Featuring over 180 resources, the new Contextual Safeguarding Toolkit gives guidance on how to implement a contextual safeguarding approach to the risks young people face beyond their families, such as identifying where children are at risk, which could range from within peer groups, schools or other locations outside of the family home.

Informed by research, the toolkit has been developed by academics from the University of Bedfordshire’s Safer Young Lives Research Centre and child safeguarding expert, Professor Carlene Firmin MBE, alongside a team of researchers from Durham University.

The research used showed that the child protection system needs to understand and respond to the contexts where young people are unsafe, and not solely focus on the behaviour of children and young people themselves. For example, in case studies where children who are abused by peers or adults unconnected to their families, often the work to protect them focused on changing their behaviour and that of their parents, rather than changing the contexts where that child is unsafe. In worst cases, the research found that many young people have been left unprotected altogether, or only responded to by criminal justice agencies who saw them as a risk to others rather than at risk of harm themselves.

Using these findings, the research team developed the new Contextual Safeguarding Toolkit based on the results from an initial pilot with Hackney Council where safeguarding was monitored in nine additional areas. Following this, a second period of testing was funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and the London Violence Reduction Unit which saw the researchers embed themselves into children’s services teams in multiple test sites to identify how they were changing their systems. The researchers then used the developed toolkit to trial different approaches, such as the introduction of a new child protection pathway and category for a child protection plan called ‘Risk Outside of the Home’ that resulted in a better partnership between parents, guardians and social workers.

The team behind the Contextual Safeguarding Toolkit, which has now been piloted successfully by ten local authorities, hopes it will address this gap in the child protection system across the UK.

Carlene Firmin MBE, Professor with Durham University’s Department of Sociology, said: “During my doctoral research, I identified a significant gap in the child protection system in there needing to be a more contextual approach that was focused on where harm to children was occurring. From the pilots within the local authorities, we now understand how to create systems in which social workers can assess peer groups, locations, and schools where young people come to harm, and the difference this can make.  

“The next step is to see the contextual safeguarding approach become business as usual across the sector. We have also come to understand how much further we have to go to create the policy conditions in which this type of practice can be business as usual.”

Dr Helen Beckett, Director of the Safer Young Lives Research Centre – based within Bedfordshire’s Institute of Applied Social Research (IHR) – commented: “We are so pleased to have been able to support the development of the Contextual Safeguarding programme over the last decade and to reach this exciting stage where we see this toolkit launched into the sector.

“We’re grateful to all the staff who have contributed to this work over the years, and to all the partners who have worked with us to share their learning and reflections, which have been central to the creation of this toolkit. We look forward to seeing the many ways in which this will be used to better safeguard children and young people in the coming years.”