Delphine Peace

From sexual violence within friendship groups to being groomed in community contexts for transporting drugs, extra-familial risks and harms continue to challenge traditional safeguarding approaches in the UK. These issues inhibit young people’s safety and wellbeing and reduce their opportunities to develop as they grow. Offering a bold and hopeful alternative, this book draws on a major multi-disciplinary research project involving practitioners, parents and young people. It asks how we can move beyond thinking about safeguarding young people from risks and towards creating the systems and conditions in which all young people feel safe and are enabled to flourish. Through critical perspectives spanning diverse cultural and geographical contexts, and using reflective questions to prompt deeper thinking, the book reimagines adolescent safeguarding, showing how institutions can shift from risk-centred responses to delivering what all young people need to live full lives and to be safe in the process.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. During adolescence, young people are exposed to a range of risks beyond their family homes including sexual and criminal exploitation, peer-on-peer abuse and gang-related violence. However, it has only been over the past two decades that the critical safeguarding implications of these harms have started to be recognised. Social care organisations are increasingly experimenting with new approaches but continue to experience challenges in supporting affected young people and their families. This book analyses the results of the first rapid evidence assessment of social care organisations’ responses to risks and harms outside the home across 10 countries. The authors highlight key areas for service development, give insights into how these risks and harms can be understood, and consider wider implications for policy and practice.