This workshop addresses a persistent global challenge in residential care: not whether to include youth voice, but how to systematically embed it within decision-making, service improvement, and accountability. Drawing on a cross-national collaboration between Boys Town (United States) and Udayan Care (India), the session demonstrates how research–practice partnerships (RPPs), the Do Better framework, and measurement-based care (MBC) can be integrated with participatory, youth-centered research to advance system change.

The workshop advances a shift from conducting research on youth to conducting research with youth, positioning young people and families as co-creators of knowledge, measures, and solutions. A case example from Udayan Care’s Beyond 18 study illustrates how youth-informed findings translated into practice through initiatives such as the Sphere of Aftercare, Aftercare Outreach Programme, and LIFT Fellowship. These efforts exemplify an iterative cycle linking evidence generation to program design, policy influence, and improved transition supports, including access to education, livelihoods, and community-based services.

The session combines brief framing with interactive, role-based group work. Participants—engaging as policymakers, practitioners, care leavers, and NGO/government representatives—will define “what matters,” identify measurable indicators, and design feedback systems that convert data into action within an RPP framework. Digital tools and visual methods will support real-time capture of diverse perspectives, anchored by care leaver narratives.

By integrating research, practice, and lived experience, the workshop highlights how evidence can become more timely, culturally responsive, and actionable. It concludes with a global proposition: improving residential care requires embedding youth voice, measurement, and partnership within continuous system-level learning.

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Current policies in the UK and US have constrained residential care practice in ways that risk the very therapeutic promise of TRC. Reflecting on the TRC Consensus Statement definition, This workshop will describe the pressing policy challenges in the UK and US and how policy and its unintended consequences have shaped program structure, access, workforce, goals, and practice in residential programs. The session will highlight opportunities for innovation and facilitate larger group discussion and exchange.

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Residential care for children and young people is recognized as a highly complex yet under-valued field of practice, requiring staff to navigate multiple and often competing expectations. Beyond providing daily care and ensuring safety, practitioners are expected to build therapeutic relationships, support family involvement, manage challenging behaviors, collaborate across service systems, and contribute to positive developmental outcomes. These diverse responsibilities raise important questions about how residential care staff understand their professional roles and how organizational, policy, and cultural contexts shape their work. This interactive workshop brings together perspectives from different national contexts to explore the evolving role of residential care practitioners and the challenges they encounter in contemporary practice. Drawing on research, practice experience, and international comparisons, the presenters will examine similarities and differences in role expectations, professional identity, workforce preparation, and the structural conditions that influence practice. Particular attention will be given to how residential care staff balance relational, therapeutic, educational, and care responsibilities while working within increasingly complex service environments. The workshop is designed to encourage dialogue among practitioners, researchers, and policymakers. Through facilitated discussion and collaborative reflection, participants will compare experiences across countries, identify shared challenges (e.g., balancing closeness and professional boundaries, navigating tensions between relationship-based practice and institutional requirements for compliance and surveillance), and consider the implications for workforce development, organizational support, and policy. By bringing together international perspectives, the session aims to foster a deeper understanding of the residential care workforce and to stimulate discussion about how systems can better support staff in delivering high-quality, relationship-based care for children, young people, and their families.

This workshop will bring together evidence and learning from a range of countries about the role of inspections and quality standards in children’s residential care. It will include a discussion on the possibilities and limits of elaborating quality standards and monitoring care quality in residential settings. 

While therapeutic residential care (TRC) services aspire to foster safety, healing, and opportunities to flourish, there remains limited understanding of how everyday practices and conditions in care enable them to form authentic relationships. This interactive workshop aims to explore possibilities for children to form authentic, safe and loving relationships in Therapeutic Residential Care. The session will draw on recent research in Australia and the UK, focusing on what children say about the everyday practices that they wanted to see demonstrated whilst living in a children’s home. The workshop will begin with a brief overview of key research findings and country context, before inviting participants to consider an important set of questions. They will share their own views about enablers, constraints and perceived risks associated with practices that are loving, and whether and how those risks might be mitigated. A facilitated reflective practice inquiry will then explore what might be working well in TRC practice and the difference that is being made. Workshop participants will engage with anonymised reflections from young people living in TRC, exploring key findings (presented earlier) on how every day micro interactions communicate respect, value, and love, enabling children to feel seen and recognised. Finally, practices strengthening young people’s connections beyond the residential care setting, to family, culture, and community will be examined. The workshop will close by inviting participants to move from insight to application: what do these findings ask of them in their practice context? Participants will be challenged to think critically about the implications for organisational culture, leadership, and program design. Finally, consideration will be given to what will change for children if we move from compliance-driven approaches to practice that genuinely prioritise their relationships, experiences and wellbeing.

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Residential care for children and young people is shaped by diverse historical, cultural, policy, and organizational contexts, making meaningful international comparison both essential and challenging. While cross-national research has the potential to advance knowledge, inform policy, and strengthen practice, differences in terminology, service structures, legal frameworks, and data availability often complicate comparative analyses. This interactive workshop presents an innovative approach to international comparative research in residential care through the development and application of a standardized data collection matrix. The matrix was designed to capture key characteristics of residential care systems across countries while allowing sufficient flexibility to reflect national contexts. During the first part of the workshop, the presenters will introduce the rationale, development, and structure of the matrix and share selected findings from participating countries, highlighting both common patterns and important variations. The second part of the workshop will focus on the work of the international research group of the Association for Children’s Residential & Community Services (ACRC) and its contribution to advancing collaborative scholarship in residential care. Drawing on experiences from multinational research initiatives, the presenters will reflect on the opportunities and methodological challenges of conducting comparative research, including issues of conceptual equivalence, data interpretation, and knowledge exchange across diverse systems. Designed for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, the workshop will emphasize dialogue and collaborative reflection. Participants will discuss lessons learned from international comparative research, identify priorities for future collaboration, and explore how comparative evidence can contribute to strengthening residential care policy, practice, and research across national contexts.

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