In this blog, by the GCCS’s Njilan Morris-Jarra, questions of who is listened to in the field of safeguarding and why are posed and considered.
I've been working for the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding for under a year, after more than a decade of working in practice and research in and around children’s services, as well as the criminal legal system (CLS). Recently, I’ve begun reflecting on a shift in the credibility of my voice and perspective, its weight, and the things I'm allowed to say – to whom and from which vantage point. After more than 10 years working in and around the CLS, children’s social care, and voluntary and community sector (VCS) youth services, I'm now conducting research from within a prestigious university. Here, I can observe and articulate things that were often raised and dismissed or left unaddressed in practice spaces, including spaces where individualised and punitive practice fails to keep young people safe. It is partly because of these frustrations that I made the career transition I did.
At the junior levels I occupied, it often felt as if my role was not to think, question or raise concerns, but to carry out very specific tasks of direct intervention with young people. This was particularly stark in multi-agency contexts, where information and observations were treated as more authoritative depending on the agency they came from. Statutory agencies such as policing, youth justice and social care often carried greater weight in decision-making. Youth workers, intervention workers and other non-statutory practitioners' and partners’ knowledge of specific individuals, groups and contexts was valued when it could feed statutory, enforcement or investigative actions. But often it was not valued highly enough to challenge, critique, or meaningfully contribute to changing ways of thinking and working in practice.
Topics such as systemic harm, racism, poverty and criminalisation are often acknowledged in practitioner training packages, conferences or meetings. These learnings often result in changes to things like the language we may use in practice spaces but, in my experience, rarely disrupt established practices, protocols or partnerships in any meaningful way.
This is additionally difficult to observe when you are building relationships with young people who are facing extra-familial harm and encountering the CLS. You absorb the trauma of those experiences when your young person is killed, hurt, excluded or repeatedly profiled, but have little to no space to raise real concerns or to offer critique that looks beyond the behaviour of the young person. Your knowledge of their life is sought, but your professional judgement and critical observations outside of behavioural responses are rarely treated as expertise.
The Contextual Safeguarding approach speaks to this, by challenging individually focused responses to harm that sideline the broader contexts, relationships and environments in which that harm takes place, and the practitioners who know them best (Firmin, 2020).
No workplace exists in a vacuum, and social care, safeguarding and case work are no exceptions. We interact with people who have experienced and are experiencing interpersonal, institutional and systemic harms. These exist both outside of and within practice and we, as practitioners, organisations and teams are navigating, understanding and seeking to address them in different ways. As a practitioner in these spaces, the critical observations and challenges I brought into practice were sometimes met with defence, dismissal or rejection, in favour of protecting established ways of working, maintaining partnerships and often rather punitive responses to young people and communities.
So, who is allowed to 'know', to 'question', to 'speak' and to 'critique' in these contexts, and what counts as credible knowledge?
I have always engaged with critical research and perspectives on race and criminal justice, long before completing my master's degree and moving into academic research. While still relatively junior in this space,
I now find that my voice, questions and critiques carry credibility. As a practitioner, I had many of the same observations, questions, suggestions and critiques that academics within the GCCS and beyond are now sought after to support organisations with. In under a year in post, I have had multiple surreal moments in which I have been able to voice things that my former colleagues and I were repeatedly scolded and dismissed for raising. It leaves me holding a mix of frustration, vindication and sadness.
I recognise that some differentiation in expertise and responsibility is necessary within systems, but this can feel skewed towards agencies and senior officials whose focus is enforcement and maintaining the status quo, rather than those centred on relationships, equality and care. I find this especially troubling when the latter group’s voices are backed by what they know about the impact of structural inequality, violence and oppression on the wellbeing of young people.
It is easy as a practitioner to begin to believe that your critical observations, concerns and critiques are not actionable, or that they are extreme or divisive. It is also easy to internalise the resistance you encounter from individuals and organisations without recognising the layers to it. I feel it is important for practitioners and advocates not to distrust their voices, but to organise and collaborate both with people in academic spaces who believe that their perspectives and knowledge count, and with each other.
Recognising, valuing and acting on the contributions of these critical voices within organisations is essential for addressing harm and creating true safety for children and young people in our services and communities.
References:
Firmin, C. (2020) Contextual Safeguarding And Child Protection: Rewriting The Rules. Abingdon: Routledge.
Blog published: 23rd July 2026