Fulfilling potential
Why context is key Dawn Jotham explains the basics of contextual safeguarding and how educators can successfully adopt this approach to support their students and school communities
The importance of effective safeguarding policies and practices has been high on the national agenda of late – think of the spike in serious youth violence or the rise in mental health related risks. As education professionals, safeguarding is also something that is, or should be, at the forefront for headteachers, senior leadership teams and teachers. They are, after all, tasked with caring for our young people for approximately six hours a day, five days a week, and operate in an environment that is highly influential for children and teens. However, despite policy guidance, in many instances the effectiveness of any safeguarding or duty-of-care is greatly dependent on the context in which it occurs. This has prompted the new wave of safeguarding best-practice, known as contextual safeguarding, which adopts a more holistic view of assessment and interventions. Contextual safeguarding is an approach that informs policy and practical frameworks that has been developed by Dr Carlene Firmin and fellow researchers at the University of Bedfordshire over the past six years. It is, as defined by Dr Firmin, principal research fellow at the university, ‘an approach to understanding, and responding to, young people’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families’. It is based on three key tenets that recognise that the relationships formed between young people and their neighbourhoods, schools and online interactions, carry a varied weight of influence; that
parents and carers often have diminished influence in these contexts; and that experiences in both familial and extrafamilial contexts are mutually influential. This is primarily due to the substantial amounts of time young people spend outside familial environments. Consequently, those working with young people need to be mindful of the different spheres of influence, and make a concerted effort to engage the people and organisations that exercise influence in these environments. As Dr Firmin outlines, at its core, contextual safeguarding is about recognising that ‘assessment of, and intervention with, these spaces [extra-familial settings] are a critical part of safeguarding practices’. As a result, context-driven safeguarding also expands the scope of inquiry to include a range of social contexts, thus broadening the risk factors considered when preempting or reactively intervening in the safety and wellbeing of young people. Contextual safeguarding becomes increasingly important as children progress from early childhood to their teens, as their spheres of influence expand and they spend more time in social environments and less isolated time with their families, and it is often these new experiences that determine their exposure to violence and risk of exploitation. For example, young people can be at high risk of online bullying, peer-on-peer abuse, robbery or serious violence as a result of their extra-familial settings and the social norms that are established with their peers.
Autumn 2019
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