The £1.9 million project, coordinated by the University of Sussex and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, will investigate how innovation could protect young people from the threat of child sexual exploitation, gang-association, peer-on-peer abuse, criminal exploitation and involvement in county lines drug dealing.

Researchers aim to address the current gap in knowledge around what allows innovation to succeed and will scrutinise how six local authorities have interpreted and operationalised Trauma-Informed Practice, Contextual Safeguarding or Transitional Safeguarding. They hope their findings will inform the development of future innovation, both in complex safeguarding and in social care and public services more broadly, and enable the development of a critical sociology of complex safeguarding.

One of the three innovations, Contextual Safeguarding, an approach to advance the way child protection systems respond to abuse in extra-familial contexts was developed at the University of Bedfordshire and has since been inserted in child protection guidelines in England and policy action plans in Wales.

Dr Carlene Firmin, who heads up the Contextual Safeguarding programme at the University of Bedfordshire and is a co-investigator for the project, said: “We are thrilled to be partnering others in this project at a critical point in the development of Contextual Safeguarding as more as areas beyond those with whom we are directly working – begin to take up and develop the approach.

“So far we are aware of 36 local authorities in England and Wales who are seeking to work in this way – 26 of whom are doing so without direct and funded supported from the Contextual Safeguarding team.

“This project will go some way to understanding how they are undertaking this system change – providing an evidence base upon which other areas can build their approaches in the future.”

Dr Firmin will work on the project alongside fellow Bedfordshire researchers, Dr Jenny Lloyd, and Katie Latimer as well as colleagues from the University of Sussex, NGO Research in Practice, social enterprise Innovation Unit, and charity Become.