Joanne is an applied social researcher with an interest in methodologies and processes of ‘engagement’. She has worked in the field of safeguarding and extra-familial harm since 2015, first as part of the Safer Young Lives Research Centre at the University of Bedfordshire and then as part of the Contextual Safeguarding research team at Durham University. She has developed methods to engage young people in discussions about Contextual Safeguarding approaches, and the harm they may experience in extra-familial contexts, and has theorised about service and structural challenges in engaging young people in offers of support. Historically, Joanne has undertaken work on definitions of, and policy frameworks that respond to, exploitation across public health and social care. She has also researched the safety of young people in the school environment since 2016, as part of the Beyond Referrals project.
Joanne’s current research focuses on how youthwork can safeguard young people from EFH. Dominant practice models for youthwork frame it as a vehicle of social conformity with a role to play in supporting other key safeguarding partners, such as the police and social care, in safeguarding practice. This has resulted in youthwork working to the agendas of these other sectors’ agendas, which often blame young people for harm they experience, and which are struggling to work with and protect young people from harm in their communities. Joanne’s study will explore the ways a social-justice approach for youthwork can create safety for young people experiencing EFH. The study employs a unique ethnographic methodology to understand how safeguarding is created, practised and experienced in relation to EFH in an open-access youthwork organisation. Joanne’s research will be crucial to understanding how youthwork can safeguard young people on their terms and how the youthwork sector can work with not for partner organisations to improve the welfare of young people.