Since 2018 the National Lottery Community Fund have funded the testing of Contextual Safeguarding in five ‘pilot sites’, and in 2019 funding from the London Violence Reduction Unit then supported testing of the approach in a further four London sites. In 2018 Esmee Fairbairn foundation funded the testing and further development of self-assessments tools for schools and voluntary sector agencies to build their safeguarding responses to peer-to-peer sexual harm within their settings. The Samworth Foundation also resourced the development of a network of Contextual Safeguarding trainers, the establishment of Contextual Safeguarding champions groups in social care, and a study, ‘Securing Safety’, into the rate, cost and impact of relocation in response to extra-familial harm (EFH).
Since this time, formal testing of Contextual Safeguarding in England and Wales has expanded to nine pilot sites, and a further 45 local areas have started to use Contextual Safeguarding outside of the pilot process. 14 schools have assessed their response to peer-to-peer sexual abuse, and a Contextual Safeguarding in education champions group was established in 2020 with representation from 23 Teachers, Education Safeguarding Leads and Designated Safeguarding Leads across England and Wales. The Football Association commissioned Contextual Safeguarding training for all of their clubs, and a sports club, faith organisation and youth club are now undertaking pilots to self-asses the safety of young people within their setting. Our three-year Securing Safety study established for the first time an approximate rate of children relocated from their communities due to extra-familial risks, with a cost and impact analysis demonstrating to policy makers the urgent need for investment in safer communities.
The Contextual Safeguarding practitioners’ virtual network had just over 1,000 members in 2018 – membership now exceeds 10,000 professionals. In 2019, practice champions were identified in the nine Contextual Safeguarding pilot sites. By 2021 social work practice champions had been identified in eight of the nine regions in England, as well as in Wales and Scotland – resulting in the establishment of regional support groups for practice champions and strategic leaders and a collective of VCS organisations have formed as they embed the approach into their design and delivery of EFH interventions.
Needless to say – a lot has happened in four years!!
Developments in policy have been as swift as they have been in practice. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner has recommended the adoption of contextual approaches in cases of criminal exploitation, and similar messages have been given by the authors of the triennial review of Serious Case Reviews commissioned by Government and the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review panel. In 2021 the first references to Contextual Safeguarding were inserted in national guidance in Wales and Scotland, triggering country-wide interest in both these areas and signalling a second surge in take-up in the next 12 months. The Independent Review into Children’s Social Care in England included a specific focus on EFH and made recommendations in respect to safeguarding in extra-familial contexts, citing evidence from across our research projects.
This extensive take-up of Contextual Safeguarding has surpassed expectations, sectors and geographical boundaries that were detailed in bids to funders in 2018 and 2019. While this has brought much opportunity to learn about Contextual Safeguarding – and impact the services received by children, families and their communities on a larger scale – this rapid pace of growth has also surfaced challenges and risks of implementing Contextual Safeguarding. Over the past two years we have also increased our engagement with young people and parents – gathering their views on Contextual Safeguarding and what they want us, and others, to hold in mind when pursuing this system change. Their views have also highlighted the gains, risks and challenges of Contextual Safeguarding that have emerged throughout our programme.
So what have we learnt?
We have learnt that, when applied as intended, Contextual Safeguarding can leverage a social justice approach to harm and inequality. We have witnessed social workers, and wider safeguarding partners, use the approach to create safety and increase guardianship for young people in public spaces, reduce or rethink community safety sanctions used against young people who are being exploited and work with schools to agree how best to respond in partnership when concerns for young people’s welfare begin to escalate. We have seen contextual approaches used to end, or prevent, the use of secure placements for young people affected by extra-familial harm and a range of efforts made to consider safety and harm within young people’s friendship groups as well as their families when EFH is a concern. This work has demonstrated the potential of contextual approaches and created safety for young people.
However, this work has not come without challenge. There has been disagreement over the extent to which the assessment of risk beyond families is the role of social work – and indeed whether social workers have been trained to adequately undertake this work. Local areas have had to pilot approaches in spite of, rather than in accordance with, national guidelines in England as early references made to contextual approaches (in 2018) are not as extensive for supporting practice as senior leaders might require. There is disagreement about the role of Community Safety Partnerships in responding to locations associated with EFH, as children’s social care develop contextual activities; and whether community safety or child protection legislation should take priority in cases of harm beyond families. And while we have seen much progress in assessing locations and school environments associated with EFH we have seen far less confidence amongst professionals in knowing how to respond. Evidence related to contextual interventions is hugely limited – in a commissioning landscape that is dominated with 1:1 intervention models and outcome measures.
Amongst these challenges we have seen risks to the safe, ethical and sustained implementation of Contextual Safeguarding. While peer relationships have been increasingly considered by social work professionals, there is no clear legal, ethical or practical parameters for this work – risking it being undertaken alongside police activity to map connections between young people and increase surveillance of their activities rather than assess their needs and work with them to provide protection; a concern that young people have raised with us. Moreover, child protection legislation provides clear thresholds for intervening in family life on the grounds of child welfare – but it does not do the same for intervening in the private lives of children’s peer relationships or the public space where they spend their time. Community safety activities set some precedent for responding to public spaces where EFH has occurred, but the same cannot be said for schools who were closed for significant periods during the test period due to the Covid-19 pandemic. There is a risk therefore that the association between schools and EFH (and the ability of safeguarding partners to respond) is lost as the work develops.
We have taken a range of steps to begin to address the challenges and surface the risks outlined above. For example: we have released legal briefings highlighting the gaps in the existing legislative/guidance framework; we have released a resource to explain the difference between relationships of trust and relationships of surveillance when undertaking safeguarding work; and we have begun to showcase case studies of contextual interventions via Contextual Safeguarding website. We have also built a ‘champions groups’ to offer peer support for social workers undertaking this work. We have collected extensive evidence on the issues raised above as part of our work in test sites and have fed this into the Independent Review, and via our UK advisory panel (attending by all government departments and inspectorates). However, most test work was delayed by 8-12 months due to Covid pandemic, and so we are yet to analyse this evidence and convert it into resources for the sectors with whom we work.
What next?
We are going to spend the next 18-24 months maximising the impact of the successes achieved, address the challenges they have surfaced and exploring how to mitigate the risks identified. We have identified four key areas of work that, if resourced, would with significantly increase the chances of sustaining Contextual Safeguarding in national policy and practice frameworks. These four workstreams make up The Next Chapter (TNC) project, which will produce evidence and resources for UK safeguarding systems to embed Contextual Safeguarding in a way that is ethical and safe for young people affected by extra-familial harm. The four strands of The Next Chapter will sustain the use of Contextual Safeguarding in England and Wales, support the testing of the approach in Scotland, and integrate the framework into global social work standards that ensure its use is anti-oppressive.
We will start by analysing data collected during piloting of Contextual Safeguarding during the Scale-Up project, working with identified test sites and members the Contextual Safeguarding Local Area Implementation Group to identify:
- The legal and policy scaffold for embedded contextual approaches in UK child protection systems
- The ways in which structural inequalities shape young people’s experiences of EFH harm-reduction responses
- How interventions in, and with, contexts associated with EFH (schools) build safety for young people affected
- The conditions that enable or hinder how social workers use contextual safeguarding in practice responses to EFH
Each of these questions will make up a ‘strand’ of work under the TNC project. So, here’s an introduction to the strands:
Strand One: Planning for safety – led by Professor Carlene Firmin
How do we plan in cases of EFH for groups and individuals? Working with three local areas, we will build on work commenced in Wiltshire to test a new child protection category (Risk Outside of the Home) within a newly design child protection conference in cases of significant EFH. This test work will inform the development of new statutory guidance on EFH, with specific work to:
- Identify threshold patterns linked to initiation of a ROTH process
- Evidence the role of partner agencies when developing ROTH plans
- Identify what enables parents and young people to engage in ROTH processes
- Identify how community safety activities intersect with ROTH planning
- Monitor efforts across these areas, and one other, to integrate consideration of peers into child protection processes.
Strand two: Building Safety – led by Dr Lauren Wroe
Working with practitioners, young people, and wider communities in one local authority that is using a Contextual Safeguarding, we will explore the use of CS to address structural drivers of EFH:
- Identify and address the role of statutory services in building safety and creating risk associated to EFH
- Co-design with community members, an element of the CS system that seeks to target inequalities in how harm and responses to harm are experienced
- Revisit the Contextual Safeguarding framework and identify elements that require revision to ensure it is used in a way that address, rather than contributes to, harm experienced by young people
Strand three: Schools – spaces of harm/spaces of safety – led by Dr Jenny Lloyd
Working with education professionals in 2-3 local authorities that are using a Contextual Safeguarding approach we will identify how the context of ‘education’ can protect against or contribute to EFH. In the process we will:
- Identify how decisions and structures linked to school exclusions and managed moves contribute to EFH
- Test resources developed as part of Beyond Referrals to evidence the ways that schools are environments where EFH occurs
- Identify partnerships between children’s social care and schools that use contextual interventions to address the two issues outlined above
Strand four: Sustaining social work – led by Dr Rachael Owens
Working with social workers in 2-3 local authorities that are using a Contextual Safeguarding approach, we will identify how social workers feel about adopting a contextual approach to EFH. As part of this project, we will evidence:
- The ways in which Contextual Safeguarding supports social workers to achieve social justice for young people affected by EFH
- The effect this has on social workers’ experience and motivation in relation to their role
- The challenges or frustrations emerge when attempting to take a contextual approach (and the source of these)
- The conditions that would support contextual social work approaches in the future
We hope that by improving understanding in these areas, we will build an ethical framework against which the sector can assess its use of Contextual Safeguarding – at the level of law and policy, structural factors, contextual drivers, and professional practice.
To support this work, we are reviewing the membership and structure of the governance arrangements that support our research. We will launch a revised CS Advisory Panel later in the year, bringing together members of our previous disparate groups from local areas, the VCS, academia and central government; as well as creating strand advisory groups for more in-depth engagement with our four workstreams.
As always, the emerging findings and ideas from the strands will be published via the Contextual Safeguarding website, where we invite you to download, share and send us your feedback on resources, briefings etc. We are all learning together!
The CS team