The recommendations of the biggest inquiry into residential childcare for a generation will be costly.

The final reports from the National Residential Child Care Initiative (NRCCI) include calls for more specialist care for young people and earlier placement in care for some under-12s, and there is a demand for a push to properly address the health care needs of children who are looked after by councils.

Most of all there is the demand that, by 2014, all new ­residential childcare workers should be required to have a degree-level qualification, to put them on a par with the other professionals they encounter in health, social work and education.

That is likely to push up wage bills for hard-pressed local authorities and voluntary organisations. But this, at least partly, is the point, according to Romy Langeland, who chaired the NRCCI.

The initiative was set up by the Westminster government with the express understanding that residential care could be the first and best option for some children – and that, says Ms Langeland, requires a culture change.

“One of the key issues is to ensure the workforce is appropriately recognised and rewarded for the importance and complexity of the tasks they do,” she says. “Relationships are the ordinary magic through which care is delivered and you can only achieve that with confident and competent staff. If we get that right it will cost us less and it will make a huge ­difference to young people.”

The verdict of the teams making up the NRCCI was that, despite recent advances, residential childcare remains a poorly-paid ­isolated ghetto for workers – while for children it is often the last option, once repeated foster placements have broken down.

Degree-level qualifications for this key public-sector workforce are essential, Ms Langeland told Herald Society. “It is not enough to be well-meaning. The challenges are so great that you need a professional grounding to fall back on when things get hard.

“The other factor is that the staff involved often have the best knowledge of the children they work with, but get less of a voice [when meeting higher-status professionals].”

Some teaming-up between local councils may help alleviate some of the costs of meeting the reports’ recommendations. The NRCCI calls for some provision of specialist support for children under 12. The presumption has been that children this young should be in foster care, but 10% of children in residential care are under 12, so there is obviously a need. ­However, the numbers are small, so they have tended to end up in generic settings, with much older children.

“We would be hoping a couple of local authorities would get together. None of the smaller authorities will have need for huge numbers, but when they need one, they are desperate,”

Ms Langeland says.

Overall, provision has been too generic, the reports imply. They call for other dedicated services, including specialist residential care, to work with the high ­numbers of young people with mental health problems, including those who self-harm.

Indeed, when I ask about another of the recommendations – for a push on improving the health of looked-after children – mental health is all Ms Langeland comments on.

“It overwhelms everything else,” she says. “It is not surprising – these young people have been traumatised by neglect, parental substance abuse or sexual abuse. Nearly 50% have mental health needs of some kind and we are not doing well for the health needs of these kids.”

The reports overall are ambitious, as Scotland’s Children’s ­Minister Adam Ingram acknowledged at their launch.

The Scottish Government has backed them, as have Cosla and the Association of Directors of Social Work, whose president Harriet Dempster describes them with enthusiasm as “hugely aspirational”. But nobody knows quite how the money will be found to deliver on their findings.

However, Ms Langeland believes it must. “All of us who are part of it feel we need to invest to save. There is much the sector can do now, but it is also about trying to make use of scarce resources. I think councils have realised that the risks of not doing this may be a balance to the cost.”