It is ironic that as the first decade of the 21st century is nearing its end, we are encouraged to rethink residential child care. The irony is not because of any dramatic changes in residential child care per se but because of the discourses that have attempted to rid child welfare services of residential child care. Some have argued that all residential or institutional services are oppressive and should no longer be included among the variety of service options available to families or to health, education and welfare professionals. Such arguments are commonly put forward by so-called scholars who have never, ever worked with troubled or troublesome children and young people in residential child care. Theirs is an opinion allegedly informed through research about residential child care, not through practice research located from within the worlds where looked-after children and young people live. Theirs is a language filled with a discourse on outcomes and graphic claims offered by the disaffected. Rarely have they listened to life stories told by those who found respite, solace, opportunities and emotional commitment through relationships offered through positive residential child care experiences.

For all of these reasons it is timely for an intellectual stocktake and an opportunity to rethink residential child care. In the first place, residential care and education are among the oldest forms of human service ever to have been established. The first social work training dates from the late 19th century when the National Children's Home introduced in-service training for its carers. Residential child care is also the most internationally used of all health, education and welfare services with residential provisions of various sizes – from smaller, localised facilities to large-scale villages – located throughout the world, in so-called developed countries as well as in those others described as developing. Residential child care caters for the nation's most vulnerable or challenging children and young people, who are still most commonly looked after by that nation's least formally qualified people. There remains a strongly held view that real care cannot be taught and that the best carers are those who are ‘born’ with innate capacities and abilities to provide nurturing care. It is timely that all of these assumptions should be subjected to a systematic rethink.

Those who argue against the use of residential child care frequently omit residential schools from the list of services they would target for closure.