Children and young people in out of home care have experienced adversity and they deserve to feel safe, connected and have attuned relationships with their carers and care team. 

Australian Childhood Foundation Foster Care WA team comprise of Care Coordinators and Therapeutic Specialists who practice using the Doolann Therapeutic Model of Care which is a comprehensive care response for children and young people in out of home care. Our aim is to provide inclusive, culturally strong therapeutic care and support to vulnerable children and young people, and their foster carers. Using this model, the team positions children and young people at the centre of all practice.

Following the Out of Home Care reform in WA, delivering a therapeutic foster care program as a new provider to carers who have already been caring for numerous years has brought an array of learning. Some interventions include supporting carers with a history of conflictual relationships with stakeholders involved in the child’s life, supporting carers with their understanding of trauma related behaviours and behaviours that challenge, and supporting children and young people with placement moves. We practice with the child at the forefront and have surrounded their care team with trauma informed therapeutic knowledge and interventions.

The children and young people that we are working with are starting to achieve outcomes that have been seen as too hard to achieve in the past. We have examples of children using their own words to articulate how they feel, and care teams who work together for the best interests of the child now there is a shared understanding of care.

Young people living in therapeutic residential care can  face major challenges that may prevent them from forming healthy relationships and connections within the community, which are critical building blocks for their wellbeing and safety. As a response to these challenges, Australia has introduced ‘therapeutic residential care’ (TRC) models in a number of states and territories. In Australia, TRC was developed to respond to highly complex levels of need, for those young people who were unable to live in a family or other home-based care arrangement. 

 This paper presents research which explored whether and how relational practices in TRC enable the experience of positive, trusting relationships for young people. Young people between the ages of 12 and 18 years (N = 38) reported developing trust when staff genuinely invested time in their wellbeing, demonstrated care and respect, and made them feel valued. Conversely, the lack of these practices and/or particular organisational and systemic conditions were considered barriers by some, that could lead to ‘misrecognition’. Drawing directly from the lived experience as recounted by young people currently living in residential care, the researchers conceptualise and introduce a new dimension of relational practice in residential care settings.