Contextual Safeguarding and Child Protection

Rewriting the Rules

Carlene Firmin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000074109
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This book offers a complete account of Contextual Safeguarding theory, policy, and practice frameworks for the first time. It highlights the particular challenge of extra-familial routes through which young people experience significant harm, such as child sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, serious youth violence, domestic abuse in teenage relationships, bullying, gang-association, and radicalisation.

Through analysing case reviews, observing professionals, and co-creating practices with them, Firmin provides a personal, philosophical, strategic, and practical account of the design, implementation and future of Contextual Safeguarding. Drawing together a wealth of practice examples, case studies, policy references, and practitioner insights for the first time, this book articulates a new safeguarding framework and provides a detailed account of its translation across an entire child protection system and its relevant component parts.

It will be of interest to all scholars, students, and professionals working within social work, youth justice and youth work, policing and law enforcement, community safety, council services, forensic and clinical psychology, counselling, health, and education.

Part 1
The challenge we face and the lens through which we view it

1 Opening

My husband is weary about my preferences for television shows. For him evenings are about settling into the sofa for some laughs courtesy of a witty stand-up comic masterfully critiquing the politics of the day. I on the other hand wax and wane between two extremes: the whimsy and heartbreak of so-called reality television or the raw and challenging content featured in documentaries – or films that document real life events – where young people have come to harm. The reasons for this are not, thankfully, the subject of this book; and hopefully the upfront confession hasn’t sent potential readers running in the opposite direction.

My TV choices have, however, provided all manner of material for his book – and none more so than this poignant quote from the film Spotlight:

Mark my words Mr. Rezendes, if it takes the village to raise the child, it takes the village to abuse one.

(Spotlight, 2015)

It was 2018 and I was getting ready for bed in my friend Lucie’s spare room – she often kindly put me up for the night when I needed to spend a few days at my university in Luton, rather than travelling to and from London. The film had been out some years before, and I hadn’t watched it then, but (given the aforementioned questionable preferences) I was pleased to see it had been made available on a streaming service that evening – the perfect thing to watch before settling down for the night. The film documented how journalists at the Boston Globe newspaper had investigated the abuse of children in the city’s Catholic churches. In one scene journalist Mike Rezendes played by Mark Ruffalo is interviewing the lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian, who is representing the then adult men who had been sexually abused by clergy members as children. He is clear: many figures in the church, in the media, in politics and local residents had been aware of the allegations for years. Their inaction, and in some cases complicity, meant that priests were able to access and abuse children for decades; without this wider contextual scaffold the abuse may never have occurred – particularly on the scale that it did.

Nearly two years on from when I first heard the phrase from Spotlight and I still remember the rasping sensation I felt as my sharp intake of break clipped the back of my throat the moment I heard it. It was uncomfortable, anger-inducing even, but also very true. I heard it at a time where Contextual Safeguarding, the subject of this book, was already in progress. I was developing it because, like Mitchell Garabedian, I had become all too aware of the bus drivers, security guards, teachers, shop keepers, residents, paramedics, councillors, park wardens and youth workers, who oversaw, managed or could reach into the contexts in which young people had been exploited. I was also aware of how our societies and statutory systems were responding to the abuse of children by looking almost exclusively at the parents who had raised those children (as both the source of potential harm and protection) and not that wider village who often managed the place in which they were abused.

I know why my husband rolls his eyes every time I take hold of the remote control. My choice of ‘light’ entertainment is, to him, ‘heavy’ – and in short depressing. This book, however, is not. As unlike Garabedian’s quote, this book will focus on how a village, in 2019, can protect a child. We also have to recognise the truth in what he said, however, to get to that hopeful place. I will use the first part of this book to do that: summarising the abuse that young people experience; outlining the ways child protection systems have developed to respond;¹ and detailing the theories and concepts that have given me a lens through which to see and understand our challenge. The three parts that follow it will take you on the same journey that I’ve been on for the past five years, reaching a destination in which we have a clear framework for how to safeguard young people from the abuse they experience beyond their family homes.

Much of what this book will suggest isn’t novel. It borrows from a range of research and practice traditions in which we have learnt how to create safe and protective communities, institutions, friendships and families. From community and social justice social work, youth work and community development, and public health approaches to violence through to safer-by-design approaches to crime reduction, situational crime prevention and problem-solving policing agendas, I will pull the established contextual wisdom of many to build a novel child protection framework – a Contextual Safeguarding framework. And in doing so I pull the intention behind the idea of a village raising a child into a political, social and practical system in which the extra-familial forms of harm that children experience has been framed as a child protection issue.

This process is important. In April 2019 the Sky News anchor Jayne Secker challenged musician and practitioner Guvna B when he called upon communities to play a role in safeguarding young people from knife crime:

Guvna B: My mum’s from Ghana, and she used to say this Ghanaian saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.

Jayne Secker: But we’re not in a village in Ghana; and people don’t necessarily feel there is much of a community in some parts of London at least.

In many respects Secker seemed to have purposefully misunderstood the point that Guvna B was trying to make with an undercurrent of racism that was infuriating at best. Despite this attempt to undermine him, however, Guvna B’s point is clear. We have to identify ‘the village’ that is raising our children and provide a framework and approach that will maximise its safeguarding potential. Contextual Safeguarding is one approach to doing that, and having been co-created between researchers and practitioners since 2013, this book is my first attempt to compile this iterative evidence-base into one publication.

The abuse

This is a book about Sara. And it is a book about Malik – both of whom you will meet in chapter 2. It’s also book about countless other young people who are abused by peers or adults unconnected to their families. As they enter adolescence, and the heady mix of physical, emotional and social changes that colour this time in human development, they begin stepping out on their own. In shopping centres, parks and libraries, on social media platforms, waiting in transport hubs and navigating much bigger schools and colleges; and for the most part they are fine when they do. But for the young people who are approached at their local take-away shop, groomed and trafficked to distribute drugs around the country, the journey through adolescence is a darker shade of gloom. As it is for young people who are sexually harassed and abused by peers at school; or exploited via organised crime networks who see them as sexual commodities for their own financial gain. Or young people who are emotionally and physically abused by their first, same-age, romantic partner. Young people who experience robbery, are threatened with weapons, or even stabbed on their way home from school. Or those who are bullied to a point where they can’t see a future beyond the blurred vision of their tears. There are many things about each of these experiences that will be particular to the harm in question, and unique to the young person who experiences them. And yet, the extra-familial dynamics of these experiences, the community and peer relationships in which they occur, and the school and neighbourhood settings where they play out, are often shared. The villages in which our young people are abused are all around us – they are merely broader than the family homes which have been the traditional target of systems in place to tackle abuse.

The system response

And so this is also a book about how the state and wider societies have responded to Sara and Malik. It is about a child protection system, designed to protect children from abuse within their families, and the difficulties that have arisen in England (and could arise elsewhere) when people have tried to use that system to deal with abuse in peer groups, schools and community settings. In England all manner of harms experienced by young people like Sara and Malik have been classified as abuse. A series of public inquiries and campaigns have called on the state to respond accordingly. A spotlight has been shone on the efficacy of statutory services, and individual children’s social care departments and police forces have been found wanting.

This is the place from where my team and I sought to understand, and respond to, the realities of Sara and Malik’s lives: and the struggles that professionals and their parents had in trying to keep them safe. What were child protection systems, specifically, doing in response to extra-familial abuse – and what would it take for those systems to act differently? In particular how could child protection systems, and the social work workforce, engage with the peer groups, school environments and public places where young people were coming to significant harm – and thereby broaden their field of vision beyond the children and families with whom they had traditionally worked? Our endeavour to answer this question has involved coining, theorising and then applying the idea of Contextual Safeguarding – creating child protection systems and wider safeguarding partnerships that can: target the extra-familial contexts and social conditions in which abuse occurs; do this through the lens of child welfare and child protection (not solely through policing and community safety); leverage the extensive partnerships that can reach into extra-familial contexts; and measure the impact of such systems contextually.

As such it is important to emphasise that our primary concern has been child protection responses to extra-familial harm – rather than all possible responses to the issue. In this book I will make reference to a range of partners who are involved in mounting a response to extra-familial abuse, and whose expertise has informed the development of Contextual Safeguarding. But it is important to emphasise the parameters of the work to date, and the intention behind its inception.

Contextual Safeguarding has been six years in the making – and so in many respects is a very young idea. But in that time we have already learnt a substantial amount about what it takes to extend the remit of a child protection system so that it can engage with the extra-familial dynamics (and contexts) of abuse. In this book I will outline three critical stages of learning so far. The first involving attempts to implement small contextual tweaks to child protection systems that otherwise remained solely focused on the assessment of, and intervention with, children and families in response to abuse. The second being focused on implementing whole system change to embed a Contextual Safeguarding approach throughout child protection systems. And the third considering the conceptual, policy and practical implications of learning so far, and signalling immediate and more long-term questions to be explored in the years ahead. Understanding each stage of development is important for ensuring that those interested in Contextual Safeguarding understand where it has come from – and where it could go: maximising opportunities for further co-creation of the approach in the future.

The evidence base

In writing this book I bring together findings from five key projects that have been used to build Contextual Safeguarding since 2011.

The first study (2011–2015) involved a review of nine cases of peer-on-peer abuse, involving 145 young people (detailed in chapter 2). This study provided a contextual analysis of extra-familial harm, and in doing pointed towards a need to contextualise safeguarding responses.

In response to the case reviews I led an action research project from 2013 to 2016 (The MsUnderstood Project) in which 11 local areas in England contextualised elements of their response to peer-on-peer forms of extra-familial abuse. This work evidenced the value of contextual approaches; the challenges of sustaining contextual approaches without system wide change; and was the evidence base that underpinned the Contextual Safeguarding framework – first published in 2016.

The need for system-wide change was explored through two projects that ran from 2016 and 2017 respectively. The first was the 2016 launch of a Contextual Safeguarding practice network – through which practitioners could test, and provide feedback on, contextual approaches – engage in learning events, produce case studies to support practice development and continue the development of practices initiated from 2013 to 2016 in the original 11 sites. Then, in 2017, we embarked on our first whole system application of the Contextual Safeguarding Framework – working with children’s services colleagues in the London Borough of Hackney to create a root-and-branch children’s social care response to the extra-familial contexts in which young people were being abused.

In 2018, we built on the learning emerging from Hackney to the launch the Contextual Safeguarding Scale-Up project – a bid to test the framework in additional localities. We had funding to work with three areas but 50 applied to take part; so in the end we selected nine (and secured additional funding to support this) – five outside of London and a further four within the capital. This project will run until 2022, but learning has already emerged from system review activities in all sites to track progress to date, and identify priorities for the year ahead.

Across these five projects we have used a series of largely qualitative research methods to build, understand, document, disseminate and enable contextual practices. Core techniques have included: embedded research methods – sitting alongside practitioners to capture, and inform, the system-change process; content analysis of policy documents; meeting and practice observations; focus groups with young people and practitioners; surveys; reflective workshops; and system mapping. The methods employed in these different studies are detailed in the respective parts of this book where they most feature – in particular chapters 2, 4, 5 and 8.

All of the data collected within, and across the projects, have been analysed through a two-tier conceptual lens. The principal approach to analysis has been to use the Contextual Safeguarding framework (chapter 6) to document and assess the contextual capabilities of local safeguarding systems. My research team and I have regularly organise our data against this framework – as you will see in various parts of the book – to both understand whether Contextual Safeguarding is being realised in a local area, and to articulate what we are learning about the operational reality of such an approach. Underpinning the Contextual Safeguarding Framework is a series of larger theoretical ideas that are detailed in chapter 4 of this book: the central ones being the concepts of social field, capital and habitus offered by Pierre Bourdieu to explain the social world. As our work has developed, theories of critical social work, ecologies of human development, public health approaches to violence reduction and situational crime prevention have all provided a home to Contextual Safeguarding, and have been drawn upon to advance and explain the idea. As such, all are also referenced in this book, providing an overarching framework in which to explain the positions we have reached, and also to anchor my recommendations for where we should go next.

The path to change

Most importantly this is a book about what child protection systems could be; how the state could act; and what we as a society could be doing to re-write the social rules of extra-familial contexts in which Sara, Malik and other youn...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• PART 1: The challenge we face and the lens through which we view it
• PART 2: Establishing the building blocks for change
• PART 3: Mapping and test running Contextual Safeguarding systems
• PART 4: Looking back and planning forward A pit stop on the path to Contextual Safeguarding
• References
• Index