Abstract

Relationship-based practice refers to approaches within human services which centralise inter-personal relationships – either those between clients and workers or between clients and their own network – as a way to achieve positive service outcomes. Relationship-based practice is increasingly recognised as a critical component in many areas of human services, particularly youth services. Despite increasing policy intentions for programs to adopt a relationship-based approach, it is not always clear how services can implement this in practice. While relationship-based skill training can be offered to individual workers, a question remains as to what can be done at an organisational and policy level to cultivate relationship-based practice. Within this context, this paper explores how programs can be designed to foster relationship-based practice. The paper draws on the evaluation of an intensive and tailored service for addressing long-term youth unemployment in Australia: the your job your way pilot program run by yourtown. A key success of the program was strong relationship-based practice, and this paper explores five features of the program’s design that enabled this: (1) small caseloads, (2) intensive support, (3) professional yet ‘youth-friendly’ staff, (4) staff discretion about some aspects of program implementation, and (5) support delivered through social and group activities. The paper draws implications for how service provider organisations and governments can cultivate relationship-based practice in human services.