ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on working in partnership with adolescents in care and with their careers. It describes the integration of a systemic approach with a relational and intersubjective perspective when working in partnership with young people and their networks. The chapter considers that many young people enter care with anxious attachments, then the studies that suggest it is difficult to make successful therapeutic relationships with these adolescents might seem to be revealing an inalienable truth. It presents a number of case vignettes to illustrate themes arising from practice and explains to create space for the voices of young people in care taken from case study research by Tracey Fuller. The chapter suggests that combining these approaches is essential in order to attend to the inner world experiences of feelings and trauma and outer world realities and relationships. Adaptive reactions to traumatic experiences include hyper-arousal, which can leave young people with an ongoing, everyday mood of constant low-level fear.
