Impact Report on the MSc in Advanced Residential Child Care

Scotland’s ambition to be the best place in the world to grow up includes an explicit commitment to give children in care the childhood they deserve (Amos, 2022). This report offers a corollary: for Scotland to be the best place in the world for all children to grow up, including those in residential child care, then the personal and professional of the adults who care for them must also be a part of Scotland’s ambition. The MSc in Advanced Residential Child Care, a vital pillar in the support for residential child care workers’ development, plays a key role in Scotland achieving this ambition. People who work in the care system require specific knowledge, skills, values, and support in order to promote the development of the children and young people they care for. Professional qualifications make an irreplaceable contribution to some parts of the workforce, but in order to do so, these qualifications must have relevant content, effective teaching and robust support for learning. Perhaps even more importantly, such qualifications must support the development of values and a professional identity oriented towards care and close relationships – not distance and superiority. This report provides compelling evidence that the MSc in Advanced Residential Child Care (referred to here forward as ‘the course’) is an eminent example of one such qualification. It is positioned to make a continued, critical contribution to changing the culture of residential child care, where working alongside children, young people, their families and care experienced adults effectively becomes consistent across the sector; where the conditions for loving relationships to flourish are the norm no matter what the challenges; and where working in residential child care in Scotland is the best place in the world to make a difference in the lives of children and young people. As will become clear further in this report, these cultural changes have already begun.