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 vision for Contextual Safeguarding?
Oxfordshire is a county in southeast England. In 2021, Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board (OSCB) commissioned a child safeguarding practice review of how services respond to contextual risks beyond the home and how multi-agency partners work together to target child criminal exploitation (CCE). The review, and legacy of Operation Bullfinch, facilitated strategic discussion on how systems and structures are organised to support and protect adolescents vulnerable to exploitation. As part of this systems-learning agenda, a key consideration has been how Contextual Safeguarding (CS) approaches might be embedded to inform a safeguarding adolescents strategic framework and address all forms of extra-familial harm (EFH).
What has been put in place?
The OSCB annual report cites CS is an OSCB priority area as part of its improvement agenda for adolescent
safeguarding practice arrangements. The new Oxfordshire Youth Justice & Exploitation Service is a multi-agency service comprising youth justice and social workers and police, health and education professionals. The head of service is the strategic lead for CS, missing, exploitation and youth justice. The specialist team advances ‘exploitation social work’ that involves direct work with children and families to identify, plan and deliver tailored responses to EFH.
The integrated service includes dedicated child sexual exploitation police; an education, employment and training officer; nurse practitioners; and a children and adolescent mental health service offer. This includes consultation from clinical psychologist and consultant psychiatrists for complex cases. Service case managers hold expertise on EFH working with key agencies within location ‘hotspots’ for exploitation, and the service is developing capacity for hybrid working with children’s social care teams. CS approaches are utilised to drive safety planning in response to contextual risk and disruption and enforcement of those exploiting children. The service is developing its offer to children and families to include mentored support programmes to help divert them away from exploitation and harm and develop their interests and skills. Parenting support groups have also been put in place for parents of children that have been exploited.
The service is developing its Multi-Agency Risk Management processes so that EFH can be effectively identified. There is a drive to ensure all staff across the service and partnership share a common understanding of CS and their responsibilities in delivering these approaches within adolescent safeguarding practice.
What were the challenges?
CS is being embedded within the Youth Justice Service, but it is a difficult agenda to implement locally across the service and within the existing children’s social care system. CS embeds well when multi-agency partners each understand the approach and share responsibility for their role in delivering aligned safeguarding responses.
What were the key mechanisms of change?
CS has been implemented from the ‘bottom up’. The outcomes from the pilot work, which is coordinating and testing CS approaches, will develop a service-wide strategic framework for safeguarding vulnerable young people from EFH. There is buy-in across the specialist team to advance CS approaches in response to EFH. The team are building on best practice locally and nationally in respect to the role of mapping techniques to keep vulnerable young people safe from contextual risk.