Positive outcomes from Attachment Placements!
18.10.11
The results of our analysis of discharges over the last 4 years are conclusive - 73% of children placed in Keys Attachment services are rehabilitated home or make successful transitions to other forms of family placement or independence.
Peter O'Neill Marketing Director comments
"These results are fantastic - we always knew that we were achieving positive outcomes with the Keys approach with children who had suffered abuse, trauma and many failed placements through attachment problems but these results confirmed our belief!
These positive outcomes only help spur us on to achieve more for those children with attachment problems who do not get the specialist help they deserve and need earlier in their care career"
Attachment Discharges and Positive Outcomes
Residential care for children with attachment issues has been a core part of Keys Group provision for more than 15 years. Whilst we always had complete confidence and faith in our service from our own observations and testimonials from placing social workers we have only recently more clinically researched outcomes by way of discharge destinations.
Positive outcomes:
Having reviewed the discharges out of the company from attachment homes over the last 4 years we found the following:
Over the 4 years, 33 children have been discharged from Attachment Homes within the Group. The placement destinations of those children were:
•· 2 children were placed in an adoptive family
•· 7 children returned to birth family/extended family
•· 9 children were placed successfully in foster care
•· 6 children moved into their own independent living accommodation or services designed for preparation/transition to independent living
•· 3 children were placed in secure accommodation
•· 3 children were placed in specialist mental health facilities
•· 1 child was discharged to a specialist residential school
•· 1 child discharged to another provider at Parents request
•· 1 child placed in specialist facility for sexually harmful behaviour
For the majority of children being admitted to Keys Attachment homes their previous experience has been one of abuse, trauma, neglect and significant disruption to their healthy attachment cycles. It is usual for children placed with us to have experienced 20+ reported moves before admission. It is therefore extremely positive that 55% of the young people return to live in a family setting be it foster care, back to adoptive families or indeed birth/extended families.
18% move on to independence often supported by the residential workers locally - 66% of these to their own flat and 33% moved to be geographically closer to family ties.
The 18% that moved on to either secure accommodation (welfare grounds) or a mental health provision are young people who required more specialist help and for whom group living in the community was too hard at the time.
The relatively small percentage of children moving to other residential provision did so for various reasons (9%)
•1. Residential school
•2. Family request
•3. Specialist provision SHB
Conclusions
We at Keys Group work extremely hard to ensure that children placed in Attachment homes are treated as children who have suffered trauma, damage and abuse and that their presenting behaviours are but symptoms of their previous experience.
We do not give up on children, we work hard with and for them to secure positive futures. We endeavour to help them develop appropriately and would aim that they would take away from their experience and journey with us the ability to make and sustain meaningful reciprocal relationships, a coherent narrative of their lives and the ability to make informed and safer choices for the future.
The outcomes we and they have achieved is a further testament to our child centred approach and provides further validity of the Keys Attachment Model.
