stability, school attainment, cost per child. But when you sit down with people who’ve actually lived the care system, the story gets messier and far more human. Colby Pearce is joined Professor Dr Lisa Holmes, one of the world’s leading researchers in residential childcare, to ask a simple question with huge consequences: what outcomes are truly meaningful for children in out-of-home care?

We talk about why “countable” outcomes can crowd out what children need to heal and grow, including relationships that don’t get cut off when a placement ends, a sense of belonging and identity, real agency in decisions, and protection from loneliness. Lisa brings a systems lens to the problem, drawing on ecological theory to explain why children’s trajectories are rarely linear and why it’s risky to attribute long-term adult outcomes to a single placement without grappling with timing, instability, disability data gaps, and other confounds.

The conversation then turns to residential care. Yes, it’s expensive, but expensive doesn’t automatically mean poor value for money. We challenge the “last resort” rhetoric and argue for a better frame: placement purpose. What is this placement for, for this young person, right now? We also dig into what quality residential care looks like in practice, from trauma-informed training to strong supervision that supports the workforce to do complex, relational work well. 

If you care about child welfare reform, foster care, kinship care, residential care, and outcomes that actually match children’s hopes for an ordinary life, this one’s for you. 

Lisa’s Bio

Lisa joined the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sussex in January 2022 as Professor of Applied Social Science. Prior to this she was an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of Research in the Department of Education, University of Oxford. 

Over the past twenty-five years Lisa has carried out a range of research and evaluation projects, with a particular focus on the relationship between needs, costs and outcomes of services and support provided to children and families. Along with her colleagues, Professor James Whittaker and Professor Jorge F del Valle, Lisa is co-chair of the International Work Group for Therapeutic Residential Care and is a board member of the European Scientific Association On Residential And Family Care For Children And Adolescents (EuSARF) and the Association of Children’s Residential and Community Services (ACRC). In late 2017, along with colleagues at University College London and the University of Oxford, Lisa established the Children's Social Care Data User Group. The group provides a forum to share expertise and learning between all users and potential users (academic, practice and policy) of children's social care (child welfare) data. 

Lisa has published a range of books and journal articles. Over the past two years she has presented her research in Australia, South Korea, Spain, Finland, Croatia, Lithuania and the US.

Links:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheSecureStartPodcast
Podcast Blog Site: https://thesecurestartpodcast.com/

Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for

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