Instability at Transitions and Within Continuity: Navigating Maltreatment and Relational Impermanence In Out-of-Home Care

Background and Purpose: While most youth in care have a relational permanency goal, fewer than 7% achieve it. This harrowing gap is frequently attributed to the instability of out-of-home placements, which both disrupt relationships with biological and alternative caregivers and separate youth from siblings, teachers, and communities of origin. Consequently, multiple placements often constrain youth agency, compelling navigation of temporary and transactional relationships. This said, youth may form enduring connections with service providers, peers, and romantic partners, providing continuity independent of placement changes. Dominant frameworks of relational permanency, however, are implicitly tied to placement instability, emphasizing relational disruption and attachment challenges. Thus, current research offers an incomplete understanding of how relational instability operates across diverse relationships and contexts, and how youth maintain continuity to support connection, emotional security, and agency over time.

Methods: This qualitative study explored narratives of survivors of childhood maltreatment, examining relational permanency and its relationship to resilience. Participants were 23 young adults (ages 18–25) with a self-identified history of childhood maltreatment, recruited over a two-month period by Fostering Success Michigan support coaches and Michigan Youth Opportunity Initiative program coordinators. Semi-structured interviews addressed participants’ perceptions of relational permanency and its impact on development. Using an abductive coding approach, early code development was guided by sensitizing concepts from self-determination theory (e.g., autonomy, competence, relatedness) and the protective factors literature, while remaining open to inductively derived codes grounded in participants’ narratives. The coding team applied the codebook to each transcript, resolving disagreements through iterative discussion and updating codes until consensus was reached. Coding proceeded iteratively and abductively, with multiple rounds of refinement integrating analytic insights and theory. Higher-order themes were informed by theory and refined iteratively to enhance conceptual clarity and coherence.

Results: Thematic analysis identified three major interrelated themes describing experiences of and strategies for coping with relational impermanence. The first two themes address relational instability as “instability at transitions,” reflecting disruption across care contexts, and “instability within continuity,” in which precarious relationships emerged independent of placement changes. These themes supported the third theme, “adaptive reorientation to instability,” capturing participants’ resilient responses, including openness to uncertainty and acceptance of change. Relational instability was evident across nearly all narratives, demonstrating that precarity extends beyond placement changes and permeates multiple relational domains.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings extend scholarship by distinguishing dimensions of relational instability that shape youth care experiences. Addressing placement instability alone is insufficient; policymakers and practitioners should balance legal and relational permanency, strengthen workforce stability, and implement trauma-informed training for caregivers and professionals. Interventions must also target relational instability independent of placement changes, promoting durable and predictable connections across formal and informal contexts. Community-based spaces, such as mentorship programs, may provide consistent environments for building enduring relationships. Attending to multiple dimensions of relational instability can enhance youth relational security, emotional well-being, and personal agency over time.