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Background: In residential youth care, group care workers and teachers often serve as a mentor for individual adolescents. Although favorable mentoring relationships are associated with positive adolescent outcomes, few studies examined the role of mentoring in residential youth care. Objective: The present study aims to assess adolescents', care workers' and teachers' mentoring relationship needs in terms of their one-on-one conversations during residential care. Methods: We conducted structured interviews with eleven adolescents, ten group care workers and two teachers and content analysis to assess the data. Results: All respondents are rather satisfied with their conversations, which are often concerned with how the adolescent is doing. Adolescents mostly consider their family and home-situation as difficult topics, while care workers mostly consider sexuality as a difficult topic to talk about. Although 'improvement' with the youth is often the aim, most adolescents report that they do not (know if they) show changes because of these conversations. Moreover, only one of the twelve professionals thinks that it is his core task to achieve "behavior change" with the adolescents. According to the professionals, conversations often aim at building a good relationship, coaching, determining treatment goals, and gaining insight into the adolescent. Adolescents prefer a mentor who is calm, has respect, listens, and is reluctant in giving advice. Most professionals do not use a specific method and doubt whether they want to have conversations according to a manual or support tool. Conclusions: Despite being rather satisfied, adolescents and professionals indicate several points for improvement of one-on-one conversations.

Family‐centred practice (FCP) has been suggested as a best practice for treating youth with emotional and behavioural difficulties in residential care. In this preregistered systematic review, we examined how FCP is operationalized and measured in residential youth care and which family outcomes are associated with FCP. Our systematic search in six databases identified 5784 articles. We analysed included articles by coding the operationalizations of FCP in the interventions and study measures. Further, we descriptively summarized relations between FCP and family outcomes. Thirteen articles met our inclusion criteria. In these articles, FCP was operationalized by five types of youth worker actions in interventions and was measured as five types of family involvement. Ten articles examined pre–post differences in family‐centred interventions. Only four articles analysed relations between FCP and a family outcome. Studies found some support for a positive association between FCP and whole‐family functioning, but overall, the association between FCP and family outcomes remains unclear. Our findings demonstrate that more research is needed that specifically examines different aspects of FCP and how they relate to family outcomes in residential youth care. Such studies can benefit from the conceptual model proposed for FCP in residential youth care interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Helping children and parents remain together, despite significant parent or child problems, is a key objective of child welfare services. One option is to place whole families together into out-of-home settings. We searched peer-reviewed and gray literature and solicited input from international networks to identify the range of family placement programs available. We identified three key types of "shared family care." Shared Family Foster Care (SFFC) involves sharing of care and intensive modeling of effective parenting by a host family that engages in mentoring of the parent and parenting of the child. Shared Residential Care (SRC) programs involve sharing of care and intensive modeling of effective parenting by professional staff as they engage parents and children in what had often been child-only residential programs. Family Residential Treatment Programs (FRT) also place parents and children in residence together. FRT programs are often aligned with inpatient treatment units. Active programs that illustrate each type are described. Through this typology and detailed information of currently active shared family care programs, policymakers and program designers can consider which kinds of programs have the most potential for implementation and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term behavioral change is often difficult to achieve with adolescents staying in residential youth care. To achieve long-term behavioral change, we developed the Up2U training program to enhance these adolescents' intrinsic motivation for change. Based on motivational interviewing and solution-focused therapy, Up2U is designed for conducting one-on-one conversations with adolescents in residential youth care. The aim of this study is to evaluate the experiences that adolescents and care workers have had with Up2U. The results of semi-structured interviews show that, in general, the care workers were satisfied with Up2U. They identified the clarity, conciseness, and sample questions as positive elements of Up2U. In contrast, the care workers regarded the extensiveness and the implementation of Up2U as less positive. The adolescents also seemed to be positive about the use of Up2U during one-on-one conversations. In conclusion, although both care workers and adolescents were generally satisfied, there is still room for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secure residential youth care facilities try to optimize their help by offering gender-specific treatment, in an attempt to achieve positive behavioral change in adolescents. In this study, we examined behavioral change in a sample of 239 Dutch adolescents (M age = 15.59 years, SD = 1.36 years, 54.9% girls) in secure residential care. Pretest, posttest and follow-up measurements were carried out for behavioral problems, PTSD symptoms, emotion regulation, perceived competence and family problems. Comparisons were made between girls in gender-specific care, and girls and boys in regular care. Missing data analyses revealed the dataset contained many missing values. Analyses were performed at group level, using MANCOVA, ANCOVA's and bootstrapped planned contrast, and at case level, using the Reliable Change Index. At group level, results revealed higher effectiveness of gender-specific care for girls compared to regular care for girls, only in diminishing externalizing behavioral problems. Overall, there were more similarities than differences in the effectiveness of gender-specific versus regular help. At individual level, 0–58% of the adolescents improved during their stay in secure residential care. However, most adolescents showed no change (25–88%) or even deterioration (0–39%). These results strongly emphasize the need for alternative interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secure residential care (SRC) is criticized for several reasons. Therefore, in many countries, the general policy is to limit the length of stay of adolescents in SRC. However, research on length of stay and treatment effects of SRC on adolescents' behavioral problems is sparse. Using single case experimental designs with time-series, forty adolescents referred to SRC completed a questionnaire on behavioral and attention problems every two weeks during a baseline (A) and treatment period (B). Two-level regression analyses were used to investigate the effects of SRC on behavioral and attention problems. In addition, we tested whether length of stay moderated effectiveness. On the individual level, the treatment showed a positive statistically significant effect on the behavioral problems of 0%-8% of the adolescents and a statistically significant negative effect on behavioral problems was found in 3%-10% of the adolescents. On the group level, adolescents showed no significant decrease in problem behavior or attention problems from baseline to discharge. Length of stay did not moderate the results. Based on the results we conclude that most adolescents fail to improve. In addition, length of stay was not associated with effectiveness, nor could it be explained by adolescents' characteristics., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.