In sectors like social care, housing, and homelessness, the foundation of effective support often lies in building strong relationships. When working with people who’ve been through high levels of trauma or distress, it’s clear to see why having the right support around them at the right time is so crucial.
But what does the right support look like? It’s not about fixing; it’s about active listening, open communication, understanding, and being there for people in a way that works for them.
When we focus on building good relationships, where people feel heard and understood we can help people shape their own lives, find new opportunities —and look after our own mental health in the process.
In this blog, we will explore:
- Why are good working relationships important?
- Making space for building good working relationships
- What are the benefits of good working relationships?
Why are good working relationships important?
After speaking with frontline workers, we learned that people accessing these services often felt unheard. They described services as being focused solely on the perception that something was wrong with them, without ever asking what they needed or wanted. We were also told that services were consistently re-traumatising and causing harm.
As Oliver Townsend, Head of Partnerships and Practice at Platfform, explains:
“Positive, healing relationships are a key component in creating, with people, a secure base to reconnect and rebuild their life in the way they want to build it.”
While the importance of good working relationships in housing and social care has long been recognised, systemic barriers often stand in the way. Instead of focusing on connection, these systems can create divisions—between “us” and “them,” or “damaged” and “whole.”
We often celebrate those who overcome these challenges despite the odds, but we also need to reflect on the people left behind by deficit-based services.
While approaches like trauma-informed or psychologically informed environments have value, no single model can fully address these challenges. Instead, a better way is to focus on how we build a sense of trust and strong connections—because, ultimately, strong relationships are the foundation of meaningful change.
Relationships are the answer. How we build them, how we maintain them, how we repair them, how we end them, how we navigate them, and how we heal from them.
Making Space for Building Good Working Relationships
Positive relationships have always been central to housing and support. It’s not a new concept—it’s a way of being. While tools and frameworks can help guide us, they are only useful if they support us in relationship building.
Sometimes, these tools are only helpful in getting the system out of its own way, so that relationships can become the central focus of everything we do.
Oliver explains that a key part of building good working relationships with people (who may have faced many negative experiences) is about giving them the space to set their own goals and move at their own pace. We can offer effective communication, and guidance when asked, using our knowledge, connections, and influence to create opportunities. We can listen, be there during challenges, and gently encourage with trust and understanding.
Instead of formal support sessions, we have informal conversations. Home visits are replaced by walks or coffee meetups, and we help people reconnect with the world around them—if they choose to. Ultimately, our aim is to step back, having empowered them to lead their own journey, whether that’s with themselves, others, or their community.
There are still obstacles, of course. We’ve worked closely with commissioners to build similar relationship-based approaches, demonstrating the importance of flexibility in their structures, processes, and expectations. This has led to changes in risk assessments, lone-working policies, non-engagement letters, and referral processes, but there’s still much to do.
But we’re learning to better connect, too, and just as we don’t rush the people we work with, we can’t rush ourselves either.
What are the benefits of good working relationships?
In 2019, Caredig Housing Association began a journey to become more relational and trauma-informed in the way they deliver services and provide support for people accessing their services, tenants and staff. We led a deep listening exercise on how this change can feel to people on the ground.
One staff member shared:
“The difference in the work that we’re able to do with our tenants, our clients, has been huge – the quality of the conversations and being confident enough to have those conversations with people.”
Staff also saw improvements in relationships among team members, stemming from a better understanding of behaviour, finding common ground and improved conflict resolution. Another staff member reflected:
“I’ve not only seen the behaviour shift from engagement with residents, but actually internally between all staff I would say. Because you don’t know, my co-worker could be experiencing some things that, whatever happens behind closed doors, you just don’t know. And a trauma-informed approach, it doesn’t just fit one person, actually, it’s everybody. And I think that’s what it’s done. I think the place has always been a very people orientated place, but I think the ability now to really understand what could be happening… has really, I think it’s helped.”
Tenants consistently reported high levels of wellbeing, safety, and trust—key factors of a relational, trauma-informed approach. This sense of security emerged from positive relationships with staff and a broader feeling of belonging and acceptance within the organisation.
They emphasised how their good relationships with staff impacted their sense of empowerment and acceptance. They noted how staff worked to build trust over time through genuine connections, which made them feel supported and listened to.
One tenant shared:
“I like going for a cup of coffee on a Friday with staff. It’s nice to have a one-to-one chat where I talk about any issues and they help me.”
These relationships, built gradually and with care, became a cornerstone of the support tenants experienced.
Using this approach, we are also able to better meet the needs of people who require far more time to build trust and connection than the system generally allows. Typically, these people would be described as having made “no progress”. But this just means that it’s even more important not to write off or downplay the communication that has happened. Sometimes we see relationships where people maintain an open line of communication for months through nothing more than text messages – but for some people, that is the longest and most stable relationship they have had for a long time.
Through trust, clear boundaries, and honesty, we have seen people make huge progress, but in their own time and in their own way. And this is great, because this means we are being truthful and honest, which is key to role modelling secure and healthy relationships. This, in turn, can have a huge impact on front-line workers’ job satisfaction through a better working relationship and building a genuine connection with the people they work with, alongside setting professional boundaries and good communication.
Interested in our approach?
We work to influence positive changes in public and healthcare systems. To do this, we draw on our 30+ years of experience working in housing, homelessness and mental health. We know that if the systems intended to support us all are going to work, then they need to understand our environments, experiences, and circumstances.
These are the things that influence our mental health, and it’s here that we focus our calls for change. By applying these learnings, we help organisations change how they view and engage with their team, recognising potential where others see problems. It’s about building space for knowledge and reflective capacity and educating frontline workers and leadership.
We create supportive spaces for front-line team members, team leaders and senior management to learn, reflect together and build positive workplace relationships. Our preventative approach to staff wellbeing helps prevent burnout, compassion fatigue and strengthens service delivery. Find out more here.
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