Risk Outside The Home: Resources

The Newcastle Safeguarding Childrens Partnership has brought together a range of local and national resources to support practitioners in understanding their roles in safeguarding and protecting children and young people who face harm in their communities.

Local Resources and Briefing Sessions

PowerPoint Slides and Pocket Guides

The NSCP delivered a range of briefing sessions focused on topics related to Risk Outside The Home. Alongside a copy of the PowerPoint Slides we have produced Pocket Guides for professionals:

Recordings

Recordings of the Risk Outside The Home briefings delivered by the NSCP are available below:

Related Resources

Introduction to Risk Outside The Home:

For those wanting a great introduction to Contextual Safeguarding you can watch this Ted Talk delivered by Professor Carlene Firmin in which she outlines how she developed this approach to improving responses to young people who face harm in the community. Building on the Ted Talk shared in the previous e-mail update, a more up to date and fuller account of Contextual Safeguarding and risk outside the home is given by Professor Carlene Firmin here at a webinar given to the British Association of Social Workers.

Newcastle’s approach to Risk Outside The Home supports other important approaches to safeguarding which underpin our response to protecting children and young people. Adopting Restorative and Relational Approaches to safeguarding is important. The Contextual Safeguarding Network have produced this guide to Relationship Based Practice and Contextual Safeguarding. Further information regarding Newcastle’s Restorative and Relational Approach can be accessed here. The NSCP and SAB have developed a transition protocol to support practitioners ensure that as young people move towards adulthood they continue to receive the right support at the right time. The Contextual Safeguarding Network have developed a practitioner guide on Transitional and Contextual Safeguarding.

The Children’s Society have produced a professional toolkit on Young People Trafficked For The Purpose Of Criminal Exploitation In Relation To County Lines

Thinking About Language

Victim Blaming Language: We discussed how language which either positions young people as being responsible, or blames them for the harm that they suffer is not acceptable and needs to be challenged. Please watch this short video, written and produced with young people.

Making Words Matter: This briefing, draws on both evidence and research as well as practice and knowledge from academics, practitioners and Experts by Experience to describe why language is important, the impact of language on a developing child and young person and suggests ways to support practitioners and services in attending to language.

Child Exploitation Appropriate Language Guide: This document, seeks to provide guidance to professionals on the appropriate use of language when discussing children and their experience of exploitation in a range of contexts. These include when speaking directly with or discussing children, within recording and case management systems and when delivering relevant training or other learning interventions.

Assessments

Professional Mapping Exercise: It can be helpful for professionals to build a better understanding of the communities that they work in. One suggestion is to print off a map of the area and start mapping out your knowledge of the area in terms of its strength and potential sources of harm. This may help us understand the gaps in our knowledge about specific areas and encourage us to reach out to other partners, young people and families to build insights that can inform assessments, plans and interventions. Please see page 5 of the Safety Mapping Document (here)

Assessment Triangle: Most people are familiar with the Assessment Triangle that features within the Working Together to Safeguard Children documents, and the Assessment Diamond used in Newcastle. The Contextual Safeguarding Network have produced specific assessment triangles focused on different contexts: School, Neighbourhood and Peer Group. For more information click here.

Peer Mapping Exercise: Understanding the peer groups that young people are part of or affected by is crucial to understanding their safety and risk of harm in the community. Mapping out how groups of young people relate to one other, the dynamics at play and how different young people are involved is crucial to building contextually informed assessments. Please read the Peer Mapping Example here.

Community/Safety Mapping Exercise: This is an exercise that practitioners can do with young people to understand their experiences in the community and their perceptions of risk. It involves using a map of the local area that young people spend time in and mapping out key locations and routes that they use (home, school, parks, shopping centres, paths, bus routes…) and colour coding these areas by how safe young people in them. Red indicates areas they do not consider themselves safe, Amber represents spaces where they are reasonably safe but might have some concerns, and Green represent areas in which they feel safe. This can help professionals better understand the nature of the risks young people face, where interventions need to be focused and what needs to happen immediately to reduce risks and promote safety. The Safety Mapping Document provides more information and can be accessed here.

Contextualise Assessments: Adapting our existing assessments to help practitioners better engage with contextual risks can be helpful. Hackney have shared an example of how they updated their existing assessments to be more focused on risks outside the home – the changes they made are highlighted in green. This can be seen in the Hackney CF Assessment Template which is available here.

The Assessment and Intervention Planning for Young People at Risk of Extra-Familial Harm: This provides an excellent and accessible overview of how professionals can assess contextually and how this can lead to making plans that engage with the key issues involved in Risk Outside the Home. This is available here.

Interventions

Safety Plans: This contains a range of case studies and example plans. These will be useful in providing ideas of how plans can be developed which directly address questions of safety and risk contextually. They can be accessed here.

Disruption: The National Working Group Toolkit provides a comprehensive overview the various mechanisms and processes that can support the disruption of perpetrators and sources of harm. This is a crucial element in engaging with contextual risks outside the home. This is available here.

Exploitation Tool Kit: This provides a good overview of criminal exploitation and county lines and provides useful insights and recommendations to professionals. Please click here to read more.

Securing Safety: This infographic provides a really helpful overview of things to take into consideration when young people may be moved out of area as part of a plan to keep them safe from risk outside the home. This is available here.

Child Exploitation Disruption Toolkit: This is produced by the Home Office and is a comprehensive guide for all professionals who work with young people who are at risk of exploitation. This can be read here.