NATIONAL CARE STANDARDS

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Sector-wide residential and/or foster care standards in some shape or form have been around for about 50 years. In North America, best practice Standards for Foster Family Care were first published in the 1970s by the Child Welfare League of America. In New Zealand in the 1980s, residential and foster care standards were collaboratively developed for one of the country’s regions, and while not widely implemented, in Australia national Baseline Out-of-home Care Standards were published in 1995.

 Since those days, there has been a growing interest, particularly from Governments, in the development of sector- wide care standards and the publication of numerous national, state or province care standards documents. The best-known include the following:

·      UK national standards for foster care (1999 - since superseded)

·      Quality4Children Standards for Out-of-Home Child Care in Europe (2007)

·      Australian National Standards for Out‐of‐home Care (2010).

 The latest addition is New Zealand's Oranga Tamariki (National Care Standards and Related Matters) Regulations 2018, which came into effect in July 2019. Notably, and in contrast to many, the New Zealand standards are legally enforceable. 

 However, while national and other standards across different countries may in some respects be remarkably similar, they may have very different purposes.

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Our challenge is to ensure that we are clear on those purposes, are able to harness the power of published standards in order to continuously improve policy, practice and outcomes, and to always have honest conversations where that is not the case. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts! You can email me at: iain@betteroutcomes.co.nz

Kia kaha (Stay Strong).

Iain

Iain Matheson