Children in residential care: How to evaluate behavioural change

This article reports the results of an observational longitudinal study carried out on four children who lived in a residential community because of their multiproblem families. The aim of this study was to apply the evaluative methodology proposed by Le Poultier (1990) in order to assess I) the processes of change in the children over time and II) the relations between educational practices and observed changes. The findings confirm I) the existence of processes of change in the children; II) the presence of correlations between the displayed behaviour of the children and adult practices. In addition, what emerges is the existence of a dimension (transgression versus co-operation and autonomy) underlying the educational project designed by the adults. The data refer to observations of the behaviour of each staff member on a weekly basis for a six-month period and, at the same time, to the self-observations of each adult regarding the behaviour adopted towards each child. The data were analysed using: I) correlational coefficients to check the relation between the children's behaviour and the social work; II) Correspondence Analysis to permit a simultaneous representation of the developmental changes observed in the four children with respect to social work.