Walk into almost any therapeutic residential care home and you’ll see a system working hard to protect young people. There are clear rules, structured routines, detailed risk assessments, and behaviour management plans.

These things matter. They create order. They reduce harm. They make environments safer for young people whose lives have often been anything but predictable.

But there is an uncomfortable truth at the heart of this work: safety, stability, and behaviour management are not enough.

In partnership with the Australian Childhood Foundation, Southern Cross University’s Centre for Children and Young People, together with leading scholars, set out to understand what actually enables young people in residential care to build trusting relationships and meaningful social connections.

Over four years, researchers listened closely to the voices of young people and staff. What emerged was not loud or dramatic. It was quieter than that. But it was persistent, and it was powerful. Again and again, young people described something that is often overlooked in “good” systems of care: relational poverty.

Relational poverty is not about a lack of services or funding. It is not about whether a placement meets standards or whether programs are delivered. It is about something far more fundamental: the absence of meaningful, everyday human connection.

Young people spoke about feeling alone, even when surrounded by staff. They described being “looked after,” but not truly known. Their lives were managed but not shared. They were safe, but they did not feel that they belonged.

This distinction matters more than we often realise. Trauma may begin in relationships, but healing also happens in relationships. Without connection, care can meet every formal requirement and still miss what matters most.

Residential care has evolved significantly over the past decades. Many services are now trauma-informed, structured, and highly regulated. Yet even strong systems can unintentionally recreate the very conditions young people are trying to recover from.

When care becomes dominated by compliance, risk management, and behaviour control, something essential can be lost. The small, human moments that build trust and identity begin to disappear.

What remains can look like good care on paper, but feel very different in practice: predictable, but impersonal; safe, but emotionally distant; well-managed, but relationally thin.

For young people who have already experienced disconnection, rejection, and loss, this can deepen their sense of isolation rather than heal it.

This raises a confronting question for all of us working in and around residential care:

What if the greatest harm is not only what has happened to young people before they arrive, but the relationships and opportunities they continue to be denied while they are with us?

Not through neglect or intent, but through systems that prioritise safety over connection. If we take relational poverty seriously, then residential care cannot simply be understood as a placement. It must be understood as a relational environment.

That shift changes everything. It means recognising that every interaction matters, every shift holds relational potential, and every routine can either strengthen or erode a young person’s sense of belonging.

This is not about adding more programs or increasing complexity. It is about changing how we show up in the moments we already have. One of the most practical contributions of this work is the concept of “recognitional” micro-practices. These are small, intentional actions that communicate something powerful to a young person: I see you. You matter. You belong.

These practices do not require major reform. But they do require attention, consistency, and genuine presence. In the everyday living environment, this might look like remembering how a young person takes their coffee, sitting with them during meals instead of supervising from a distance, sharing humour, music, or even quiet boredom. It is about creating spaces that feel like homes, not just placements.

In relationships, it means supporting connection with people who matter, even when those relationships are complex. It means helping young people maintain friendships, and, importantly, being a consistent and reliable adult presence. Because long after rosters are forgotten, young people remember who showed up for them.

Beyond the house, it involves connection to community. Too many young people leave care having been kept safe but excluded from the very social and cultural worlds they need to belong to. Supporting participation in sport, hobbies, culture, and community life is not an “extra.” It is central to building a life beyond care.

For residential care staff, this is the work. It sits in the daily balancing act of managing risk while staying relational, holding boundaries while remaining compassionate, and continuing to show up, even when it is hard. This perspective does not minimise the complexity of the role. It recognises it. Because at its core, this work is not just about managing behaviour. It is about shaping identity.

For leaders, the implications are just as significant. Relational practice does not happen by chance. It is enabled, or constrained, by the systems around it.

Rosters must allow time for connection, not just task completion. Organisational cultures must value relationships, not only compliance. Supervision must create space for reflection, not just accountability and systems must measure what truly matters, not only incidents, but the quality of relationships. If connection is not prioritised at a systems level, it will always be the first thing lost under pressure.

None of this argues against safety. Safety is essential. But safety on its own is incomplete. Young people do not just need protection from harm. They need to be known. To be valued. To belong. The goal of residential care is not simply to keep young people safe while they are with us. It is to ensure that when they leave, they carry something with them that endures: a sense that they matter, and that they are not alone.

Further reading 

Want to know more? See: McPherson, L., Canosa, A., Gilligan, R., Moore, T., Gatwiri, K., Day, K., Mitchell, J., Graham, A., Anderson, D., (2025) Young peoples lived experience of relational practices in therapeutic residential care in Australia, Children and Youth Services Review, Volume 170, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108129.