Residential care: To what extent do levels of relational continuity within residential caring environments, including secure care, (e.g. consistency of key workers, staff teams, or trusted adults) vary across services, and how are these patterns associated with children’s wellbeing, safety, and longer‑term outcomes?
Background
The Independent Care Review made clear that stability and relationships must sit at the heart of children’s care. It highlighted that children should be “actively supported to develop relationships with people in the workforce and wider community” who are able to provide consistency, listen and act with compassion. It also emphasised that unnecessary moves, disruptions in care, and changes in social workers can damage trust, wellbeing, and long‑term outcomes. Ensuring stability is therefore about both where children live and who they interact with.
Despite this, we still do not fully understand how instability such as moves between homes whilst in the care system, changes in caregivers, or frequent turnover in social workers affects outcomes for children at different ages, nor what local factors help prevent disruption. More evidence is needed to understand the implications of instability for babies, children and young people, and what kinds of support, investment, or system changes can promote secure and lasting relationships.
Helping support a child’s pathway to permanence is central to ensuring they experience stable, loving relationships and a secure sense of home, and avoid prolonged uncertainty. This requires timely, well‑informed decisions about the right long‑term care arrangement for each child. Drift and delay can both prolong a child’s pathway to permanence, and more evidence is needed around the related causes, outcomes, and successful mitigations.
Next steps
Get in touch with [email protected]
Related UKRI funded projects
-
Care pathways and outcomes: The teenage years
Across the UK, when children enter care, they live in a range of different placements, such as foster care, kinship care (with relatives or friends), adoption or with their birth parents. However, adoptive placements are...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: University of Ulster
Why might this be relevant?
This project specifically focuses on the stability and outcomes of children in care, addressing the question fully with expertise.
-
Looked-after children in Wales: An analysis of the backgrounds of children entering public care
The doctoral research around which my fellowship is centred explored the differences between local authorities in Wales in the rates at which they place children in out of home care, referred to as being a 'looked after'...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
Why might this be relevant?
While this project focuses on looked-after children in Wales, it provides insights into social work practice and child welfare policy, partially addressing the question.
-
Communities in care: a scoping review to establish the relationship of community to the lives of looked after children and young people
Friendship networks and relationships with communities are important parts of the lives of looked after children and young people (LACYP). Much of legislation, policy, practice and research focuses on 'the care experienc...
Funded by: AHRC
Lead research organisation: University of Lincoln
Why might this be relevant?
This project explores the relationship of community to looked after children, offering insights into community connections and stability, partially addressing the question.