To evaluate the effects of a youth work programme with a focus on interpersonal relationships, contacts were made with young people on the streets of a large Australian city. Verbalizations from them were recorded and content analysed and indicated that they were experiencing a poverty of interpersonal regard. They mentioned few satisfying interpersonal relationships and talked of being lonely. Comparison of young people who participated in the programme with others who did not indicated that the former had made at least short term gains in both of these areas, while other aspects of their experience outside the focus of the programme had not varied from the beginning to the end of the four month period of the evaluation.