A blog from our Co-Director Autumn Roesch-Marsh.
Lean on me, when you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on
– Bill Withers, 1972, Lean on Me
Most of us will recognise the lines above from the popular 1972 song Lean on Me. And most of us will relate. Friends are an essential source of support, care and love in life. For this reason, philosophers, sociologists and neuroscientists have become increasingly interested in the ways that friendship is important to our happiness, our sense of belonging and connection, and our physical and mental health. In his recent book, Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection (2026), neuroscientist Ben Rein explores the growing evidence based on the importance of friendship to our physical and mental health, describing the myriad ways that friendship and social connection support our brains and bodies by lowering stress hormones and inflammation, supporting cognitive function and enhancing feel good hormones like oxytocin.
As a social worker and social work academic I have been interested in friendship for over twenty years. This might not seem surprising, exploring the importance of the ‘social’ for wellbeing is absolutely central to social work as a profession. Our training explores the importance of understanding the social context in which people live and experience challenges. Using ecological and systemic models, we are trained to work alongside people to assess needs and strengths to develop interventions which will make a difference. Most importantly, we are taught to keep people, their wishing and their feelings at the heart of everything we do. In my experience, what most people want is to feel that they matter to other people and that they are not alone. They also want to share and offer something to other people. This basic need for connection and reciprocity seems to be an evolutionary predisposition, and theories like attachment help us to understand how human beings are hard-wired for connection.
However, not everyone gets the same opportunities to forge social connections and make friends in life. Opportunities for friendship and social connection, like most things in life, are socially determined. Through my research over the last few years, I have learned a great deal about how care experienced people, in particular, encounter barriers to friendship, both while they are in the care system and after they leave it. This is obviously not the case for everyone, and despite barriers, many care experienced people have friendships that are wonderful and sustaining. It is however deeply troubling that for many, the very system that is supposed to support them can make it harder for them to make friends and connections. This can be because of rules, like not allowing sleepovers, or because of budgetary restraints, which mean they cannot do activities that others their age are enjoying.
One problem is that social workers and carers don’t always think about friendship enough and don’t have the skills or knowledge to offer the practical and emotional support that children and young people need. This did not seem right to me or my colleague, Professor Ruth Emond from the University of Stirling. We spent years reviewing the literature, running workshops with practitioners and students, and thinking about what might evoke change.
In September 2024, we were awarded a small grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which allowed us develop the Transforming Friendship Focused Support project.
In this project we have worked alongside practice colleagues from the Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum (Staf) and seven care experienced co-researchers to develop our understanding of the importance of friendship and the barriers people face. Our aim was to create a set of resources to support improvements in practice. Research questions and approaches were co-created and we all shared in developing the resources for practice.
Our methods were creative and fun, and we used the arts to help us think and discover more about the topic together.
In November 2025 we launched these resources at a co-created workshop at the Staf annual Conference; they are now available to download here. We hope you will make use of them and share them widely.
We also have further outputs planned including:
- an anthology of artwork and poetry on friendship (written by care experienced people) – we are launching this on 31st March, sign up to the online event here;
- a guide to friendship and trauma;
- and journal publications relating to our methods and findings.
Join our mailing list to stay up to date about new resources, future seminars and workshops. And if you or your organisation would appreciate hearing more about the project, we would be willing to organise a bespoke seminar or input – please get in touch here.
