ABSTRACT
Some children or young people stay in residential care, for example in residential schools for emotionally and behaviourally disturbed children, children's homes, or other establishments providing residential training. Such a residential community is not just a school or training establishment with living rooms attached, although it may seem so to the outsider. Residential living means that the whole personality of the student is involved in the community, and that the relationships set up in the community and the attitudes and skills learnt by the students have much more impact, for better or worse, than in a non-residential setting. Bullying inside such a community actively poisons the supportive relationships aimed for by the staff, and indicates that the basic emotional structure of the community is threatened. Communities have to recognise that they can easily turn into institutions, and actively work against the institutionalising processes which gradually depersonalise young people.
