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The present study examines the relation between classroom climate in schools for secondary special education and students' perceived social exclusion. A total of 401 Dutch adolescents (70.3% males) with conduct problems, attending schools for special education, filled out questionnaires on classroom climate, problems in social information processing, externalizing behavior and perceived social exclusion. Results showed that a positive classroom climate was associated with a reduction of students' externalizing behavior problems and perceived social exclusion, which was associated with improvements in social information processing. However, these relations were only found at the within group level of analysis (between students) and not at the between group level (between classes); thus contextual (class level) effects could not be demonstrated. It can be carefully stated that a positive classroom climate in secondary special education may protect against perceived social exclusion. Future research is required to examine whether our findings can be replicated in other schools for secondary special education or can be generalized to secondary education in general.

In order to work on qualitatively good residential care it is important to monitor group climate and to act on clients' feedback. The present study describes how two youth care organizations in the Netherlands implemented group climate monitoring instruments for children (GCIC 4–8 and 8–15) as part of the broader ‘You Matter!’ project (in which N = 15 teams, and N = 274 children participated), and aims to answer the question how these monitoring instruments can help to improve group climate when routinely embedded in daily care. The results indicated that, in the age group 8–15 (n = 171), negative group climate aspects diminished over two years using feedback from the children. Evaluating the ‘You Matter’ project, it appears to be worthwhile to invest in the monitoring of group climate. According to the interviewed group workers (N = 5), group climate improvements were instigated most when the feedback was discussed soon after the measurement, when teams were facilitated to reflect together and when they kept working on their shared vision. Trends in children's answers on the open-ended questions of the monitoring instrument provided further important information about how to stay focused on creating a safe and positive context for vulnerable children in residential care.

The aim of the present study was to examine differences in perceived living group climate between boys and girls in a sample of 344 youth (68.6% male, M age = 16, SD = 1.58) receiving residential youth care in the Netherlands. Participants filled out self-report measures on living group climate. Results of multilevel regression models indicated that girls in non-correctional facilities experienced living group climate most positively, and girls in correctional facilities experienced living group climate most negatively compared to girls and boys in non-correctional facilities. We conclude that residential treatment settings should adapt gender-responsive approaches to address specific needs of girls, specifically in secure residential care. Future studies should focus on specific needs of girls to advance knowledge on how they can benefit optimally from their stay in residential care to facilitate gender-specific programming in residential youth care.

A debate about the effectiveness of secure residential youth care is currently going on. While some continue to support secure residential youth care, others conclude that ‘nothing works’ in secure residential youth care, and argue that non-residential treatment is superior to secure residential treatment. This article reviews recent research on this topic. The conclusion is that evidence for the effectiveness of non-residential treatment for youth with severe behavioural problems and/or criminal behaviour is sparse if considered as an alternative for secure residential youth care. Secure residential treatment shows a modest, but positive effect. We need to overhaul the myth that ‘nothing works’ in secure residential youth care, and focus on how to optimise the effects of secure residential youth care.

A meta-analysis of 27 controlled studies, including 17,038 youth, was conducted to examine the effectiveness of institutional youth care over the past three decades. We compared institutional evidence-based treatment (EBT) with non-institutional EBT, institutional care as usual (CAU) with non-institutional CAU, institutional CAU with non-institutional EBT, and institutional EBT with institutional CAU. Only the last comparison yielded a significant and small-to-medium effect (d = .36), which not only shows that institutional youth care can be equally effective as non-institutional youth care, but also demonstrates that it seems more effective to provide youth with EBT during their stay in the institution. Furthermore, moderator analyses indicated that only cognitive behavior therapy showed a significant and medium effect (d = .50), whereas (social) skills training and care as usual showed no effect. Age, gender, type of outcome measure (delinquency, skills, problem behavior, and overall problems) and study design characteristics (randomized, matched or non-matched controls) did not influence the results.