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The relational-centred approach to inquiry presented in this paper is an attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice with the additional aim of promoting the evidence-based of Child and Youth Care (CYC) practice. In it, we provide a brief overview of the evidence-based practice (EBP) movement and its roots in logical positivism. Drawing on our past research experiences, we argue that the currently accepted epistemological assumptions of EBP are conceptually narrow and theoretically limiting, particularly in the context of complex human service practice. Finally, we present a relational-centred inquiry approach to EBP grounded in the epistemological assumption that all people are contextual social beings, in so much as we experience the world differently. However, while CYC provides the context for our discussion in this paper, we believe that a relational-centred inquiry approach to EBP is equally applicable across the spectrum of human service disciplines. The paper is an invitation to rethink fundamental assumptions of EBP and consider relational-centred inquiry as an approach to search for more effective ways to understand the lives of people we encounter as human service practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]