Why Trust Takes Time: Creating Felt Safety for Vulnerable Youth

There is often a quiet tension in the first few minutes of working with a vulnerable young person. The room may look calm, the conversation may seem polite, and yet something remains held back. Answers are brief. Eye contact is limited. The young person may appear detached, cautious, or difficult to read. For many practitioners, this is one of the hardest parts of the work: knowing support is needed, while also sensing that trust is still a long way off.

It is easy to misread these moments. Guardedness can look like disinterest. Silence can look like defiance. A flat tone can be mistaken for rudeness or indifference. In practice, though, many young people are not refusing connection so much as protecting themselves from it. If their experiences with adults have been inconsistent, intrusive, shaming, or short-lived, then wariness is not irrational. It is adaptive.

This is where the idea of felt safety becomes important. Safety is not just a matter of being told that a room is safe, or that an adult is trustworthy. It is something the nervous system has to experience over time. A young person may understand, on a rational level, that the adult in front of them is trying to help, while still feeling highly alert, defensive, or shut down. Support tends to deepen only when the young person begins to sense, through repeated interactions, that they are not about to be embarrassed, pressured, or let down.

For practitioners, this can be frustrating. There is often pressure to get moving, to identify goals, to gather background information, or to begin intervention quickly. Schools want progress. Parents want answers. Services want evidence that something is changing. But trust rarely develops under pressure. In fact, the more urgent the adult becomes, the more a guarded young person may retreat.

A more useful question is not, “How do I get this young person to open up?” but, “What am I communicating about safety in the way I am showing up?” This brings the focus back to practice rather than personality. Creating felt safety is not about being unusually charismatic or endlessly warm. It is about being clear, predictable, respectful, and emotionally steady.

Often, the smallest things matter most. Predictability helps. When sessions begin in a similar way each time, young people know what to expect. Choice helps too. Something as simple as offering options about where to sit, what to start with, or how to respond can lower the sense of threat. Transparency matters just as much. Young people are usually quick to notice when adults are vague, overly polished, or not fully honest about their role. Being clear about confidentiality, limits, and next steps can build more trust than trying to sound reassuring.

Language also matters. Vulnerable young people often spend a great deal of time around adults who talk about them, assess them, or interpret them. Relationally safe practice sounds different. It is less clinical, less rushed, and less invested in proving expertise. It leaves room for uncertainty. It acknowledges discomfort without overreacting to it. Sometimes a calm, matter-of-fact statement such as, “We can take this slowly,” does more to reduce anxiety than a highly enthusiastic attempt at rapport.

Another important part of felt safety is learning to tolerate silence. Many practitioners feel an understandable urge to fill quiet moments, especially early on. Silence can feel awkward, and awkwardness can be hard to sit with. But when adults rush to fill every gap, they can accidentally communicate that discomfort is not allowed. A young person who needs time to watch, assess, and settle may experience this as pressure. Leaving space without withdrawing can be one of the most respectful things an adult does.

It is also worth recognising that trust is often tested before it is offered. A young person may miss a session, give a blunt answer, reject help, or appear uninterested just after a positive interaction. These moments can feel discouraging, but they are not always signs that the relationship is failing. Sometimes they are ways of asking, indirectly, “Will you stay steady when I make this hard?” A relational response does not mean accepting anything without limit. It means holding clear boundaries while resisting the urge to personalise the behaviour.

Creating felt safety does not require perfect wording or flawless instincts. It asks for consistency. It asks adults to notice their own pace, tone, and need for quick progress. It asks them to understand that trust is built less through big emotional moments and more through ordinary, repeatable experiences of reliability. For vulnerable youth, those ordinary moments can be the difference between remaining guarded and beginning, slowly, to engage.

References

Australian Association of Social Workers. (2025). Trauma-informed mental health: Supporting young people involved in statutory child protection. Australian Social Work. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0312407X.2025.2526205

FISA BC. (2020). Supporting trauma informed practices: Adolescent and youth resource manual. https://fisabc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Adolescent-and-Youth-Resource-Manual.pdf

National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.). Trauma-informed guiding principles for working with transition age youth. https://www.nctsn.org/

Relational Child & Youth Care Practice. (n.d.). Article search. https://www.rcycp.com/libraries.aspx

Relational Child & Youth Care Practice. (n.d.). Relational child and youth care practice in action. https://www.press.cyc-net.org/samples/RCYCP_InAction.pdf

Saferworld. (2025). Guide to trauma-informed approach in youth work. https://www.saferworld-global.org/downloads/resources/guide-to-trauma-informed-approach-in-youth-work-pages.pdf

ACT for Youth Center of Excellence. (n.d.). Trauma-informed programming. https://actforyouth.org/program-toolkit/trauma-informed.cfm