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‘Known to services’ or ‘Known by professionals’: Relationality at the core of trauma-informed responses to extra-familial harm

Firmin, Carlene; Langhoff, Kristine; Eyal-Lubling, Roni; Ana Maglajlic, Reima; Lefevre, Michelle

‘Known to services’ or ‘Known by professionals’: Relationality at the core of trauma-informed responses to extra-familial harm Thumbnail


Authors

Kristine Langhoff

Roni Eyal-Lubling

Reima Ana Maglajlic

Michelle Lefevre



Abstract

Efforts to shift from criminal justice to welfare-based responses to exploitation and other forms of extra-familial risks and harms, have centred relational approaches. In particular, the role that relationships between professionals and young people can play in providing a sense of safety as well as a route to wider support services when young people come to harm beyond their families is under consideration. In parallel, trauma-informed practice is increasingly promoted as a tool for creating service conditions in which relational practice can thrive. In this paper we present data from an institutional ethnography of two social care organisations in the UK which are endeavouring to adopt trauma-informed responses to extra-familial risks and harms. We use observation, focus group, and case file data collected in two time periods, to illustrate a relationship we identified between the nature and source of knowledge that guided professional responses, the ability of professionals to form relationships with young people affected by extra-familial risks and harms, and the capacity for their organisations to be trauma-informed. In doing so we trouble an established discourse in many social care organisations, that young people subject to intervention are ‘known-to-services’ and call for more responses in which young people are ‘known-by-professionals’ who are supporting them. Far from being a matter of semantics, we discuss how these two ways of knowing about young people, and the situations they face, potentially facilitate or undermine key pillars of trauma-informed practice, and the relational approaches that make such practice possible.

Citation

Firmin, C., Langhoff, K., Eyal-Lubling, R., Ana Maglajlic, R., & Lefevre, M. (2024). ‘Known to services’ or ‘Known by professionals’: Relationality at the core of trauma-informed responses to extra-familial harm. Children and Youth Services Review, 160, Article 107595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2024.107595

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 10, 2024
Online Publication Date Apr 16, 2024
Publication Date 2024-05
Deposit Date May 7, 2024
Publicly Available Date May 7, 2024
Journal Children and Youth Services Review
Print ISSN 0190-7409
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 160
Article Number 107595
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2024.107595
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2434123

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