Creating an Emotion Coaching Culture: Embedding Emotional Safety in Residential Children's Care

Emotion Coaching is used by many different types of professionals to support the children and young people with whom they work. Bhavika Sahiri, an accredited practitioner trainer with ECUK, is a social worker who works as a Deputy Manager in a residential children's home. Bhavika writes about how Emotion Coaching impacted the culture in a children's home.

"When people think about Emotion Coaching, they often think about conversations with children and young people during moments of distress. While this is undoubtedly important, my experience in residential children's care has shown me that Emotion Coaching can become much more than a strategy. It can become the foundation of an entire culture.

As a Deputy Manager in a residential children's home supporting children and young people with complex trauma, neurodivergence, mental health needs, and experiences of instability, I have seen first-hand how emotional safety influences every aspect of care. The young people we support often arrive having experienced disrupted relationships, multiple placement moves, school exclusions, exploitation, self-harm, or significant emotional distress. Many have learnt to communicate their needs through behaviours that others may find challenging.

Emotion Coaching has provided us with a different lens. Rather than asking, "How do we stop this behaviour?" we increasingly ask, "What is this young person trying to communicate?"

Taking Emotion Coaching Beyond the Training Room

For many years I delivered Emotion Coaching training to staff teams. However, after joining Jurita Homes as Deputy Manager, I wanted to move beyond annual refresher sessions and explore how Emotion Coaching could be embedded into everyday practice.

Crucially, this was not something I could achieve alone. Our Residential Manager fully embraced the approach from the outset and has consistently modelled Emotion Coaching through his leadership. His commitment has been essential in creating a culture where emotional safety, curiosity, reflection and understanding are valued at every level of the organisation.

Together, we recognised that if Emotion Coaching was to have a lasting impact, it needed to extend beyond training sessions and become part of how we lead, support staff, work with young people, and make decisions. This has created a genuinely top-down and bottom-up approach, where leaders model the practice, staff develop confidence in applying it, and young people themselves begin to understand and use the principles in their everyday lives.

This led to the development of several initiatives:

• Emotion Coaching induction sessions for new staff.

• Small-group practice sessions using role play and real-life scenarios.

• Post-incident reflective discussions for staff.

• Structured key work sessions for young people.

• Leadership discussions about how Emotion Coaching can influence supervision, performance management, risk assessments, and care planning.

The aim was simple: create a shared language and approach that could be used consistently by everyone in the organisation.

Supporting Staff to Feel Safe

One of the most powerful lessons I have learnt is that Emotion Coaching is not only for children and young people.

Residential care can be emotionally demanding. Staff may experience assault, allegations, missing episodes, self-harm incidents, or safeguarding crises. Following significant incidents, people often carry fear, guilt, frustration, or self-doubt.

We began using Emotion Coaching principles during post-incident reflections. Rather than focusing solely on what happened, we created space to explore how people felt and what support they needed.

This shift has helped staff feel heard, validated, and supported. It has also encouraged greater openness about learning needs and reduced the fear often associated with making mistakes.

When staff feel emotionally safe, they are better able to provide emotional safety for young people.

Helping Young People Understand Their Own Emotions

Alongside staff development, I created a series of structured key work sessions to introduce Emotion Coaching directly to the young people in our care.

The sessions explore topics such as:

• Understanding emotions.

• Recognising triggers.

• Identifying current coping strategies.

• Building emotional vocabulary.

• Developing alternative responses to difficult situations.

The content is adapted to each young person's age, abilities, and previous experiences. For some, this involves visual resources and mood cards. For others, it means linking Emotion Coaching to approaches they are already familiar with.

One of my favourite moments has been hearing young people use Emotion Coaching language themselves. Some have even started identifying when adults are using the approach well—or when they think we need a refresher.

These moments remind us that children and young people are not passive recipients of support. Given the opportunity, they can become active participants in understanding and managing their own emotions.

Emotion Coaching and Trauma-Informed Practice

For us, Emotion Coaching does not sit separately from trauma-informed care; it strengthens it.

Both approaches recognise that behaviour is often a response to unmet need, stress, fear, or past experiences. Both prioritise safety, relationships, connection, and understanding before correction or consequence.

Emotion Coaching provides the practical framework that helps us bring these principles to life in everyday interactions. Whether we are supporting a young person through a crisis, helping a staff member process a difficult incident, or reflecting on organisational practice as leaders, the same core principles apply: connect first, understand emotions, maintain boundaries, and support learning.

This consistency has helped create a culture where young people and staff alike feel safer, more understood, and more able to engage in positive relationships.

The Impact of a Shared Approach

Over time, we have noticed several changes.

Staff are more confident in building relationships and connecting with young people during difficult moments. Conversations are increasingly focused on emotions and unmet needs rather than behaviour alone.

Young people are reaching points of crisis less frequently because staff are often able to recognise triggers earlier and intervene sooner.

The approach has also strengthened consistency across the home. In a setting where multiple adults provide support across different shifts, having a shared framework is invaluable. Young people know what to expect, and staff have greater confidence in how to respond.

Perhaps most importantly, Emotion Coaching has helped create an environment where people feel safer to express emotions rather than hide them.

Looking Ahead

Emotion Coaching continues to evolve within our organisation. As we prepare to open a second home, we are exploring how the approach can be embedded at every level, from direct care practice through to leadership and organisational decision-making.

What began as a training programme has become something much broader: a way of understanding people.

In residential care, where children and young people have often experienced misunderstanding, rejection, or instability, that understanding can be transformative.

Emotion Coaching has reminded us that behaviour may be what we see, but emotions are where meaningful change begins".

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