How do we resource safety for young people in their friendship groups, schools and communities?
Young people experience significant harm in their friendship groups, schools, and communities, but professional agencies with a duty to safeguard young people are not resourced to address the social conditions in which these harms take place. This often results in individualised interventions that reinforce inequalities and place responsibility on young people and their parents to safely navigate harmful and depleted environments. The Contextual Safeguarding research programme has partnered with local authority social care teams, schools, and voluntary and community sector organisations since 2017 with the goal of building systems that can begin to respond to the social conditions of extra-familial harm.
Resource has been a major barrier to achieving this goal, with huge cuts to all sectors. But commissioning and funding also funnel resource into siloed services and targeted provision, measuring success at the level of individual not social change.
In 2021 the Contextual Safeguarding programme finalized the Securing Safety study; this research told us that approximately 1 in 10 young people who are known to local authority children’s social care teams due to ‘extra-familial harm’ are accommodated in out of area care placements. Young people and parents told us about the significant impact of ‘relocations’, from ruptured family relationships, loss of protective networks, to feelings of isolation and responsibility for their abuse. These placements incurred significant costs for local authorities (ranging from £22,000 to £170,000 for a 6-month placement) and, sadly, many professionals reported that ‘relocations’ were used when no alternative support or intervention was available.
In 2021 the Contextual Safeguarding programme partnered with Lambeth local authority to understand their safeguarding response for Black boys and young men who were significantly harmed. We were told that discriminatory practices in education, policing and social care, a lack of trust in policing and social workers, cuts in public services, lack of access to housing and employment, and wider experiences of poverty were creating the conditions in which Black boys and young men were unsafe in Lambeth. When we asked what services were commissioned for these young people, we were told that gangs' services and mentoring programmes were commissioned. There was a significant mismatch between need and provision. In a follow-on study with Bristol local authority in 2023 a consortium of young people, carers, community workers and statutory professionals told us about the ways in which local-authority and police-led responses to extra-familial harm reinforce inequalities in young people’s lives, and how responses should be rooted in care and in young people’s existing trusted networks, should increase universal access to safe places and relationships, and be youth-centered and youth and community work-led.
The scale, direction and mismatch of resource is a persisting issue. The Contextual Safeguarding research programme is currently piloting a new statutory child protection pathway for Risk Outside the Home, with the Department for Education. This research, so far, has shown us there are some benefits to an alternative pathway where parenting isn’t the focus of child protection scrutiny, but where relationships (including professional) and spaces beyond the family are assessed and supported. A major challenge for this work is that local areas simply do not have the services or provision they need to build safety around extra-familial relationships and places. For example, detached youth work, adequate housing provision, school funding or youth provision.
Lauren Wroe from the Contextual Safeguarding team has been funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation to work with young people, their families and communities, local authority commissioners, and voluntary sector funders to develop a Contextual Safeguarding Funding and Commissioning guide. This guide will support the sector to understand need and direct resource to the services and provision that young people want and need.
The funding will support a three-year participatory action research project to:
- Understand from young people, their families, carers and communities what they need and want to build safety in their communities in relation to extra-familial abuse.
- Work with a consortium of young people, their families, carers and communities, alongside local authority commissioners and voluntary sector funders in two areas of the UK to explore the resource barriers in the sector and in young people’s lives in relation to extra-familial harm.
- Co-develop a Contextual Safeguarding Funding and Commissioning guide with the consortium. The guide will begin to address these challenges and provide direction to the sector to effectively resource safety for young people in their communities.
This project is running from August 2024 until March 2027.