Welcome to our web area dedicated to context assessments and responses.
Before we dive in, some background about what we mean by assessing and responding to a context.
Contextual Safeguarding assessment and responses take place at two ‘levels’:
- Level 1 is when we work within a traditional casework model with an individual young person and their network, considering their needs and the risks they face within the contexts where they experience harm.
- Level 2 is when we take a context (such as a park, group of friends or school) and assess the needs of young people within that context. At Level 2 our responses are aimed at changing the social conditions (i.e. the dynamics, relationships, resources, policies, culture and structures) to make the context safer for all young people who are part of it.
This web area is to support you in developing Level 2 work.
So, if you want to respond to the needs of young people within a context, where do you start? We have resources to support you to assess and response to neighbourhood, peer group and school contexts.
If you’re not sure whether the concerns are mostly related to the community’s social conditions, peer-group issues, or school issues, don’t worry. Start with the one that seems the most relevant. You can use the Context Weighting tool to support you in deciding, and it’s always possible to adapt as you move through the process.
The basic steps that every context assessment follows, no matter what the focus, are outlined below. This mirrors the child and family assessment process. It’s important to remember that just because the focus has shifted from an individual child to a context, we still need to follow the same rigorous process for understanding what’s going on and responding.
Gathering basic information about the harm or problem. When you begin you might not have a developed referral process, but as you learn and develop your Level 2 processes, you will likely want to develop a standard way to gather information and a standard set of questions to ask.
Finding out about the young people, the guardianship available to them and the wider environment and community, including resources, policy and culture affecting their experiences in the context.
Considering what the assessment has told you about the main drivers of harm and then forming goals for what you do next based on this knowledge. This is an important stage and can get overlooked in context-based work, where there is often a temptation to skip from assessment to response.
Delivering a response or intervention designed to increase safety, by meeting young peoples’ needs within a particular context, increasing their access to safe relationships, and/ or increasing their access to resources, systems and environments.
This is where you review the difference that your intervention has made to the safety of young people in that context. You can do this by repeating some of the methods used to assess the context to see if you have different results.
