This article draws on our practice and research experience in diverse residential settings to examine structural inequities facing children and youth in residential care. Our overall goal is to conceptualize residential care as a site for radical advocacy and social change. We track the impact of minoritization by exploring links between historical structural inequities and the positioning of minoritized groups as being in need of professional intervention. Drawing on queer, anti-racist, Indigenous, postcolonial, and feminist theories, we explore how interplaying processes of racialization, gendering, classing, and sexualization (among others) produce unequal circumstances for some groups of children and youth in residential care. We situate our critique in an analysis of two important structural forces that shape contemporary social services in the West: neoliberalism and neocolonialism. We propose that employing a critical social justice analysis in our engagement with children, youth, families, and communities -and with the systems in which they and we are embedded -can open alternative possibilities for residential care praxis.

We investigate the compressive energy absorption performance of polymeric octet-truss lattice structures that are 3D printed using high-resolution stereolithography. These structures are potential candidates for personal protective equipment, structural, and automotive applications. Two polymeric resins (high-strength/low-ductility and moderate-strength/high-ductility) were used in this work, and a comprehensive uniaxial tensile characterization was conducted to establish an optimal UV curing time. The external octet-truss structure geometry (3″ × 3″ × 3″) was maintained, and four different lattice cell densities (strut length, L) and three different strut radii (R) were printed, UV cured, and compression tested. The compressive stress–strain and energy absorption (EA) behavior were quantified, and the EA at 0.5 strain for the least dense and smallest R structure was 0.02 MJ/m3, while the highest density structure with the largest R was 1.80 MJ/m3 for Resin 2. The structural failure modes varied drastically based on resin type, and it was shown that EA and deformation behavior were related to L, R, and the structures’ relative density (ρ¯). For the ductile resin, an empirical model was developed to predict the EA vs. compressive strain curves based on L and R. This model can be used to design an octet-truss lattice structure based on the EA requirements of an application.

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