Professor Carlene Firmin carlene.e.firmin@durham.ac.uk
Professor in Social Work
Green Lights and Red Flags: The (Im)Possibilities of Contextual Safeguarding Responses to Extra-Familial Harm in the UK
Firmin, Carlene; Lloyd, Jenny
Authors
Dr Jenny Lloyd jenny.a.lloyd@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Abstract
Young people experience significant harm in a range of social contexts and from adults and peers unconnected to their caregivers. The recognition of this by policymakers in England, Scotland, and Wales has resulted in child protection policy frameworks increasingly requiring social work responses to the extra-familial contexts where such harm occurs, as well as to the young people affected. This paper presents results from an embedded research project in which five local children’s social care departments used a Contextual Safeguarding framework to respond to this shifting policy direction. The data collected via ethnographic methods over three years included meeting and practice observations (n = 65), meeting participation (n = 334), reviews of young people’s case files (n = 122), interviews (n = 27) and focus groups (n = 33) with professionals, focus groups (n = 6), interviews (n = 2) and surveys (n = 78) with parents and young people, and analysis of local policies and procedures (n = 101). At two stages in the project, the researchers used this dataset to review the progress in each participant site against the Contextual Safeguarding framework. Reporting on the progress made across the five sites, this paper identifies elements of the system change that appeared most feasible or challenging. The results demonstrate four ways in which current policy reforms fall short in creating national contexts that are conducive to the implementation of Contextual Safeguarding, despite local progress towards this goal. The implications for the policy and practices are outlined, with fundamental questions asked of the statutory systems which need to protect, but all too often criminalise, young people abused beyond their front doors.
Citation
Firmin, C., & Lloyd, J. (2022). Green Lights and Red Flags: The (Im)Possibilities of Contextual Safeguarding Responses to Extra-Familial Harm in the UK. Social Sciences, 11(7), Article 303. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11070303
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jul 2, 2022 |
Online Publication Date | Jul 12, 2022 |
Publication Date | 2022 |
Deposit Date | Sep 5, 2022 |
Publicly Available Date | Sep 5, 2022 |
Journal | Social Sciences |
Electronic ISSN | 2076-0760 |
Publisher | MDPI |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 11 |
Issue | 7 |
Article Number | 303 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11070303 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1193206 |
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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