Children, Seniors and Social Development
May 3, 2017

Provincial Government Commits to New Program for Residential Placements for Children and Youth

As part of the ongoing effort to improve programming and placement stability for children and youth in care, the Provincial Government is changing its approach to procuring the services of staffed residential out-of-home placements, moving to a program rather than the public tendering process that has been in place since 2014.  

Delivering residential placements under a program model, instead of a public tendering model, will help provide greater flexibility in supporting the changing needs of children and youth and increase placement stability. Under the current public tendering process, children/youth could experience disruption in their living arrangements, given contracts that were awarded in 2014 would need to be retendered, possibly leading to changing care arrangements.

Currently, there are approximately 180 staffed residential placements throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. These include individualized living arrangements, group homes and emergency placement homes which use a 24-hour staff model to provide care to children and youth with highly complex needs.

An Expression of Interest will be issued every two years to demonstrate the Provincial Government’s interest in working with existing and new service providers. The department will select service providers to establish residential placements by assessing which provider can best meet the needs of the child or youth to be placed. 

Quote
“Our focus needs to be on providing the highest quality, stable care to children and youth who require residential services. Delivering residential placements through a program, rather than a public tendering process, allows for greater flexibility in establishing needed placements and greater stability for children and youth living in these homes. The need to establish homes through a drawn out tendering process and the potential requirement to move children/youth to new placements is eliminated by removing the public tendering process. Instead, we can focus on improving outcomes for children and youth for whom we provide care.” 
Honourable Sherry Gambin-Walsh,
Minister of Children, Seniors and Social Development

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Media contact
Krista Dalton
Children, Seniors and Social Development
709-729-3768, 685-6492
kristadalton@gov.nl.ca

2017 05 03                                                    3:15 p.m.