I am a social and cultural geographer working in the area of harm to young people in their communities. This can include harm between young people like sexual harassment and violence at school, serious violence and the use of weapons, and young people that are criminally exploited.
I'm an embedded researcher. This means that I spend time in organisations to understand how they work and what needs to change to improve how safeguarding systems work with young people. A lot of my work has focussed on being embedded in children's social care but I now work in schools and with voluntary and community sector organisations. My work focusses on preventing and addressing inter-personal violence to young people but I am particularly interested in how systems designed to keep young people safe can also inflict harm. My most recent work has looked at zero-tolerance and school exclusion.
My work is focussed on ensuring children's rights and welfare are upheld and am critical of approaches to safeguarding that promote behaviourist and individual approaches to harm. I believe that change can happen and to do this we need to make safer environments and communities that value and listen to young people.
As a member of the Contextual Safeguarding leadership team and lead for education my research has focussed on a range of projects focussed on 'extra-familial harm' including: designing children's social care systems to work in contexts beyond the home via the National Scale-Up project, addressing harmful sexual behaviour in schools as part of the Beyond Referrals project, and most recently looking at the education experienciences of young people impacted by extra-familial harm as part of the 'In the name of safeguarding' project.
I particularly care about turning academic research into resources and learning that can help professionals and practitioners. I manage the Contextual Safeguarding website and frequently work with policy makers and organisations including the Department for Education, Ofsted and Chair a sub-group of the International Taskforce for Child Protection.