Correspondence in Residents' and Staff Members' Assessments of the Quality of Life of Children in Residential Care Facilities

This paper employs Shye's (1979, 1985, 1989)Quality of Life (QOL) model to examine the QOLof 920 boys and girls in 46 Residential CareFacilities in Israel, from the perspective ofboth the residents and the staff. Specifically, it examines the degree ofcorrespondence in the residents' and staffs'assessments of the residents' QOL and theassociation between the degree ofcorrespondence and the quality of the facility. Findings showed that while residents and staffmade similar assessments in various areas ofthe residents' cultural and social QOL, theresidents rated their physical QOL higher andtheir psychological QOL lower than the staffdid. Findings also showed that while residentsand staff agreed on the residents' QOL in thepoorest facilities, they disagreed in theothers. In the better facilities, the staffrated the residents' QOL lower than theresidents' did; in the poorer facilities, theresidents rated their QOL lower than the staff. These findings raise concern about staffawareness of the psychological hardships anddistress of the juveniles in their care, aswell as about their ability under thesecircumstances to provide adequate psychologicalcare.