Contextual safeguarding and understanding student voices: How extra familial risks to children can be managed
- 27 August 2024
- Posted in: Healthcare, Education, Management & Leadership
Contextual safeguarding and understanding student voices: How extra familial risks to children can be managed
Since 2021, there have been over 50,000 anonymous testimonies on school sexual harassment culture. There has been a 75% increase in UK knife crime since 2013, 27,000 children involved in gangs and county lines operating in towns across the UK. 1 in 6 children had a probable mental health disorder in 2021, with a 33% increase in referrals to NHS mental health services. 93,000 children aged 11-15 “self-exclude” from schools in England, with bullying being cited as one of the primary reasons. Since 2010, there has also been an estimated £1 billion cut from UK Youth services.
Schools, police, social care and health face the constant challenge of breaking down these communication barriers and are challenged with attempting to discover the context of why and how harm takes place and intercept these issues before they escalate.
These statistics above indicate systemic issues and a pressing communication gap between young people and adults in accessing early help, support, and the right interventions. It highlights a parental gap in understanding, and a lack of proactive data sharing between agencies that work with children (schools, police, social services). How can we understand where and why this harm takes place?
Where and why does this harm take place?
Child on Child relationship issues are often hidden and take place away from adult supervision and are frequently related to the child’s online life and social life, i.e., they do not solely take place in the school setting. These extra-familial issues grow in relevance as children build relationships beyond their family setting and in the communities in which they live. Recognizing and seeking to understand the different relationships children have in their schools, peer groups, online and in their community is a fundamental aspect and challenge of safeguarding work in our communities.
The original work of Carlene Firmin (2017) identified these issues, and this led to the development of the contextual safeguarding framework.
The contextual safeguarding framework can provide schools with the opportunity to both address current harm and to change contexts to attempt to avert the repetition of similar incidents.
Dr Firmin’s groundbreaking research and subsequent Ted Talk highlights one of her cases where a sexual assault happened in a stairwell. Many individuals were convicted, and victims moved schools. However, the stairwell remained a hotspot for sexual assaults for another 6 years (YouTube, 2019). This highlights a fundamental need for interventions in the spaces where these harms take place to prevent future harm occurring.
How can we improve the spaces and places in schools and our communities to keep young people safe?
The focus around contextual safeguarding framework has four clear benefits:
Develop Community: Contextual safeguarding does not just focus on one individual, but on how to protect all young people from environments that cause safeguarding issues. It uses partnerships between educational settings and communities, so that everyone is aware of possible warning signs and how to report them.
Age Appropriate: Contextual safeguarding is particularly important for adolescents, because as young people age, they spend more time socializing away from their families. Consequently, their social networks – and any harm associated with them – become more significant. Ofcom reports stated 90% of children have smartphones by senior school, meaning easier access to mobile apps and more opportunities of being at risk of harm. Studies also highlights that young people communicate more often and comfortably via their devices. (PR News, 2017)
Develop a Shared Culture of Safety: All those who have influence over extra-familial contexts use their influence to make these settings safer. As a result, young people are protected by ensuring that the potential for harmful situations is reduced.
Prevent Future Harm: The relationships that young people make during this period of time influence what they expect from future relationships, so if they socialize in safe, supportive environments then they will form safe, supportive relationships (and the same applies for harmful, abusive relationships). By ensuring that young people are in nurturing environments, both within educational settings, and outside them, we can reduce the risk of future harm.
Striving to understand poses the greatest challenge and yet the greatest opportunity for the safeguarding community. Carlene Firmin’s guiding principle has never been more important or relevant:
“We will not understand the everyday life experiences of young people unless we seek to understand the social rules that govern their lives.”
(Dr Carlene Firmin, 2021)
Understanding the lives of our young people needs to be our goal and the framework and immense benefits offered by contextual safeguarding needs to become centre ground in our safeguarding cultures and approaches. Contextual Safeguarding is an approach to understanding, and responding to, young people’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families. It recognises that parents and carers have little influence over these contexts and it is this recognition that is fundamental to our progress and should fuel our drive to understand the voice and life experiences of the child.
We also need shared learning with young people on how they can advocate and look after themselves and each other in these situations.
Listening to and seeking to understand the voice of the child entails a continuous commitment to learning to understand the life experiences of young people through their lens and an acceptance and appreciation that listening and seeking to understand is not the end but the start of a continual cyclical process in which the interventions and evaluations of the success of the identified interventions also include the voice of the child.
