In 2017, the Contextual Safeguarding programme (CSP) began partnering with local authorities to begin testing the Contextual Safeguarding (CS) framework in practice. This project was the first systematic attempt at evaluating the extent of the programme’s reach and impact. The Reach and Impact (R&I) workstream aimed to evidence the value that the CSP adds in terms of influencing policy and practice in response to extra-familial harm (EFH). Below is one of the case studies from the Reach and Impact Project. This case study describes how Contextual Safeguarding has influenced local systems and practice to improve the lives of young people experiencing or at risk of extra-familial harm. Names and some details have been changed to preserve young people’s anonymity.
What was the issue?
A peer group of five young people between 13 and 17 years were identified via the daily multi-agency missing children and exploitation-focused meeting. The young people were frequency going missing as group and travelling out of area. There were concerns that the peer group were engaged in sexually harmful behaviours, and some were self-harming. They were often found together hanging out around recreational land where they were accessing disused buildings and lighting fires.
What was the response?
To coordinate work with the peer group, a single point of contact was established within the missing and exploitation service. The service managers held a coordination meeting with all professionals involved with the young people to inform individual plans. A group email was set up to ensure coordination of communication across a multi-professional group. The pastoral lead at the young people’s school and a safer schools’ officer within the police were also engaged in the process. The young people were already receiving support from children’s services as either children in need, in need of protection or looked after children. The intervention focused on two young men and a young woman aged between 13 and 14; the older children were worked with separately.
A coordinated multi-agency response included:
- Youth outreach activities via a local voluntary community and social enterprise (VCSE) service - who provide child sexual and criminal exploitation services - to engage the peer group in positive activities
- Return home interviews were undertaken by VCSE on a group rather individual basis where possible
- At an individual level, exploitation plans were initiated to increase young people’s safety, including support from youth justice to address home-based conflict to reduce any “push factors” within the family context and work undertaken around healthy and safe relationships to address sexually harmful behaviours
- Addressing the location of concern via partnership working between the police, fire and rescue and detached youth service by:
- Increasing police awareness of the peer group and location of concern via their weekly threat, harm and risk meetings
- Detached youth work to engage young people in the community to understand their wishes and needs as well as initiate safety interventions
- Securing unsafe disused buildings by the local authority’s building service and the fire and rescue service
Following peer mapping and assessment work, further opportunities for partnership working were identified. However, the priority has been to build trusting relationships with young people and ensure existing key partners and lead professionals were communicating effectively to promote and protect the welfare of the peer group.
What were the challenges?
Contextually informed practice requires a fundamental shift regarding partnership working. Traditionally, child
protection work has involved child protection police officers only. Whereas, contextual safeguarding approaches overlaps with local policing and neighbourhood community policing, who may be less used to working via the lens of child welfare. This is recognised as a challenge nationally as well at a local level regarding integrated safeguarding partnership activities.
What difference did this make?
Early indications suggest that young people’s risk of exploitation resulting from frequency of missing episodes and associated vulnerabilities has been reduced. Assessment work identified contexts beyond the concerning location of disused buildings within the recreational space. This has enabled improved understanding and further exploration of associations between the peer group as well as extended family members when the young people go missing. Interventions are on-going.
What did we learn?
Previously, the risks identified for the peer group from accessing disused buildings within the recreational space may have been seen as a policing concern rather than a matter for the safeguarding partnership. A Contextual Safeguarding approach has led to ongoing conversations regarding keeping the peer group safe and how the partnership work should operate beyond securing the locations. This means that the young people have received a more timely, coordinated response to their needs.