Research on the impact of the keyworker‐child relationship on residential staff is scarce. This longitudinal study investigated the potential moderating effects of child and keyworker attachment styles on the link between child behavioural problems and staff burnout and the moderating effects of child attachment style on the link between keyworker attachment style and keyworker burnout. Participants included 261 children and 59 residential child care workers, from 5 orphanages in Saudi Arabia. Five self‐report measures were utilised: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, the Security Scale, the Coping Strategies Questionnaire, the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire. Keyworkers caring for relatively non‐avoidant children and those with an avoidant attachment style themselves experienced relatively high burnout a year later. Relatively high burnout was also reported by avoidant keyworkers who cared for avoidant and generally insecure children, while anxiously attached keyworkers reported relatively high burnout when they cared for children with any type of insecure attachment style. The present findings highlight essential interpersonal processes involved in the development of burnout in residential child care workers and call for the employment of attachment‐focused interventions as measures of burnout prevention.

This qualitative study explored the accounts of 50 residential childcare staff in Saudi Arabia, aiming to identify ways in which staff and residential institutions may function as attachment objects for the children in their care. Rather than conducting a formal attachment assessment, a semi‐structured interview schedule was utilised, intending to generate novel insights into the child–carer relationship. Informed by attachment theory, thematic analysis suggested that keyworkers' narratives were organised around three conceptual dichotomies – social rejection versus social acceptance, distress versus containment and development of the self versus bonding. The accounts also indicated that staff and institutions might encounter significant challenges in providing emotional security to the orphans, challenges touching upon all three levels – individual, dyadic and collective.Key Practitioner Message: • The study identified main ways in which the orphanages and their staff facilitate or inhibit the formation of secure bonds between them and the children in their care; • The study highlights that attachment provision in those institutions should be explored at the individual, dyadic, organisational and sociocultural levels; • Change in care arrangements should address all these levels, with an emphasis on improving child and staff psychological well‐being, staff working conditions and staff training and education. Interventions should also challenge deeply rooted stigmatising attitudes.