What is contextual safeguarding?
Contextual safeguarding is an approach that recognises that children may be at risk of significant harm within and outside their homes. It considers the relationship and interaction between the child and their family, their familial contexts, and the impact of pressure from their peers or community. As children develop, they are influenced by many environments outside of their own family.
Extra-familial contexts
These can include:
- Peer groups
- Schools and other educational establishments
- Community/public spaces, including parks, housing estates, shopping centres, takeaway restaurants, or transport hubs
- Online, including social media or gaming platforms
What are extra-familial harms?
Where there are concerns that a child is experiencing extra-familial harm, safeguarding leads should consider all the needs and vulnerabilities of the child. Some children will have vulnerabilities that others can exploit and require support appropriate to their needs to minimise the potential for exploitation.
Children of all ages can experience extra-familial harm, and they may experience this type of harm from other children and adults.
Forms of extra-familial harm include:
- Exploitation by criminal and organised crime groups and individuals (such as county lines and financial exploitation)
- Serious violence
- Modern slavery and trafficking
- Online harm
- Sexual exploitation
- Teenage relationship abuse
- The influences of extremism which could lead to radicalisation
- Child-on-child (non-familial) sexual abuse and other forms of harmful sexual behaviour displayed by children towards their peers
What does this mean for your school?
Your school is just one of the contexts where children spend their time. Most schools are where children feel safe, but they can also be places where children experience harm. There have been many reports of children experiencing sexual harassment, grooming, and bullying within schools.
Schools need to identify and address the underlying factors enabling abuse. Children may be exposed to multiple risks as the different contexts they find themselves in can be interrelated. When schools have concerns, they should always consider the wider context and sources of influence on the child. When completing referrals to social care, always provide as much information as possible, including wider environmental factors.
Practical ideas
Always:
- Take a child-centred approach and put the child first, respecting the voice and lived experience of the child
- Recognise and challenge inequalities and discrimination
- Recognise, respond, report and record concerns
- Be professionally curious
- Work in partnership with parents/carers, supporting services and agencies
- Create a safe space for children
Key questions for reflection:
- Do your students feel safe within school?
- Do your students know who they can report concerns to?
- Do your staff receive safeguarding training on extrafamilial harms?
- Do you take a contextual approach to school safety?
- Do you know the local conditions that impact contextual safeguarding?
Introducing MyVoice
MyVoice is an open-access reporting system that empowers anyone to report safeguarding concerns easily and anonymously. It can be targeted at specific groups, such as students and parents and or made available to the wider community, ensuring that everyone has a voice.
By providing secure, anonymous access for reporting safeguarding concerns, early intervention can be enhanced, and an open culture of safeguarding can be fostered, providing better support for anyone who needs it.
For more information on contextual safeguarding and how our solution, MyVoice, can help, download our free guide to ensure you have the essential information you need to protect all your students.
