Relational practice: Views of out-of-home care providers

Children thrive when they have warm, stable, and responsive relationships with the adults in their lives. For the 14,000 children in out-of-home care (OOHC) in NSW, building and sustaining these genuine connections is the primary foundation for healing and wellbeing. Practitioners in OOHC services play a crucial role in supporting these relationships, and this, in turn, requires them to build positive and trusting reciprocal relationships with children, parents and carers. This way of working can be described as relational practice.

Developed in collaboration with ACWA, the NSW peak body representing non-government community organisations, this report shares NSW OOHC practitioners’ and managers' perspectives on relational practice. It draws on a survey of more than 200 practitioners and in-depth discussion groups. While these service provider perspectives offer valuable insight, they are only part of the picture. A fuller understanding requires centring the relational and emotional experiences of children, parents, and carers, and being guided by their definitions of what safe, meaningful and genuine relationships look like to them.

The findings highlight a significant gap between relational capability and relational conditions. While practitioners said they value and understand relational work, they are frequently hindered by system incentives that reward compliance, speed, and documentation over time, presence, and connection.

Put simply, systems are putting paperwork before people. Administrative safeguards and accountability mechanisms are necessary, but they cannot substitute for the human relationships that underpin children’s safety and development. As explored in our Humanity over Bureaucracy infographic, decades of risk-driven system design have created incentives that prioritise surveillance, compliance and documentation, often at the expense of time, presence and relational availability. Neuroscience and lived experience consistently point in the opposite direction: children’s wellbeing depends on relational security.

These findings are intended to serve as a pathway for reflection and a catalyst for sector-wide dialogue. They are also informing an ACWA/CRC-convened Taskforce focused on strengthening relational practice. The Taskforce brings together OOHC practitioners, as well as representatives from government, regulators, carers, parents and young people with lived experience, to develop new approaches to supporting and enabling relational work.