Despite high-profile media reports of harming and abuse of children in their own homes, recent data shows increasing risks to children are often the familiar, ordinary, ‘every day’ situations. Children can be vulnerable to harm in wider contexts including relationships with their peers, schools and their neighbourhoods – delegates at a safeguarding conference will hear.
Delivered by Birmingham-based charity Services For Education, the online Safeguarding Conference on Thursday, March 27, will focus on ‘contextual safeguarding’ – an approach to understanding and responding to young people’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families.
One of the conference organisers – Jo Perrin, a seasoned Education Adviser at Services For Education with a strong background in safeguarding – said many recent high-profile situations have had a contextual safeguarding element.
“Only by understanding all the risk areas in a child’s life can we understand the actual lived experience of the child and their full vulnerabilities. Our legal processes and our practices have, to a large degree, developed to focus on risks to children in their own homes – where parental figures may have significantly harmed a child or somehow colluded in that harm.
“Whilst none of this is wrong, and it has protected generations of children, schools need to be aware of what is happening outside the immediate school environment,” said Jo.
Jo will be joined by the rest of the safeguarding team from Services For Education, including Lucie Welch and Emma Mudge, along with a panel of experts including Headline Speaker Dr Rebecca Brown, Research Associate in the Contextual Safeguarding Team at Durham University. Rebecca will talk about the recent ‘In the name of safeguarding’ study and the ways Contextual Safeguarding can be used to build safety in the context of education and close by.
Other speakers include Sabrina Hewitt, Exploitation & County Lines Specialist and Trauma Informed Practitioner who was herself criminally exploited from a very young age and who now works directly with young people and their families who have been either involved in or affected by exploitation and county lines, and Clair Graham, Head of Service for Contextual Safeguarding working within the EMPOWER U – the Exploitation and Missing Hub at Birmingham Children’s Trust.
Prof. Luna Dolezal, Professor of Philosophy and Medical Humanities at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter, will discuss the idea of “shame competence” and why we need to understand shame and its effects, and also need to recognise and avoid shaming.
The online, full-day conference will start at 9.30 am and will examine the complexities of Contextual Safeguarding, providing essential knowledge, practical advice, and best practice guidance for professionals working with vulnerable children. Further information on the conference is available at https://www.servicesforeducation.co.uk/online-safeguarding-conference/
