This article explores the relationship between ethical procedures and ethics in practice in a research project with parents and children from 27 families who had received a social intervention based on their substance misuse and concerns about the protection of their children. We draw on the ‘ethics of care’ to argue that ethical practices are relational, interactive, responsive and, at times, reciprocal. While ethical regulation provides an important opportunity to anticipate ethical issues and build safeguards for participants and researcher, the regulatory process tends to focus on the ethical actions of the researcher rather than the researched. In this article, we demonstrate how ethical decisions were made through, by or alongside participants, drawing on examples of access, consent, protection from harm and negotiating the presence of others in interviews.