In Québec and across Canada, people working in child welfare do remarkable work to protect children and youth from maltreatment and to support families facing complex challenges. But when tragedies occur, such as the recent deaths of children and youth receiving child welfare services in Québec, public debate tends to turn to accountability, institutional practice and systemic failure.We need to understand what happened and whether systems worked as they should have. Yet focusing on these questions alone can inadvertently narrow attention to risk, failure and responsibility. Too easily overshadowed is how well child welfare systems support the broader well-being of the young people in their care.If child welfare systems are to keep young people safe over the long term, they must attend not only to risks of harm but also to the conditions that support mental health and well-being. Many young people involved with child welfare are living with trauma, grief and loss, family conflict and disruption, instability, discrimination, poverty and mental-health challenges.Across our work on youth mental-health recovery and child welfare, a common theme has emerged. Young people benefit from services that foster hope, recognize their strengths, involve them actively in decisions that affect them and create meaningful opportunities for connection and participation.These insights call for a broader understanding of protection.Taking young people seriouslyWhile child welfare systems are often judged by how well they prevent harm, young people themselves frequently describe a broader set of needs and interests. One of the most consistent findings in youth mental-health research is that young people want their views to matter.Young people’s right to participate in matters concerning their care is written into child welfare laws and policies. Nevertheless, a significant gap remains between listening to young people and genuinely incorporating their knowledge into decision-making. A recent study by one of this article’s authors into clinical encounters in youth mental-health services suggests that participation can sometimes become symbolic rather than meaningful. For example, some young people participating in the study appeared to agree with proposed care plans during therapy meetings. But they explained that they had not felt comfortable expressing disagreement or were unaware that alternative options were available to them. When young people feel their experiences and voices are taken seriously, trust grows, engagement improves and their sense of agency increases.In contrast, when their views were ignored or minimized, youth in the study said they felt that services were something being done to them rather than with them. This distinction is important when reflecting on how to better support youth. Read more: How a failure to support youth who were once in care may be fuelling unemployment Relationships are a form of protectionResearch shows that supportive relationships help young people navigate adversity. Trusted adults can help them make sense of difficult experiences, build confidence, imagine different futures and gain access to opportunities. Relationships are not simply an added benefit of effective services. They are essential to ensuring young people’s well-being, in the context of child welfare and beyond.Instability and a lack of trust can contribute to worse long-term outcomes for young people involved in child welfare. Recent research captures young people’s frustration at having to constantly rebuild trust because of worker turnover and service disruptions. A multi-year study found high levels of placement instability. On average, the 2,573 young people participating in the study experienced 5.89 placement moves each.Another recent study suggests that many young people involved with child welfare and mental-health services go through multiple transitions throughout adolescence and early adulthood.Each transition — whether involving a new worker or a new placement — carries the possibility of losing someone who knows the young person’s history, understands their strengths and insecurities and has earned their trust. Stability is important not only for the young people themselves but also for the whole network of adults and relationships around them.What can we learn?Recent tragedies involving child welfare and youth mental health will rightly prompt official reviews of protection processes, standards of care and institutional accountability. But research with young people reveals a broader lesson: quality of care cannot be measured through compliance indicators or organizational targets alone, just as protection cannot be reduced to removing or managing immediate risks of harm.We must also listen to these young people who are asking for real opportunities to be heard, to take part in decisions made on their behalf, to have hope and to form relationships with adults who stay long enough for trust to develop.Young people have been saying this for years. Their message is neither complex nor controversial. But acting on it requires systems to do more than assess risk and demonstrate procedural compliance.It requires equipping child welfare professionals with the time, training and organizational support necessary to provide relationship-based and trauma-informed care to young people. It also requires reducing disruptions caused by staff turnover and service fragmentation, and creating formal and informal opportunities for young people to contribute to the decisions, services and care plans that affect their lives.Protection will remain incomplete as long as systems fail to listen to young people, take their experiences seriously, meaningfully incorporate their perspectives into decision-making and invest in relationships that foster connection, trust and hope. These are not alternatives to protection and well-being. They are among the conditions that make both possible.The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.