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Briefing: The impact of Covid-19 on identifying and responding to extra-familial harm

Briefing: The impact of Covid-19 on identifying and responding to extra-familial harm

Author: Vanessa Bradbury-Leather

“We were being told that the prediction was that domestic abuse would absolutely rocket, we were being told that online exploitation was going to rocket, we were not sure what was going to happen in terms of county lines, we didn’t know how many of our young people were going to abide to lockdown, we had no real sense of whether they were going to or whether they weren’t going to.” 

“Everything was totally up in the air”

“And so we were trying to galvanise ourselves to dealing with a situation that was, it was unprecedented, and we didn’t know how to respond really to it effectively or what we were going to do that was the right thing.”

What was the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on services that respond to extra-familial harm? Did Covid-19 restrictions exacerbate inequalities, and how did this impact on the identification of, and response to, extra-familial risk? What were the impacts when lockdown restricted physical access to spaces and places where young people spend their time? What did the loss of protective people and contexts (peers, professionals and community guardians) mean during this time? And how can these learnings from this period inform our practice now, and in the future?

This briefing will explore reflections from Scale Up practitioners on how patterns of extra-familial harm had been impacted by the conditions created by Covid-19, and the ways in which services initially responded. It will highlight challenges faced and identify examples of practice, flagging learning for continued efforts to safeguard young people from risks beyond their families.

The research highlighted some key themes:

Identification

Practitioners provided an insight into the impact of Covid-19 restrictions on the prevalence of, and their ability to identify, extra-familial harm. They reported on the following themes:

  • Types of harm identified
  • Changes in referrals
  • Escalations of concern around particular forms of extra-familial harm  
  • The loss of access to protective people and contexts (peers, professionals and community guardians) in helping to identify extra-familial risk

Response

Several challenges were raised about practitioners’ ability to respond to extra-familial harm under lockdown restrictions. Including:

  • Engaging with young people
  • Resources available and financial pressure
  • Partnerships – with lack of services open during this period and capacity issues
  • Government guidance – particularly the perceived punitive impact this had on young people
  • Young people’s right to privacy

While it has now been some time since Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, this briefing has highlighted wider observations that have significance for how we respond to extra-familial risk more generally. Namely:

  • How we safeguard young people in online spaces while upholding young people’s right to privacy by engaging social media regulators as partners and increasing visible guardianship in online spaces;
  • How the nature of extra-familial harm adapts – groomers/exploiters are knowledgeable about the context of young people’s lives and adapt to that (i.e., ‘County Lines’ to ‘Local Lines’);
  • How we measure outcomes contextually, while also recognising the influence of funding and resource requirements that prescribe hitting (often individualised) ‘targets’;
  • How to hold on to some of the flexibility that was afforded during Covid-19 to work in new and creative ways (i.e., meeting young people in spaces that suit them);
  • How, in some instances, the lack of statutory intervention available due to the restrictions allowed young people, families, and communities to have the agency and space to support and care for one another in safe-making ways, with multi-agency services being there at a distance for additional support if needed.
Download the briefing: The impact of Covid-19 on identifying and responding to extra-familial harm

The findings in this briefing reflect data that was collected during the first outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. This was a time when young people and social workers lives were drastically impacted – environments where young people spent their time changed, practitioners worked from home, businesses and schools shut, and government guidance was ever-changing. We wanted to understand the impact of Covid-19 on the changing landscape of child protection, to see whether Covid-19 was impacting extra-familial harm and responses to it and capture how social work practitioners adapted and responded during this time. Although time has now moved on, this briefing should contain useful learning for how we respond to extra-familial risk now and in the future.

 

Photo by Ignacio Brosa on Unsplash
The Impact Of Covid19 On Responding To EFH

The impact of Covid-19 on identifying and responding to extra-familial harm

December 2022

Vanessa Bradbury-Leather